General Question

flo's avatar

Is your email provider pestering users to give their mobile number?

Asked by flo (13313points) December 27th, 2011

It doesn’t help their image. Once the user declines shouldn’t they just stop? Pestering, every time!?

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

7 Answers

YARNLADY's avatar

I don’t think so. I have a private e-mail with a Moderator, so I don’t get all that junk.

flo's avatar

Good. Pain in the neck. I don’t know why they don’t see it as a negative to pester people.

ohVaNiLLaGoRiLLa's avatar

From what I have seen email providers want your mobile phone number in case you forget your password or something of that nature. Yahoo is always asking for my number and so is Facebook.

XOIIO's avatar

Gmail only asked me a couple times to verify my account, but you can skip it.

Bellatrix's avatar

I was also going to say Gmail are doing this but not my other email providers.

Male's avatar

I’m with Yahoo! and they did ask, but only once or twice for security reasons. I clicked “skip this for now” and never looked back…although I really should because I don’t remember the answers to my security questions.

flo's avatar

1)the security question or sometimes even 2 questions.
2)the alternative email address.
are there exactly for for that purpose, to verify who you are or in case you forget your password, or the passwork doesn’t work, or if someone else trying different passwords to guess and and get in. They sound like they are implying that even with those 2 features they can’t be trusted to keep it secure.

So, there is no excuse for asking for mobile numbers, besides the fact that not everyone has a mobile number. There is no “I don’t have a mobile telephone” box to check. Just like a bank would never ask you for your password, (although not as serious as bank account password which is ed flag serious business), they should also not ask you for something most people would rather keep private as much as possible.
Pestering makes them look less respectable. Maybe some hacker or got in to mess it up for them. Last week Gmail was and still is partly messed up.
I see part of the
1% full
Using 85 MB of your 7663 MB ©2011 Google – Terms & Privacy
Last account activity: 1 day ago
Details
in the middle of the emails I am scrolling to see which one I should open. The scrolling is still a problem.

@Male if they asked you for alternate address at least there is that. You could send them an email from there to ask them to see if you cound add a second,obscure, preferably your own, security Q. Better to make your the answer real.

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