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I have been a member of Stack Exchange for almost four years. I always log in using my email address and password. Yet I am an unregistered user.

Although I have filled out my profile I am always greeted by the insulting and catty remark that "Apparently this user prefers to keep an air of mystery about them." When I search trying to find out how to remove the catty remark and the 'unregistered' beside my name I get either useless information or some remark such as "this question has already been answered."

Can this 'feature' of Stack Exchange be fixed? Perhaps adjacent to the word "unregistered" and the catty remark there could be a "fix this" button?

This is what I see when I log on to the site:

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  • jwbales.us/pictures/2016-03-04.png This is a screenshot of what I see evertime I log in.
    – John Wayland Bales
    Mar 4, 2016 at 17:53
  • Thanks Kendra. You are right, I have the link bookmarked. Thank you for solving this very annoying mystery.
    – John Wayland Bales
    Mar 4, 2016 at 18:02
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    John, looks like you did have an unregistered profile (basically, a profile that doesn't have a way to log into it and is effectively temporarily active) back in the day. I'd be happy to merge it into your current profile, which would give you ownership of this answer back as well as make that bookmarked link redirect to your current, fully registered profile. Please let me know if you'd like me to do that.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Mar 4, 2016 at 20:03

1 Answer 1

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There's a very short answer for why you're seeing this: You're not looking at your profile page.

To be clear, it could be yours and just be an unregistered account you lost access to, such as by clearing your cookies. If you wrote the answer tied to that account, then it is. But at some point you lost access to that account, logged in with the one you're on now, and now you have a registered account with the same name. (Usernames are not unique on the Stack Exchange network.)

Let's look at your screenshot:

OP's provided screenshot

A couple things we can note here tell us we're not looking at your current account.

For starters, check out the "Last seen" date on the right hand side, toward the bottom of the screenshot. The date reads "Jun 25 '12" which can't be right considering you're logged in, right now, on March 4 2016, unless that's not your profile.

There's also no "Edit Profile & Settings" tab- You would see that, since you're logged in, on your own profile.

Finally, check out the top bar. You have 20 less rep than this account, no silver badges, and a profile picture. If you click on your picture up their, you'll be taken to the profile of your current account.

You're likely seeing this profile due to how you're accessing the site. If you have a bookmark, you might have bookmarked the site before you lost access to that account, and just never fixed the bookmark.

You can reclaim your unregistered account by merging it with your current one. You can find instructions on how to do that in the Help Center.

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