Error! The specified new email already exists

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1

Continuation of this issue from 3 years ago

I had a user with two accounts

an email-password account for fakename@hotmmail.com
and a google-auth account for fakename@hotmail.com

I deleted the google-auth provider account, but now when I tried to change the email account from fakename@hotmmail to fakename@hotmail.com I get an error

Error! The specified new email already exists

Searching users for “fakename@hotmail.com” returns zero results

It seems after you delete a user account, auth0 still remembers the email and therefore blocks you from added the account again. So now I have to tell my customer: sorry, I can’t fix this. You can’t use our service anymore.

2

Hi @Maxhodges1

This doesn’t sound right at all.

If you have a google social account for fakename@hotmail.com you should still be able to create an email/password account for that same address. Uniqueness does not apply here.

I also tested: I had users auth0@example.com and auth0too@example.com, and I could not change the email address of auth0@example.com to auth0too@example.com (because that already exists) but I could change it to auth0three@example.com and then back to auth0@example.com

Check to ensure you don’t already have a fakename@hotmail.com account in your email-password connection.

John

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3

Yup, I agree, it doesn’t sound right to me either, which is why I’m reporting it. :wink:

I just sent you a PM with some screenshots. I’m happy to jump on a video chat if you want to see for yourself. If I have this user submit a GDPR request, will that ensure you really delete their information? It seems you must be doing a “soft delete” or else you have an indexing issue.

Did you check the link I referenced? I’m not the first to report this. And it seems like you guys closed it unresolved back them.

I cannot … create a user with some email (that existed before, but was subsequently deleted), neither via API nor via the website. If I try, I get the message “The user already exists.”

4

@Maxhodges1

Got your PM thanks.

I don’t think we are doing a “soft delete”. I created a user with an email, changed it to something else and then created a new user with the original email, no issues there.

Can you run an export users job (or use the extension), and search the resulting file for that email address?

Thanks

John

5

I have this same issue. No user returned via dashboard or API for example@gmail.com, but when trying to update user with email - example2@yahoo.com to example@gmail.com, I get error message - ‘Error! The specified new email already exists’

6

Just seen this. Just one more datapoint – this is still an issue for us, too. We use a workaround (instead of bulk deleting/creating a bunch of users in rapid succession, we introduced artificial timeouts between the calls to Auth0 API. We also hope the issue doesn’t manifest itself IRL…

One more reason to avoid Auth0 in future projects, I’m afraid… :frowning: