Allow recovery of email address from lost account

[Adam P]

Problem:
- User has account with email address set.
- User's proxy gets blocked.
- User doesn't get successfully informed of being moved to new proxy.
- User now cannot get access to old account, but can't create new account with the old email address.

Possible solution:
When a user verifies her email address, delete any other accounts (will only be zero or one) that have that same email address. The user owns that email address, so they should also own any accounts with that that email address.
(Alternatively, the email address could just be cleared from the other accounts, but I see no reason to keep them around.)

Related to Bug #457345

[Chris (poser)]

Would this apply to all email-registration attempts, or would it be somehow restricted to proxy-migration scenarios? In the former case, this proposal would definitely address Bug #551906. But, Psiphon accounts hold more state than just an email address, right? What about existing homepages, bookmarks, locale settings and accrued-invitations on whatever account was previously associated with the email address in question?

Also, in this scenario, we are assuming that the email-validation request reaches the user successfully (even though the account-migration email did not reach him at the same address). Does that give us the opportunity to do something clever? Like include the associated account-migration information (and link) along with (or instead of) the email-validation request? Perhaps something like...

"""
WARNING: by clicking the link below, you will permanently delete the <username> account on https://<domainname>/001/ and register this email address with the <username> account on http://<domain name>/001/ instead.

<link>

If you wish to continue using the old account, simply login <link>here</link>.
"""

[Adam P (adam+)]

Your ideas are very good. As you said: It would be preferable to (give the option to) recover the previous account rather than delete it (and it's associated data). And we could also leverage the migration email in order to help with this (depending on how we do it).

[Adam P (adam+)]

If this bug is fixed by removing enforced proxy associations, verify and close Bug #457470

[Adam P (adam+)]

Fixed by user-proxy association enforcement relaxation.