Why don’t more websites use your e-mail address as your login ID?
I’m always forgetting my login ID since I signed up at some of these sites years and years ago. Is there some reason why they all want a user ID?
blog.deconcept.com is a blog about nerdy internet stuff edited by Geoff Stearns since late 2004.
One of the problems I’ve found, especially in small businesses, is that many people share a single email address, therefore two people who shared an email would be unable the have unique logins on a system that used an email as your username. It also requires that you validate the user has access to the email address they register. You need to make sure they don’t register using someone else’s email. For example you would not want me using your email for my login, right? Both problems could be easily solved by using a free email services to open a second account and sending a conformation email to validate they can check the email they provided, but they also add additional steps to the registration process.
I do agree with you – more sites should use an email for your username.
Actually I have the opposite problem: it’s pretty easy to remember the username I would have picked, but if they expect me to remember my email address, I have to remember which one I used when I signed up. Lately I’ve been using a consistent system, but if I signed up to a site a few years ago, I might have to check 20 different email addresses before I find the one I used…
I think people that share addresses like that would probably only use that account for work related things, so if they need to join a site using their work address, then the other people using that e-mail address would probably want/need access to whatever they were signing up for.
I might have to check 20 different email addresses before I find the one I used…
But at least you would find it eventually… If you forgot your login id, you would never be able to recover it, unless their recovery system asked for an e-mail address (as they should).
I also think you are a minority as far as how many e-mail addresses you have. I’ve never seen statistics on it, but I would venture a guess that 90%+ of internet users have two or fewer e-mail addresses: one for work, one for home – not counting generic ‘info@’ or ‘group@’ addresses of course.
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