Websites generally avoid providing a "merge two accounts" feature for a few reasons, and they’re mostly about security, data consistency, and business rules:
1. Security & Identity Verification
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Merging accounts means one account gets full access to the other’s data, transactions, and possibly payment methods.
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It’s hard to prove beyond doubt that both accounts belong to the same person without strong identity verification.
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If there’s a bug in the merge process or someone fakes ownership of a second account, it can lead to massive data breaches.
2. Data Integrity & Technical Complexity
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Different accounts may have overlapping or conflicting data:
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Different email addresses, phone numbers, usernames.
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Different purchase histories or subscriptions.
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Conflicting preferences or privacy settings.
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Merging needs careful handling to avoid duplication, overwriting, or corruption of data.
3. Compliance & Legal Issues
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In regulated industries (banking, healthcare, government services), merging user data might break legal requirements for record-keeping.
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Some records are tied to a single immutable identity for auditing and legal traceability.
4. Business Considerations
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Many companies treat account signups as key growth metrics. Removing “duplicate” accounts may make user numbers look smaller.
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Support teams prefer handling merges manually after verification, rather than offering a self-service tool that could be abused.
5. Rare User Demand
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While the problem exists, only a small percentage of users ever request an account merge, so many companies don’t prioritize building such a feature.
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Instead, they usually suggest:
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Deleting one account and continuing with the other.
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Exporting/importing certain data manually (if the platform supports it).
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If you want, I can also explain how some platforms like GitHub, Google, or Microsoft handle merges, because they actually do allow it but with strong safeguards. This way you can see why others avoid it.
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