Folding Forum

How easy it is to get a passkey? I know that you provide your username (that you fold under?) and e-mail address... when I begin using a username (that it seems) that no one else is using, does that mean no one has used it in a month? if nothing shows up in the search, does that mean that no one has ever used it? if someone has used the username, but nothing shows up in the search, does that give me the right to claim that username? what if the username has already been used (has points, but hasn't been active)? the passkey page doesn't answer these questions.

AFAIK, you don't have control over the username. It can be used by others without any limit to it. The "uniqueness" is determined by the combination of Username, Team ID and passkey. Hence the usage of passkey is strongly recommended.

Passkey take 2minutes to get.
Any use of a username shows up, no matter the time frame.
Oddly, anyone can use any username they want, you just give pts to that name.....
You can claim it, but it doesn't stop me from folding under it.
Having a passkey, locks the points earned to that specif user passkey combo, thus sorta making that your unique id.
AND as said above, if a trojan installer again pops up, your pts are protected via the passkey when the evil pts get zero'd.

patonb wrote:...if a trojan installer again pops up, your pts are protected via the passkey when the evil pts get zero'd.

Read this if you want more details: Why was I in team FTL?

PantherX wrote:AFAIK, you don't have control over the username. It can be used by others without any limit to it. The "uniqueness" is determined by the combination of Username, Team ID and passkey. Hence the usage of passkey is strongly recommended.

Team ID has nothing to to with uniqueness. Your passkey makes you unique.

As far as the SMP bonus is concerned, Passkey plus user-name is unique. If you decide you want to contribute your points to a different user-name you can earn points but to get a bonus, you'll need another 10 WUs before the bonus kicks in for that user/passkey combination.

You can change team numbers any time. There will be a separate subtotals for each team, of course, but and the total points will continue to be credited to the passkey and to the user-name (and to the passkey/user-name bonus qualification).