5 Nov
2019
5 Nov
'19
4:10 p.m.
On 5 Nov 2019, at 15:57, Conrad Wood
<cnw(a)conradwood.net> wrote:
To be fair, if it’s an app then it’s likely on a smartphone and will have a valid mobile
number. SMS in that situation is a very effective and pretty secure challenge-response
method, particularly now that some phones can automatically recognise and input the
verification number when it’s received.
Sadly I think the only thing keeping email alive
is the fact that
almost every non-email platform requires an email address for user
identification and authentication. There’s a big shift now for
linking to Facebook and Google etc. for doing that, but those are
obviously very specific and platform dependent mechanisms, and even
those require an email address. Sooner or later there will be a
common, platform-agnostic mechanism that will become dominant, and at
that point I suspect email die.
off-topic, <random rant>: Most hipster apps require a phone number
nowadays rather than an email address. Worse, they expect phone numbers
to be allocated in blocks (e.g. mobile numbers with a specific prefix),
as if VoIP never existed. Then they send SMS (!!!) as verification.
IMHO that is way worse than an email address as identification. (sooo
80s!). It's all quite rubbishy. Given all the data
floating about on the 'net
about us there shouldn't be any need whatsoever to log in anyways!
Email is, however, atm, quite unique, as in, it doesn't require any
prior connection between parties to communicate (good and bad - think
"spam")....
It also is 'owned' by the individual rather than a 3rd party. I own my
email addressed, as in, it does not change when I change supplier
(different to say phone numbers or google/facebook logins)
You have the right to keep your phone number when you change providers, so in that sense
it is as ‘owned’ as an email address. Although at the risk of being pedantic I’d point
out that for the most part email addresses (even self-hosted) and phone numbers are only
rented, not owned.
I suspect it won’t be too long now before even phone numbers die out. We no longer need
the in-built routing, so the number itself is just a unique identifier.
Chris
—
Chris Smith <space.dandy(a)icloud.com>