I used to run a hybrid mobile app + webapp company.

Private emails regularly lead to awful customer service interactions because people cannot tell us the email they used to register. Fastmail at least is off the beaten path enough that people probably can understand. Apple, especially using sign in with Apple, is horrid. And not just people unable to tell us the email; they then create multiple accounts; try to sign in on web and use their actual email and then have 2 accounts and flip shit that their stuff is gone; etc. Oh, and regularly blame us for their confusion.

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trollbridge 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s up to the app architect to make a way to make this work, and to stop using emails as anything other than a UUID type of token

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JoblessWonder 4 hours ago | parent [-]

So I guess the solution is just to begin to allow accounts to always register multiple emails? Although I guess the issue of multiple accounts is still going to exist if the users don't know the initial (private) email that they signed up with though unless there is a different unique ID that everyone will be able to remember.

I'm curious (and not trolling by asking) what a solution might be since email has been used as a unique account identifier for so long it is hard for my brain to think of another option at the moment.

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weakened_malloc 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Just a regular old username + password, kind of like HN allows?

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JoblessWonder 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I feel like email overtook usernames because it was more likely to be unique/memorable. I hate when websites ask me to remember a username (even though I'm using a password manager so I should really just calm down.)

	▲	bigstrat2003 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Usernames are no less likely to be unique and memorable than an email. You presumably chose something memorable for your email, so just enter that without the @foo.com bit. There, memorable and probably unique.

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5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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