Comments on: Why Is Account Registration Anything More than Email Address?

By: Garrick Van Buren

Garrick Van Buren — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:44:17 +0000

@Paul – exactly. Captcha’s I sorta get, though they give me enough problems that I think there are more effective ways to prevent robots from registering.

Passwords, names, postal addresses, in almost all cases these are bits of information that are either not required immediately, or can be generated by the service provider (if the service provider takes security and privacy seriously).

By: Paul Cantrell

Paul Cantrell — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:29:57 +0000

I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, Garrick. Are you asking about sites in general? Are you wondering about addresses? names? captchas? passwords?

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:30:57 +0000

I suppose an arguement could be made that you want your account users to select a *unique* registration id that they can also remember. Just about everyone can remember their email address and it is usually unique (unless several people happen to share the use of an e-mail account – this can be indeed be a potential problem which I’ve seen occur). An alternative is to use a Social Security number

Of course, having the rhe registered users’ email addresses on hand is also a nice side benefit …

By: Darrel

Darrel — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:05:47 +0000

‘cuz you need all the demographic data to show Google when they come a’courtin’!

By: Ed Kohler

Ed Kohler — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:36:50 +0000

The only reason I can think of for something else is length. If people can use anything, they’ll probably use something shorter.