# Why do you make me use my phone to activate chess.com?
**URL:** https://community.playchessup.com/t/why-do-you-make-me-use-my-phone-to-activate-chess-com/4443
**Category:** General
**Created:** [June 17, 2026, 2:37am UTC](https://community.playchessup.com/t/why-do-you-make-me-use-my-phone-to-activate-chess-com/4443 "2026-06-17T02:37:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Patrick](https://community.playchessup.com/u/Patrick)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2026, 2:37am UTC](https://community.playchessup.com/t/why-do-you-make-me-use-my-phone-to-activate-chess-com/4443/1 "2026-06-17T02:37:55Z")
I’ve been using [chess.com](http://chess.com) for about a year now. I remember seeing somewhere that i’d have to log in again after a year. Well, that happened. It was a real pain since I don’t use my phone for apps or for [chess.com](http://chess.com) or chessup. I use my desktop ocassionally but usually just use the board.
So to continue to use [chess.com](http://chess.com) I had to load the chessup app on my phone. To log into that I had to load bitwarden. To do that I had to setup my yubikey. Then I had to log into [chess.com](http://chess.com). And for security I had my NFC disabled, so it took me a while to remember that was turned off. So basically after having done all that once last year I had to remember how to do it all again just to re-activate my [chess.com](http://chess.com). Can’t you figure out how to just do it from the board instead? you’ve solved a lot more challenging problems. To make matters worse, it seems the [chess.com](http://chess.com) bots suddenly got much better. I went from beating a 1500 bot about half the time and then usually beat all three of the 1400 bots in a session to being beaten by the 1400 bot about 100 times in a row. Needless to say, I was already very frustrated before I even got the msg that I had to log in again. Finally got it all setup again, just needed to vent. Thanks for listening.
In fact, if you could add a couple of different ‘personalities’ to the internal game engine I could probably avoid [chess.com](http://chess.com) altogether and just play the board.
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### Author:  [@Jeff](https://community.playchessup.com/u/Jeff)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2026, 8:39pm UTC](https://community.playchessup.com/t/why-do-you-make-me-use-my-phone-to-activate-chess-com/4443/2 "2026-06-17T20:39:24Z")
[Chess.com](http://Chess.com) manages the login process to their platform - and then it authorizes ChessUp. We never see or touch a [chess.com](http://chess.com) password. We just get an authorization token that can last up to 1 year. We agree with these security measures. I understand the downside though, that it does require an occasional re-login and it is not direct on device.
I will discuss with the team if there are any equally secure methods that are more convenient for a user.
~~
For the [chess.com](http://chess.com) bot strength - I am not aware of what changes have been made. We do not control those, the play is direct from [chess.com](http://chess.com).
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### Author:  [@Patrick](https://community.playchessup.com/u/Patrick)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2026, 2:04pm UTC](https://community.playchessup.com/t/why-do-you-make-me-use-my-phone-to-activate-chess-com/4443/3 "2026-06-18T14:04:19Z")
Thanks, Jeff. You guys are doing a GREAT job with features & updates. It just caught me at a very frustrating time when the bots that I had been beating relatively easily suddenly became unbeatable. I usually play 4 bots in a session and win at least 3 games out of 4 or 5, but one of the easier bots beat me for what seemed like 100 games in a row. So, right in the middle of that I had to re-login with my phone - which I don’t use for apps so I keep it pretty well locked down, so it was a pain. Maybe there is a way to refresh the login via the Chessup or [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) website?
Anyway, don’t worry about it too much as you have another year before I complain again😉