Do you have a gravatar.com account?
Gravatar.com is a Automattic product. Automattic run the WordPress.com site, Gravatar.com and WordPress.com use the same user database. (so to be clear, Gravatar is not a 3rd party to your WordPress.com experience)
The username and password for both of the above sites are NOT the same as your WordPress.org credentials, OR the credentials to access a Self-hosted WordPress installation (Unless, you’ve chosen the same username nad password for the multiple places when you’ve signed up for them all)
Esmi – Thanks for reply – I do not have a Gravatar Account. I never heard of them until I reviewed my Profile today.
Dion – Thanks for the clarification on the Automattic relationship. My wordpress.org password is unique to wP.org – or so I thought.
What I now understand is that, despite WP’s encouragement to select strong, unique & private passwords, WP itself has shared my password with a “sister-site” Gravatar.com through a common database.
Whatever about user names and mails etc. being shared with trusted commercial associates, its hard to imagine that WP Terms and Conditions provided for PASSWORDS to be shared. This is a ridiculous situation and undermines WP’s integrity as an organisation committed to personal data security.
regards
M.
p.s. I hope the seriousness of my comments are not undermined by the silliness of my ‘imposed’ gravatar
WP itself has shared my password with a “sister-site” Gravatar.com through a common database.
When you are running a self-hosted WordPress site? Absolutely not! It is up to you to create your own Gravatar.com account. Until then, if you choose to display avatars on your site, WP will use a default avatar image.
Thanks esmi,
I have no concerns about passwords on self-hosted sites. My only anxiety is about my unique password on this particular site/forum.
It has been shared with Gravatar in contravention (I believe) of Automattic’s own privacy policy http://automattic.com/privacy/
“We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights . . . . we aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what’s visible to the public . . . kept private. . .”
My only anxiety is about my unique password on this particular site/forum.
Your wordpress.org login credentials are not shared with any other site – including Gravatar.com. The gravatar that is currently associated with your wordpress.org profile is a random, default, avatar image.
Okay – I finally get it – the “silly” avatar was allocated by WP as a default. And maybe I was complicit by failing to allocate a different one.
So now I want to remove or change it.
How? without having to open yet another account with (or disclose my WP password to) a third-party?
regards & thanks again for the timely responses
M.
the “silly” avatar was allocated by WP as a default.
Now you’ve got it. 🙂
You can’t change it unless you create your own account on gravatar.com (using the same email address that you use here) and then upload/choose a custom avatar image to the new account.
In almost all cases, I’m a fan of using a Gravatar to brand yourself or your site.
That said if you don’t want to, that’s fine too… I kinda like the horned pink tooth monster you luckily received!
So There! That their silly avatar replaced with my own silly avater
Thanks all.
M.
Just want to say that I had the same issue & have the same objection – the gravatar image stuck on my account is horrible & I don’t like having to go & create an account on another site to get rid of it. Can’t even see a way to delete my account on this forum anywhere now.
katton – You dont delete your account here (you didn’t need to make one to access Gravatar, by the way).
You can look up plugins to remove, replace or otherwise tweak gravatar off your site
