Problems with Verifying Email

When I received my email verification email, I clicked the Verify Email button. It took me to a message saying the time had expired and I could log in to resend a verification email. The first time I pressed it, it took me to the Twitch “Change Password” Page. I had no intention of changing my Twitch password, so I went back to my email and clicked the Verify Email button again. When I logged in, it took me to the screen, “ADD FRIEND”. Nothing was evident that I could resend an email verification. I looked on the other pages. Eventually, while pressing menu buttons, I was asked if Discord could use my microphone. I have no microphone on my computer. I clicked “No”, and It took me to a page titled “How Do I Enable My Mic. In Chrome” and saw nothing there either, but by accident I noticed a search box. I typed in “Email Verification”, and it took me to a page explaining how to resend my request, but it presented no link or command on that screen either to resend. It told me to go to My Account. It took a long time to find “My Account”. I clicked the cog at the bottom of Add a Friend. It brought me to screen that had My Account at the top. The instructions I had read told me I would see “A YELLOW BOX AT THE TOP OF YOUR MY ACCOUNT TAB IN THE USER SETTINGS PAGE. THE WORDS "RESEND VERIFICATION EMAIL" WILL BE BOLDED AND CLICKING THEM WILL RESEND THE EMAIL!”. However, that yellow box was not there. The page did not give me a way to resend a verification email. I still haven ‘t verified my email, even after that convoluted wild goose chase.

Here’s an idea: in the message that says I can log in and resend the email, have it programmed to take me to the yellow box automatically when I log in. If I am already logged it, have it just make the yellow box appear. Also, it would be nice if it explained what danger such a short timeout on the email is trying to avert.

Pterodaxyl

July 06, 2021 06:20

I have similarly had issues with emailed links expiring before I could activate them.

In my case it was for password reset links, but I expect the underlying mechanism is the same, as you describe here.

The first problem is that there's no explanation of what attack vector this is supposed to protect against. (Intercepting unencrypted email in-flight is an NSA-level threat, and even that isn't really addressed by a short timeout.)

The assumption that email can be reliably delivered and acted on within a few minutes is simply wrong. The relevant RFC's for email (821, 5321 and successors) talk about timeouts in the range of days not minutes. And the timeouts mandated by the GSM consortium for SMS aren't much shorter.

Whilst some people can receive email that quickly, that's because they're using a "major player" email servers (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc), and the client software supplied by them, and nothing "out of the ordinary". Heaven forbid that you might need to use a Braille reader.

There are lots of little delays that can add up, and most of them can be stacked up:

using POP to access your mailbox, delays received email until the next polling cycle. (That applies even if you're using a "big provider" to read email from a different provider.)
using a separate service provider for spam & AV filtering
forwarding from an old address to a new one (possibly multiple times)
using POP-and-re-send to get around limitations imposed by DMARC compliance
having network connectivity issues (we aren't all on the same continent)
having stale DNS caches for MX records

Onomonkhdulmaa2003

August 04, 2023 03:16

i also have similar issues i tried again and again and again but the “verify your email” was not there

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