The weird world of updating an email address online

So I’m in the process of “degoogling”. Not for the reasons most people use, just because I am trying to simplify (I have far too many email addresses) and my main email provider is Fastmail. Unfortunately most of what I’ve signed up for I’ve signed up using my Gmail address to help keep my main Fastmail address free of garbage. It is really odd to see the variety of hair-brained schemes that companies use when you want to change an email address.

At the “bottom feeder” rung is the companies that won’t let you change it at all. I ran into more than one that uses an email address as the username, doesn’t let you change it, and doesn’t have a separate way to indicate a new email address. Email addresses are unique, there is no reason they shouldn’t be updatable. If you’re not going to allow it then have another way for a user to set an email address.

Next up would be the companies that require you to still have access to the old email address, therefore expecting that every person on the planet that uses their services might remember to update every site they use before the old email account is closed. There are many, many reasons why this is a bad idea.

Then there are the ones who not only require the old address still being active but do the weird dance where they send notifications to both accounts that you need to respond to in order to update your email address. The odder thing is the (many) sites I ran into using this scheme were mostly e-commerce sites. I’d expect something like this to come from a bank. Oddly enough not one single bank I use does something this ridiculous. Let’s not even talk about the thought process of the person designing this scheme that thought it was a good idea. Clearly they don’t use email all that often.

Thankfully the majority of sites required some form of response from only the new account before changing the email address, either sent a 6-digit code I had to type in or a link to click on to verify the new email. This seems fair to me to maintain security and not require someone to remember to change every single account that might use an email before that email address is gone.

In the ease-of-use scale the easiest were sites that didn’t require…anything. I’d update the email and get a response email saying that the email address was changed and if I didn’t make the change to contact them immediately. Very easy but not very secure and it was shocking how many sites that should know better used this method (most of my utilities like water service, etc).

I ran into a couple that required me to send an email to change the email address. These were all European companies and I wonder why they’d do something so silly and require a support person to do such a mundane task that can be easily automated.

Last but not least, the German audio tools company that required me to respond back with a reason “for security purposes” and a screenshot of the settings screen of the account on the website to “prove ownership”.

Needless to say I don’t plan on doing this activity again. I couldn’t believe how many accounts I have amassed over the years that required changes. I even just said the hell with it for a bunch that I didn’t care about. Fastmail forever now 😆