Ask HN: Why is a phone number prerequisite for an email account

4 points by n3thin 12 years ago | 4 comments

Seeing all the major U.S webmail providers(Gmail/yahoo mail/hotmail) asking for phone numbers for creating an account with them presumably for account safety /recovery.

Finally created one on mail.com which didnt require anything. Finding it creepy though

27182818284 12 years ago |

Yeah I was thinking about this the other day. It is annoying. I am in the market for another Gmail-like provider that doesn't require phone numbers, doesn't pester me about Google+ alerts, etc.

I was looking at fastmail.fm. Mail.com (what you mentioned), looks interesting as well.

I'd be curious what the current generation of tech HN is using. If you search through its history, you find a lot of email alternatives, but they're older threads. I'm curious if anything new has come out that is a favorite of HN.

I'd like to setup my own mail server, but frankly, I feel like I'd accidentally leave it wide open to spammers that know a lot more about email than I do.

n3thin 12 years ago | |

Thanks.. fastmail.fm is pretty good

jacobquick 12 years ago |

It's for two factor auth. When I log into gmail it texts me a number to type in before it lets me in. That way I can use any computer and as long as I log out no one else can log in even if they stole my password. You should use two factor auth if it's available, especially if the email account has business or financial stuff in it.

johnclass 12 years ago |

To discourage creation of temporary accounts.