[jayknight]

I thought about doing something mildly nefarious with someone's PayPal account that they added my address to, but didn't want to chance legal problems. Instead I just logged into their account and removed my email address and logged out.

[red369]

PayPal is certainly trickier. I felt more comfortable testing with buying Amazon Prime through an Amazon account, because it would be easy for them to refund.

I assume I thought of trying to remove the email address! :) I sometimes forget they’re not necessarily the only identifiers, and some accounts let you use a mobile number instead. Probably there wasn’t a mobile on the profile.

It would be nice if all accounts used a username, and allowed you to not have an email or phone if you tick a box saying “I don’t care if I get locked out of this account forever if I forget the password”.

[GreenWatermelon]

Email is probably important as a spam-prevention measure. Without the necessity of validating an email or a phone number, one can create am unlimited number of accounts.

One can of course create any number of emails from server/domain they own, but that requires more skill.