GitHub Community
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Hey,
The username Policy has not changed, it is still forbidden to squat a username :
The username I want had no activity since its creation (10 years), and last time he logged was 6 years ago. I donβt understand why my request is denied as the account violates the rules. |
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Replies: 59 comments 131 replies
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Hi @fudjia and welcome to the community. First of all, we cannot discuss account-specific matters on this forum. Thatβs what GitHub Support is for. Their answer seems clear to me:
The fact that name squatting is disallowed, does not change the fact that currently no new requests for the release of these names are being reviewed. A simple reason for this may be the following excerpt from the Username Policy, although that is just speculating from my side.
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Displaying contributions to private repositories on your profile page is optional. It can also be hidden from other users. |
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I have the same problem. I need a username, which is also my website (drblockchain.org), but it is owned by someone and never used. It has no history, no repository even though it was created 8 years ago. Probably the user has completely forgotten about it. Why can't I have it? 
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Same here, with my fully trademarked @autonomo... I'm forced to use @AutonomoDev. |
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I haven't trademarked anything but the username @tomatofu is taken by someone who doesn't seem to have any activity after they joined in 2018 :/ |
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I was able to attain this username in 2018, right after Github was acquired by Microsoft. |
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Iβm a bit late to this thread, but I hope github reverses this policy. Without enforcement, name squatting is rather allowed.
This canβt really be the reason they declined to review the request. Without a review, github wouldnβt even know whether the account has non-public activity. If they simply wished to avoid the hassle of having to review for non-public activity, then they should just remove their stance against name-squatting. |
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@rcias @github can check the last logic date also. What if the user hasn't logged in for 4 - 5 years? |
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That alone isnt enough though, as someone could have made a repository that others use and then never logged on again, so the repo could be active but the person is not, so while yeah last login is definitely a piece of the puzzle I feel they also need to take other things into account. If there is a single repository that potentially should not be taken down. |
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Youβre confusing a few things here. First of all, having a name-squatting ban in your ToS doesnβt actually mean youβre enforcing it. It just means it isnβt allowed, and serves as a good legal basis to remove accounts should they pose a problem. It doesnβt create an obligation to also actively enforce the rule. Furthermore, enforcing anti-name-squatting guidelines isnβt the same as allowing anyone to challenge the legitimacy of an account. GitHub may very well be enforcing this rule by, for example, automated checks on (private) account activity. This doesnβt really mean they have to allow anyone to challenge other accounts.
So this isnβt true, since by definition name-squatting is disallowed.
As I said; they may very well just run automated checks on account activity. User reporting and manual review isnβt the only way to check/enforce these things.
No, they donβt have to do anything. Name-squatting isnβt allowed, but itβs enforced without the help of user reports. Unfortunately those are the rules. If the name you desire is taken but there seems no public activity, Iβm very sorry for you. GitHub wonβt take review requests. And there is a good chance there still is private activity on the account. Try picking a different name and regularly check back on the other account: who knows some day might be your lucky day. |
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I actually laughed out loud. |
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Please, nobody is interested in such a lawyer-like statement. So many things are not allowed by definition within a society. We are not living in an ideal world, so the question is rather clear - what can you do about this? I got the standard reply given by OP just yesterday. |
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The Copilot would have a super easy time telling squatters from "edge cases" - Github could use their Copilot to automate the name-squatting release process. But if a process which requires minimal intellect cannot be handled by the company who owns the Copilot, what does that say about the Copilot and the company? |
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Why is this selected as an answer? The answer will be to review the policy instad of the need to buy a trademark for Β£200 and wait months just to get a name. |
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Hi, I saw that you managed to get the username you wanted. Would you mind telling me how you did it? |
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quick query. If a user changes his name can I use the original one he had? OR does github prohibits that as well.? |
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@johnsoncherian yes, though there may be a wait timer before you can. |
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But there's no way to find people with zero commit history and fake names, like the one I own the trademark for: @autonomo. No idea how to contact them. GitHub told me I have to wait an additional 18 months until the trademark is finalized. I've had the same problem with @phpexperts for 13 years. "PHP Experts" isn't a trademarkable name, as it's two descriptors. so I have to use the much worse @PHPExpertsInc. |
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crazy username |
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Hey, what does this mean? π |
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Is there no recourse to try and get an inactive user removed anymore then? I had to do this twice for 2 orgs I am part of as they both had users who made an account and had no public activity since joining, I am in the same boat again where there is a user account which is squatting an org name I would like to use to split off some private repositories. It feels like removing this feature is a bad move, as you could still allow it but behind the scenes just have the support ticket check when the last user login/action and how many repositories they have interacted with, if they have not logged in for years and have never carried out any actions then take it through as a request for github to look, if not just have the ticket be binned so it doesnt waste peoples time with accounts that do things privately. As it currently stands there is a user who has no activity in over a decade other than making an account and I am powerless to request they be removed so I can make use of it. I implore github to rethink this. |
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You have to register a trademark and is a legal process to my knowledge, copyright is more likely but even then a copyright is not registered to then it becomes he said she said. I don't know why there can't be a section in report user for squatting. This way it isn't an explicit support ticket process but would allow the community to flag potentially inactive accounts and have an automated/manual process evaluate them at some point in time. Currently as mentioned there is no way to solve this problem, unless you want to enter into a potentially pseudo legal process i.e
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@grofit is it possible to takedown the inactive GitHub user with Trademark? |
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Anything is possible but I doubt github will take it further unless you can show legal documents pertaining to your ownership of the trademark, otherwise it is not legally enforceable and is a waste of their time. I feel the crux of this whole thing comes down to "github doesnt have time to deal with these requests" which is perfectly valid if we look at it the way it used to be done, so instead do as I mention in the other threads, make most of the process automated as they have the data to know if someone is actually using an account, its pretty clear if there is no repos and no activity after 5 years that the account is dormant, if they deleted it and the user decided "oh I really wanted that account" they could always go and recreate the account and MAYBE it would make them actually use it this time π Another thing to think about is since MS has taken over, user data is potentially more valuable, so just having someone's email address on an active account gives them certain data about that user that they can legally use for analytics and marketing etc, so maybe its a case of they see even empty accounts as valuable these days. |
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The policy only allows for trademark requests where there is a violation. Simply having the org name This whole situation needs to change. |
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This problem is simple work for the Copilot. |
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They ghosted me essentially. I asked if a trademark would force them to uphold their squatting policy and they refused to answer.
Please excuse my brevity as this message was sent from my smartphone.
Spencer C. Imbleau (he/him/his)
β¦ On Sep 9, 2022, at 19:03, Raj ***@***.***> wrote:
ο»Ώ
@simbleau what did GitHub reply when you tried with a trademark?
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@simbleau same here. GitHub ghosted me too when I asked about the trademark. |
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Yeah, damn Microsoft. Ruining GitHub. |
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I get the squatting thing...is it another thing if someone clearly argumented he has no interest in keeping the account, offered you to rename and free up the name already but keeps asking for "payment" to do so? Wonder if that's something I should open a ticket for and if Github still deals with that kind of stuff. |
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You could try to open a ticket but I don't see what the support could do. |
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I've run into a similar situation. What did you end up doing? Did support help in any way? |
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I think Github should start the name squatting policy again. |
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But there seems no way to let GitHub hear this kind of voice from the community. :| |
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Guy pay Β£200 for a trademark and hope they'll give it to you. Names now cost Β£200 to get on GitHub and take months. Because you need a trademark. Soon to create a repository you will need to register it with the gov and trademark the name. |
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I don't see why i can't dispute an username that has been dormant/inactive for 13 years. I hope they change the policy again. |
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We should all just register many many cool names... that way they'll need to think of some logical way to free names up |
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Its already like this jsmcm |
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I hate you Github. Bring back the policy |
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Microsoft* Corrected it for you. LinkedIn also sucks. |
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@github-staff This can't be the full story. I'm currently looking into the username "stryker" and the username was only registered in October 2022. There's no way this username wasn't in use before that so unless someone with the username personally signed on and deleted their account out of the goodness of their hearts, something must have happened to make this username available again. Side note, it seems the new user is squatting it, of course. |
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Π― ΠΏΡΠΎΡΡΠΎ ΡΠ΄ΠΈΠ²Π»Π΅Π½, ΡΡΠΎ ΠΈΠΌΡ ΠΏΠΎΠ»ΡΠ·ΠΎΠ²Π°ΡΠ΅Π»Ρ @russian Π½Π΅ ΠΈΡΠΏΠΎΠ»ΡΠ·ΠΎΠ²Π°Π»ΠΎΡΡ Π΄ΠΎ 2020 Π³ΠΎΠ΄Π°... |
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Thread tl;dr There are so many examples given by the community where it is apparent that accounts are dormant, so please don't try to fool us that they are all doing private stuff 24/7. |
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GitHub was made for development, not to be a social media platform and focus on usernames. You do realize they have other things to deal with? The support team cannot be held up because you want your dream username. |
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Exactly! |
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Cant ask much for a small company like GitHub :( |
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This is only one aspect of it, it's not just about usernames but orgs. You go off and make an app which ends up getting bigger than one single repo and you want to group them, but turns out the name of that app is taken so you have to come up with some derivation. This is more development related and the reason I'm in this conversation, 3 times this has happened and the previous other 2 times github were able to remove the unused accounts so I could create an org for grouping repos. This 3rd time though I am stuck unable to do anything, and it seems pretty obvious the user in question for me is inactive. So if I have to pick another name that potentially will have a dev impact as I will need to refactor names paces, update nugets and other 3rd party settings etc. So while this can be seen as a purely social media thing it's also got a dev impact as well, and tbh github sitting doing nothing will just make the problem worse over time. |
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On a personal level, developer accounts, I agree. On an organisational level, with organisation account names, I disagree. There are no policies in place for dormant accounts using trademarked company names. This is absurd, as usernames and accessibility matter more with GitHub than other platforms. If you want people using and contributing to your repos, which works better, a short name that matches your org name, or a longer one with hyphens or numbers at the end? Look at this: Consider this: There is a material difference here. GitHub have their policies and that's fine. They have their reasons. In the case of orgs, I think they're wrong. I hope they can improve their policies on this though. Thankfully, they're not ignoring us, @queenofcorgis is reaching out and that's all we can ask for right now. |
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We also encourage GitHub to change their policy and actions and to release dormant/inactive usernames. We had to create a stupid username just because the brand we were using is a dormant username. |
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@eric48906 the way it used to work is accounts were renamed. We're talking about renaming dormant accounts, not deleting them. |
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If you knew anything about Git, you would know renaming an account causes several issues. |
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Without getting drawn into a sophomoric conflict, dormant accounts with no repos will suffer no ill effects of an account rename. |
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That's not what you're saying though. You've said inactive accounts don't serve a purpose to the community; thus, you apparently deserve their username. |
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Can you elaborate @eric48906? Last time I checked, Git only cares about emails. |
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I donβt even think releasing them outright is a great idea. I think it is better served as an βask and you may receiveβ type of deal but just actually enforced. If weβre going to involve humans in the process (which should be the case regardless) there should some sort of βgood faithβ argument where someone who wants some short dictionary word that probably doesnβt represent their identity elsewhere on the web should have to provide something to show they use the name, like owning a domain name bearing the name. Otherwise people using names as vanity plates or bragging points will win and legitimate organizations who cannot afford to change names willy-nilly (like an inactive account with no URL changes to worry about) will be lost on the name they want because a more sophisticated squatter, some user who just wants a fancy name, was able to ask GitHub for the name first. Since this is more detrimental to orgs who place value in their names as well as not having to change them later it would undo the whole purpose of this to just release them freely. |
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Fully agree with you. There should be a process in place for orgs & users. e.g. if you have exampleuser.com and twitter.com/exampleuser and so on, and there is already a github.com/exampleuser that is dormant for 10 years, you should be able to claim this. If you're founding a new startup e.g. exampleco and you have example.co, twitter.com/exampleco but github.com/exampleco is dormant 7 years, you should be able to claim it. We all benefit while orgs and active developers are choosing GitHub for their scm, so it makes sense to work with us (the devs) than against us. cc @github-staff @queenofcorgis |
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This is how it used to work, I have requested 2 names for org use which were previously in use by an unused account and they granted the requests, it was only when I needed to do the same again recently I realised this was no longer possible :( |
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Same experience here, @grofit. It wasn't an issue but I believe people did this and sold the names, and that's what caused this current situation, sadly. |
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https://github.com/orgs/github/people this are all github people someone quote them all in reply. |
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Same here for @KeroZ :( |
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see his followers all fake https://github.com/KeroZ?tab=followers |
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Same here, @teascript could you contact me please |
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hope they bring back the username policy changes someday... π€ |
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we are all waiting |
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I keep getting emails about this, if they haven't done it by now, they never will. I haven't signed in for months, this is a bad place to build a website. Then again, I lost mine and someone from one of the other forums grabbed it after I couldn't afford it. |
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Yeah this used to work earlier. If you raise a ticket, one of the staff members will look into the account and release it when it's obvious that the name was squatted. Now when you raise a ticket you'll be hit with "We can't release that username solely based on public activity report" this is weird. Surely they could've looked into the account's activity. At the least you'll be storing the last login date for accounts. |
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Good things take time. Remember where you're going to be 10years from now. We need to all stop using GitHub, this is the way to rebell! Its the exact same way to rebell against Copilot and their nonsense policy! Who's with me?! |
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Bro this days everyone is sleeping and the ***Microsoft and github give name to big companies or enterprises who pay dollars. |
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Move to Gitlab. :-) |
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Ironically my username is taken on gitlab, because I didn't care to register early enough. It looks like a legitimate account based on a real name, but my username is based on my real name too. |
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A better reason to not use Github is that it and copilot is ironically not open source. The git repo is portable but the Issues and Actions and etc systems aren't easily. |
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Because they don't care about users. GitHub is a joke.Β
On Tuesday, June 17, 2025 at 10:13:57 AM MDT, Dr. Armani ***@***.***> wrote:
I have the same problem. I need a username, which is also my website (drblockchain.org), but it is owned by someone and never used. It has no history, no repository even though it was created 8 years ago. Probably the user has completely forgotten about it. Why can't I have it?
Screenshot.2025-06-17.at.9.00.44.AM.png (view on web)
β
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.
You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>
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GitHub...π€·π€¦ππ
π©π€£
On Wednesday, June 18, 2025 at 04:48:44 AM MDT, z0roday ***@***.***> wrote:
.
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Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.
You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>
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lol those are interesting emojs - you could add a tongue for a bigger effect as well |
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Reading this thread is kinda sad because it looks like I'm going to be stuck with the @administer-org name forever now because @administer is an obviously unused account which opened some issues on a blank repository ten years ago now. Sadly the Microsoft way of doing things seems to be just shutting down until enough people complain to invoke change. |
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I read an article about it some time ago, reached out myself... and nothing:(. Dreaded 'Unfortunately, we won't be able to release the username you requested. Please note, not all activity on GitHub is publicly visible; accounts with no visible activity may be in active use.', god damn it, it seems so clear that the account it abandoned? I wish I could get @friendlyone |
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In Dec 2018, right after Microsoft acquired GitHub, you were still able to get a manual name change by emailing support. It seems like all GitHub cares about now is their Copilot tool (and trying to monetize it once enough people are users), so all other community issues are ignored. |
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Yeah. I tried to claim my company username by providing the trademark as well but Github said that inactive username didn't violate the trademark. |
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same issue +1 |
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Hi GitHub Support, Iβd like to request the release of the username "onuronon". I represent an active organization called "Onuronon" that is building open-source tools under this name. We would deeply appreciate it if you could review the inactivity and consider releasing the username for legitimate use. Best regards, |
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GitHub no longer issues usernames that have already been taken. Your Sincerity, |
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Not enough clout for github sorry |
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You need to throw some $$$$$$$$$ |
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This is fucking annoying tbh. |
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and others
Youβre confusing a few things here.
First of all, having a name-squatting ban in your ToS doesnβt actually mean youβre enforcing it. It just means it isnβt allowed, and serves as a good legal basis to remove accounts should they pose a problem. It doesnβt create an obligation to also actively enforce the rule.
Furthermore, enforcing anti-name-squatting guidelines isnβt the same as allowing anyone to challenge the legitimacy of an account. GitHub may very well be enforcing this rule by, for example, automated checks on (private) account activity. This doesnβt really mean they have to allow anyone to challenge other accounts.
So this β¦