I think this is a little over the top. They're pushy about this because they want people to have an account recovery method so people can recover their account

I think this is a little over the top. They're pushy about this because they want people to have an account recovery method so people can recover their account if necessary. It really is important to them for that reason. This is probably any online services' single biggest source of customer service headaches: people forgetting/losing their credentials and needing the account unlocked. This is a really problematic thing for companies to deal with because any "human" customer service solution is both expensive but more importantly, very vulnerable to social engineering attacks.