Why don’t we do email verification in reverse? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#161

Post by megous » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:10 AM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #21

>…and here it is in neomutt, which helpfully “renders” the HTML with lynx: >… >But that’s a solution born from practice: the fact remains that HTML email doesn’t generally degrade gracefully in clients that don’t support images or CSS. I hope that companies don’t waste their time at such edge cases that are irrelevant for 99.9% of users such as Lynx graceful degradation. It reminds me of the stories about clients tha…

If company can't be bothered to learn how to send email properly, their email will just go to trash, thank you. :)

Things like:

- sending empty plaintext part or differnt content in plaintext part and html parts within multipart/alternative subparts (https://www.freesoft.org/CIE/RFC/1521/18.htm) - pretty much only some automated/marketing email is guilty of this. normal senders always get it right

- sending 5 line uncopiable tracking link in plain text (links should be shorter than 80 chars, to not annoy anyone trying to copy paste them)

- sending broken html just because it maybe renders some insane table layout in outlook 97 from 50 years ago more "nicely"

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#162

Post by croes » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:11 AM UTC

I use email addresses that only forward mails to my real address, so I can't use them as a sender email address

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#163

Post by sagebird » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:17 AM UTC

Another way to authenticate email is to provide your email address and password.

This has the advantage that you do not need to receive or send an email.

There may be downsides as well, but I cannot think of any ;-)

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#164

Post by Kwpolska » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #59

neximo64 wrote: post #2

Some reasons: - Not everyone will have set email up on the phone. - If a laptop is used it adds more complexity if the email is not set up on the device, (or e.g if Gmail is used via a web browser) - Not everyone will use the Mail app as default and will need to pick the right app - There may be multiple emails and additional complexity to pick the right 'from' if there are multiple emails being used. - It is a test…

Well said. Particularly the point around people not having email set up on an “OS” level. There are a lot of people who already struggle to effectively use modern computers and smartphones, and you’ll run into all kinds of weird edge cases. For example, I previously helped a friend who had just been using the gmail website on their smartphone for years because they had forgot their password but Safaris keychain had s…

I don’t remember the last time I clicked a mailto: link, and probably haven't seen one in a long time. And it’s configured to use the default Windows 10 Mail app, which I don’t use. Can I change it to Firefox and Gmail? Sure, but why would I bother?

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#165

Post by shp0ngle » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

Ugh. For me, mailto link will open… some old forgotten mail application, that will start downloading… 5000 e-mails from my gmail account? or something? and mark them as read? maybe?

I don’t really know, honestly. I always copy-paste mailto links to Gmail.

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#166

Post by ique » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

There are essentially no applications that require email. We should just stop doing email verification altogether. If you need to have a separate communication channel with your user just establish that separately after signup.

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#167

Post by ac50hz » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

avodonosov wrote: post #146

Why do we do email verification at all? The only legit and practical reason on most web sites is to be able to restore access if you forgot the password. So just near the password field we can have a "Restore options" section, with email, phone number, etc fields; each having a Test button. If user have entered email address he can use the Test button and receive a confirmation email, with a link. When user clicks th…

Many sites I work with use email to communicate information to a user that would otherwise require them to remain on the site to receive such notifications. Email forms an essential part of the workflow so ensuring that process works from first contact is critical.

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#168

Post by Kwpolska » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:23 AM UTC

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #33

mgarciaisaia wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue the crux is about proving that Me The Service can send You The User whatever info is needed (password reset, notification of planned downtimes, pricing changes, warnings about service abuse) to this address - and you'll get it. I don't care about you "controlling" an email address - you can easily get fake ones for free. It's about both parties having agreed _at least once_ on a way for the service to commu…

What's a "fake" email address? If you can get emails to an email address then it isn't fake and you are in control of it, at least for the time being

All the various 10-minute-mail services.

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#169

Post by longrod » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

I think this is a good idea ONLY as a fallback. Email deliverability is a very real problem even if it happens to only 1% out of 99% of your users. What happens when a customer emails saying they can't verify their account because they didn't receive any email? It'd be quite seamless to offer this as a secondary option.

Re: Why don’t we do email verification in reverse?

#170

Post by jstanley » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 10:39 AM UTC

> I’ve repeatedly dealt with services where the verification email [...] is marked as spam

Spam filtering in email is performed on the receiving side. You're the recipient, so if your spam filter is filtering emails you want, it's your spam filter that is defective and you are the only one who can solve that.