Hello nice people,
I've been using NiceHash app for some time 5-6 years ago. (It was a simple app for mining cryptocurrency and you get paid in bitcoin on their wallet, then you could transfer bitcoin to another wallet.) It was working fine until they got hacked (or fooled us) and lost all crypto. Luckily I didn't loose much like some guys did. I decided not to use the service anymore and I'm still receiving stupid e-mail newsletters. I tried to unsubscribe and It asks me for login, I know password, but don't have 2fa anymore. Also I don't have backup 16 words.
Now support told me that this is the only way and I feel ridiculous about taking selfie just to unsubscribe. Am I protected against this somehow? I live in Europe and I think Nicehash is located in neighbourhood.
And of course I never wanted to subscribe...and I don't think I ever verified account with a document.
What are my options other than just filtering that shitty domain as spam?
edit: typo
Probably an unpopular opinion - but I actually think requesting overriding 2fa is a big deal and companies shouldn't do that lightly. If I had a lot of money in crypto I would sure hope the exchange would scrutinize a request to turn off 2fa. And if op had saved their backup words they wouldn't have been in this situation.
Now requiring that to change an email subscription is not great, but again - turning off 2fa without the proper backup options should be difficult and scrutinized.
Requiring logging in to unsubscribe is absolutely bullshit. I mark all emails as spam that don't automatically unregister with ONLY clicking a lick. I'm not providing my email, I'm not logging in.
It's probably not for marketing emails. They probably require login to disable account alerts. Imagine a threat actor gets access to your account, turns of transaction alerts so you aren't notified, then transfers out all your crypto.
I'm certain the marketing emails don't require login to unsubscribe.
I was with you till your last sentence, I've seen multiple companies require account login to disable marketing emails. It's a dark web pattern to keep their subscription numbers high, by adding a lot of friction to unsubscribing. Those companies can go fuck themselves, but they exist in numbers
For bypassing 2fa this does seem reasonable. But anyone who can access the email address should have the permission to unsubscribe from messages.
For example on my service there is the concept of a "primary email" which is the only one that can be used to reset the password. But even if you have lost the password and access to your primary email you can still unsubscribe any other email from notifications as long as you can show access to that particular email. You won't regain access to the account but you can turn off emails.
For marketing emails I totally agree.
For important account security and verification emails, no I don't think that should be done without being able to log into the account.
If somebody breaks into your email, they shouldn't be able to compromise everything silently
This is a good point. Maybe you could have some sort of exit plan such as 3 emails confirming that you have been unsubscribed at 1d, 30d and 365d. This way if the email takeover is temporary then the user will eventually see a warning but there is still a finite amount of emails still to be received.
It isn't perfect, because an attacker could set up filters or something so that these aren't noticed. But at this point the attacker could set up a filter to hide the regular account emails so it really isn't any worse.
I think in most cases confirming you own the email should be sufficient to unsubscribe.
In high security situations there should be a more extensive method, but it should still be possible. Perhaps the timed unsubscribe, i.e. a month of access. Or mailing a letter to the account holders address. (I.e. take 4 weeks to give the account holder time to opt out)