

Ask HN: Why is a phone number prerequisite for an email account - n3thin

Seeing all the major U.S webmail providers(Gmail&#x2F;yahoo mail&#x2F;hotmail) asking for phone numbers for creating an account with them presumably for account safety &#x2F;recovery.<p>Finally created one on mail.com which didnt require anything.
Finding it creepy though
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27182818284
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.

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n3thin
Thanks.. fastmail.fm is pretty good

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jacobquick
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.

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johnclass
To discourage creation of temporary accounts.

