Since 2006's Summer Update, The old personalization feature that was available to premium accounts was changed to accounts of all status (free account and premium account) to register their accounts for added security. That made everyone with already personalised accounts to cancel their recovery keys and be obliged to register their account instead. The difference is that now to register your account you don't need to possess a premium account in order to register your account and get a recovery key of your own.
CIP previously accepted letters to change the recovery key of an account, but no longer does to avoid problems with hackers that forged real life documents to unfairly retrieve a new recovery key.
Registered accounts offer pros and cons:
Pros:
- Registered accounts provide recovery keys, which provide an effective account recovery system.
Cons:
- Because the registration requires sensitive information (such as your home address), registering may be dangerous in the case your account is compromised.
- If you lose your recovery key, you have to pay a fee of five euros to get a post mail sent to the address you provided into the account registry information.