What I recently said on the Minecraft forum in the general topic section. After one final discussion with a phone network provider I was finally able to transfer my old number from a deactivated SIM onto a new account, so eventually I will be regaining access to one of my emails associated with it with 2FA. I think having texts from back in March was one of the reasons, as that technically counts as the phone network provider being used within their 90 deadline.


It's also no secret that it is far too difficult for some people to recover access to their accounts, without reliable ways of identifying each and every individual user who creates online accounts it can be impossible to know if an account has been lost or stolen.

Clearly not every known website does have strict policies on ID, because if they did we wouldn't still be having this conversation.
Yes, there is 2FA but sometimes this does fail, and there are many reasons for it which may not necessarily be the fault of people.

It is true that people create fake ID's, sometimes by mistake, but this is why there should be a requirement for birth certificates to confirm this, the fact online retailers don't even have this requirement is a problem.



But I have to express how much I dislike Amazon's customer service after I tried to change my email on that account but couldn't due to being locked out of the email associated with it due to 2FA going wrong, and after todays experience completely built up a lack of trust in their ability to protect people's accounts or assist anyone in the recovery of said accounts.


Even if people actively used their phones prior to this issue, it doesn't stop a phone from getting SIM swapped or stolen which is a potential flaw in using phone numbers in 2FA on its own and is warned against by security experts not just myself.


I was able to recover my Steam profile and GOG and switch their emails by providing them information about debit card used and purchase history etc, so the assumption that these lines of evidence can't be used to recover a person's account is completely false.


I do not care what Amazon's policies against this are, the fact of the matter is they failed their duty in assisting with account recovery,

and while I still can sign into my Amazon at least for the time being, if I hadn't managed to get my phone number back which is going to be done after the new SIM card arrives to me, after one last call to my network provider to help change it over to a new SIM, all of my Amazon account content would've been lost. They do ask for verification when you attempt to sign into your account from a new device, so not being able to change your email over due to some problem that happened with a device used to recover it is ludicrous.



There are more and arguably far more reliable ways to confirm a person's ID than just using a device for 2FA.

This is why it needs to be mandatory that everyone's true or legal ID be used to create accounts online but with personal details hidden from the public, and when an account login issue arises they ask for you to confirm your ID. I'm fine with real names being hidden for privacy reasons, what I am not okay with is how even to this day, nobody seems to be learning about the many things that can go wrong with a person's account as a result of not being able to confirm their identification in some way, and it also makes investigating people for fraud or other crimes far harder than it should be.

www.minecraftforum.net/forums/off-topic/general-off-topic/3174817-amazons-customer-service-is-rubbish