5 Nov
2019
5 Nov
'19
4:21 p.m.
On Tue, 2019-11-05 at 16:10 +0000, Chris Smith wrote:
It might be on a tablet, or on an emulator as part of an automated
system...
(I realize my profession leads me to unusual desire to automate
everything so I'm likely to be the odd one out on this topic) - it's
still not great, there are better callback mechanisms.
Fair point - albeit 'registration' is independent of other services,
and "feels" more like ownership.
As per the number porting - that only works in a limited set of cases.
It does not work if you try to port from one EU country to another or
from BT landline to Vodafone mobile.
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.
OTOH I'm totally in favour of replacing mobile numbers with email
addresses ;).