A client needed help with a problem logging in to his investment accounts. This was an interesting one that I hadn’t run across before.
SCENARIO
The client had two investment accounts with the same financial firm. His financial advisor sent him two emails, each containing a link to log into one of the accounts. My client clicked on the link in the first email and created his account with no problem: username, password, 2FA. Everything was great.
He clicked on the link in the second email, and it completely failed. He told me that he was getting error messages that said something like, “account already exists,” even though he hadn’t logged into it yet.
THE SOLUTION
I connected to his computer remotely while we talked on the phone. He had used Google Chrome to log into the first account successfully. I directed him to open Microsoft Edge. We went back to the second email, copied the link, and pasted it into Edge. Then, he was able to create the second account with the same email address, but a different username.
WHY IT WORKED
Authentication information (cookies) stored in Google Chrome linked the browser and email address to the first account. When he clicked on the second link, it opened the financial firm’s login page with his default browser (Google Chrome) and read the stored authentication information. By using a different browser for the second account, new and different authentication information could be saved.
WHAT COULD HAVE GONE WRONG
If the financial firm stored accounts by email address rather than by username, the solution would have been to use a different email address for the second account.
Sidenote #1: usernames are better for account setup than email addresses, because email addresses are commonly known.
Sidenote #2: passkeys are irrelevant in this situation. My client would still have received an error message when he first attempted account creation. Passkeys come later in the account setup process.
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