Comment 6 for bug 680817

@colan, I've run into this problem as well. I have only logged in using one computer (ever) and am seeing the same problem as you, where the alias changes back after clicking the 'Close' button.

What is even more troubling is that editing ~/.mission-control/accounts/accounts.cfg to use a different alias/nickname has no effect. When Empathy is restarted, the original alias is back, and is written to that file again.