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I was pondering over How to protect my account from being deleted intentionally by someone having access to the pc that I am logged in?

Premise: I am always logged in on my stackoverflow account on my work PC, and I was considering the possibility of someone from my work deleting my account in my absence, for all nefarious reasons and due to the fact the local pc user account passwords are the same for all of us, due to some policy. :(

I also don't want to go through the hassle of logging in and logging out of SO every time I use the PC.

So my question is what all measure are put in place to protect my SO/SE account, which I value the most among my online presences , because I see my time/effort spent on SO contributions as an investment.

Something along the lines of ...

  • 2 factor authentication before deletion.
  • An Easy way to Undelete and Retrieve the whole account with its rep and activity etc.
  • Asking to login again to the openID/Google Account account before deletion.
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    If you request a self delete, you will have 24 hours to reverse the decision (prominent link on your profile page) - it will not be deleted immediately. That should be enough to avoid the issue you seem to be paranoid about. Though - the real answer is - log out every time if you are really worried about such a thing - this is not something that Stack Exchange should implement.
    – Oded
    May 7, 2016 at 15:14
  • @Oded OK, Thanks :)
    – Mohd Abdul Mujib
    May 7, 2016 at 15:26
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    I think it's more likely that they'd just use your account to ask dumb questions on SO.
    – Laurel
    May 7, 2016 at 15:55
  • @Laurel that is quite possible, or now that I think of, maybe this question too is...... =D
    – Mohd Abdul Mujib
    May 7, 2016 at 16:02

1 Answer 1

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Oded's comment covers it entirely:

If you request a self delete, you will have 24 hours to reverse the decision (prominent link on your profile page) - it will not be deleted immediately. That should be enough to avoid the issue you seem to be paranoid about. Though - the real answer is - log out every time if you are really worried about such a thing - this is not something that Stack Exchange should implement.

If your account is over a certain threshold (i.e. if you've posted or voted more than once or twice), you can't immediately delete your account - and it follows, therefore, that nobody else on your computer can do so either. Instead, your account is placed in a deletion queue, where it remains for 24 hours. During that period, there is a link on your profile page that lets you cancel the deletion.

If you want more protection than that, then the solution is just log out. It's not that much hassle to log out and log back in, really - just do it for your own peace of mind.

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  • As much as I'd like to do that, but my SE a/c is linked to my personal gmail ID and at work I restrain from ever logging in onto it for similar reasons. So If I was already logged in to gmail a/c It would be just be a matter of me clicking on login with gmail, but now If I log out I shall have to begin by logging into gmail then SE then when I am done logout of SE then Gmail :D
    – Mohd Abdul Mujib
    May 7, 2016 at 15:28
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    @9kSoft Solution: create an SE OpenID, and use that with your account.
    – ArtOfCode
    May 7, 2016 at 15:29

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