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Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as you don't try to validate the email address I entered. The list of gotchas for email address parsing is impressive too. (e.g. "Cool Address"@example.store is a valid email)
These might be valid but nobody uses them and nobody will complain if you do not support them.
I have/had a Facebook account with a phone number. The account was left unused for a few years. Recently, I used my E-mail to reset its password, unfortunately, since the account was abandoned for a long time, the system flagged my activity as "suspicious" automatically, and asks me for confirmation using my phone number. But I no longer own that number. And from the customer Q&A forum, I realized I was not the only…
I do wonder how EU's "right to be forgotten" comes into the play here. Could it be used in your case?
1. Correctly identify some personal information about your Facebook friends, or ask them to provide some information about you. However, I have abandoned my account for years, and clearly I no longer have personal contact with most of them.
2. Provide your National-ID document to Facebook. Obviously, I'm not comfortable with it, but I assume my identity is already public information on Facebook so I may have to do it. Unfortunately, the bigger problem is that, personally, I'm in the middle of some tricky paperwork problem with the government bureaucracy, just like my Facebook account. I may need to go to the court to sort it out, but currently I don't have time to bother.
"Right to be forgotten" and GDPR seems to be a powerful tool to solve these kind of problems, but I'm not a EU citizen and I don't know much about its regulations, but I also want to know about it. Does anyone know something about it? Assuming I'm a EU citizen, how exactly, can I submit a request of information removal? If it's similar to DMCA takedowns, perhaps it can be used? Or it need a rigorous legal proof of identity like (2)? For non-EU citizens, is there a similar outlet to solve these kinds of problems?
I have/had a Facebook account with a phone number. The account was left unused for a few years. Recently, I used my E-mail to reset its password, unfortunately, since the account was abandoned for a long time, the system flagged my activity as "suspicious" automatically, and asks me for confirmation using my phone number. But I no longer own that number. And from the customer Q&A forum, I realized I was not the only…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These might be valid but nobody uses them and nobody will complain if you do not support them.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted. It's a valid point. There is a gap between "technically valid email addresses" and "email addresses that reasonable people use".
Currently I just store phone numbers in E.164 format as a string with max length of 25 just to be safe and index them. This really takes up no additional space and can easily handle extensions.
I can't tell you how many times I've run into people storing phone numbers without normalization eg: "(555) 444 - 3333" etc., not understanding that's hard to compare against, where E.164 = "+15554443333" is much more consistent and also works with services like twilio etc.
"Phone numbers are numbers" - I've come this multiple times integrating phone numbers into a product. Currently I just store phone numbers in E.164 format as a string with max length of 25 just to be safe and index them. This really takes up no additional space and can easily handle extensions. I can't tell you how many times I've run into people storing phone numbers without normalization eg: "(555) 444 - 3333" etc.…
> Some people do not own phones, or do not wish to provide you with their telephone number when asked. Do not require a user to provide a phone number unless it is essential, and whenever possible try and provide a fallback to accommodate these users.
Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram are spectacular design failures on this point because they assume that every person has a phone number and also that every person has their own private (non-shared) and unique phone number. Facebook, Google, etc., require a phone number for verification and believe that it’s sufficiently adequate to thwart spammers.
The whole “must enter a phone number” phenomenon is a big mess, introduces privacy issues and excludes many people. None of the companies mentioned above would agree that excluding people is a goal for them, but they’ve made it so.
> Some people do not wish to provide you with their telephone number when asked
Well, you don't say!
Next in the series, “Falsehoods programmers believe about 2fa, or: just use HOTP/TOTP, dammit.”
> An individual has a phone number > Some people do not own phones, or do not wish to provide you with their telephone number when asked. Do not require a user to provide a phone number unless it is essential, and whenever possible try and provide a fallback to accommodate these users. Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram are spectacular design failures on this point because they assume that every person has a phone number…
As I understand it, Signal is always intended to be the "StartTLS" of telephone communication, so naturally it explicitly targets mobile phone users. I only use Signal to call or text someone I would otherwise call directly.
But I agree with your general opinion. For most services I found it's ridiculous to be hardlinked to my phone number. Why on Earth you have to expose your phone number to some random people you chat with on the Internet?! Telegram... at least they accept VoIP numbers...
I use other non-phone, general-purpose services, such as Matrix, to communicate with other people.
> googlei18n > Some people do not wish to provide you with their telephone number when asked Well, you don't say! Next in the series, “Falsehoods programmers believe about 2fa, or: just use HOTP/TOTP, dammit.”