WhatsApp: “you can now use email to access your account if you can’t use your phone for some reason”
This community: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”
People acting like a phone number isn’t 100x more personally identifiable than email are delusional. I have like 700 unique emails atm, and can create a new one within seconds. I only have a few numbers.
In my country we’re required to have our own identification tied to the number and we can only legally have a handful of number under a person name. Email is nothing lol.
I have a very, very old SIM card. It’s from the 3G era, which means I miss out on my phone’s 5G capabilities. However, when I went to buy a new card I found out you’re required to take a selfie and send to the telecom company alongside your ID and email, which is creepy enough to keep me using my 3G SIM…
I lived in a country doing that, and couldn’t understand the people making social media profiles with their (actually traceable to a real life identity) phone numbers public. Don’t you love receiving spam calls?
I have a catch-all address with a personal domain. Infinite aliases for free.
Hmm🤔 I use Migadu and could probably set this up – is this actually a good idea?
If they’re all attached to the same personal domain then that’s just as personally identifiable though
I use Proton Mail, which lets you make ‘aliases’, which you can use for different sites. The alias forward staright to your main (or a nominated) email.
You can use https://simplelogin.io/ to do the same, and I’m sure there are similar services around.
E.g. I can’t have feckwhatsapp@feckfacebook.com as my WhatsApp email, and it would forward to whatever account I normally use.
I do this for pretty much everything on line, so they all have their own bespoke email for me.
The problem is that they’re reaching for emails in addition to phone numbers. Don’t think for a second they’re going to let you login with just email. They want email just to have yet another data metric to profile you with.