User Account

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does User Account Mean?

A user account is an established technique for connecting a user and an information service and/or computer network. User accounts determine whether or not a user can connect to a computer, network or similar networks. A user account is one of the best methods to authenticate to a system and receive the necessary access of resources of that system.

Advertisements

Techopedia Explains User Account

A user account is comprised of a username, password and any information
related to the user. Most networks which need to be accessed by multiple users make use of user accounts. Email accounts are one of the most common examples of user accounts.

When it comes to personal computers, there are two main types of user accounts: standard and administrator. An administrator user account has all privileges to
perform tasks such as installation of applications, while standard users can only use the user accounts as set up by the administrator.

Certain computer systems are single-user systems, and therefore do not need to make use of user accounts. Multi-user systems, however, allow several users to identify themselves with the help of a user account and password. User accounts in a multi-user system have a public user profile that has the basic information provided by the owner of the account. The activities related to the user are stored in the home directory and are protected from access by other users except system administrators. Some systems allow “guest” user accounts such as on e-commerce websites and online games.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ??a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

',a='';if(l){t=t.replace('data-lazy-','');t=t.replace('loading="lazy"','');t=t.replace(/