> If you give me an email address john@example.org, I have none of those assurances, and it's entirely likely that you are not a human, or are a human overseas

> If you give me an email address john@example.org, I have none of those assurances, and it's entirely likely that you are not a human, or are a human overseas who is in the business of scamming people. Wow, "entirely likely" — what do you base that estimation on? Your analogy to a walk-in is completely on point too: surely only people in "disheveled state, unshaven, and with body odor" would sport an email address and think that's a good representation of their identity on the internet. I've conducted business with a bunch of US companies, sometimes shipping to mail forwarding companies based in US to forward stuff home (eg. that's how I got my last few $2-3k laptops). Businesses that build in some silly protections like the phone number in do not get my business. For us who've been using the internet long enough, phone number is a weird requirement: Google and eBay keep asking me to confirm my number upon login for 15 year old accounts (with eBay there's even no recourse on the page, but you do get logged in, so you can just reload the page you wanted and the screen is gone).