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And maybe that's OK in many cases?

Sure, banks must enforce good security, but a lot of other things should not care.

Like online stores for example. As long as I am paying paypal, the only info my account has is email, address and recent orders. One can google my address in about 20 minites anyway, and this means I really don't care about account security. If there was an option to login without password using email alone, I'd probably pick it.




> online stores [...] my account

Why would you need an account at all, that just raises the risk (of a data breach) for the buyer? I always prefer not having to have yet another account to buy something.


Yes, if there is a "no account" option, then this is even better.

But sadly a lot of places I saw do not offer this -- you are forced to make an account to purchase. I am not sure why. Maybe they think they can improve engagement/recognition by forcing users to make an account? Or maybe they are too lazy to implement no-account workflows? Or a misguided thought that sending detailed receipts by email is bad?

(The goal of store accounts are: (1) provide list of active orders; (2) for individual order, show user the order status; (3) once order is complete, show order details with easy re-order links. This can definitely be all done with email, but this seems to be unpopular with some users. So many stores have to implement web-only flow, which needs account for authentication. And at this point, many of them just stop.)




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