Good points but dont underestimate "granny needs to visit the bank to get access to her account again" as a problem.

For a lot of people, dealing with (now mostly digital) bureaucracies is a major stress in life. The biggest one, for some.

Its not just about invonvenience. Its sometimes about losing access to some, and just not having it for a while.

In terms of practical effect, a performance metric for a login system could be "% of users that have access at a given point." There can be a real tradeoff, irl, between legitimate access and security.

On the vendor side.. the one time passwords fallback has become a primary login method for some. Especially government websites.

Customer support is costly and limited in capacity. We are just worse at this than we used to be.

Digital identity is turning out to be a generational problem.

That’s right.

How many HN denizens are the de facto tech support for family members when they can’t login, can’t update, can’t get rid of some unwanted behavior, or just can’t figure stuff out?

I don’t blame them one bit. The tech world has presented them with hundreds of different interfaces, recovery, processes, and policies dreamed up by engineers and executives who assume most of their user base is just like them.