darrinmn
Joined 9 years ago
Joined 9 years ago
For most websites transacting with potentially sensitive information, having an email sent to confirm you own the email address should already be part of the normal flow, so I'm not suggesting any extra step here. I was only suggesting an alternative email response in the situation you try to signup with an email that already exists. The normal happy path signup flow for a new account is not affected at all by my comment.
I am only speaking to the typical signup flow that anyone can access signed out without putting in any information besides email/pw. If you are in a purchase flow where valid credit card info is already entered and is going to result in actual purchase $$, you've already excluded bots/hackers who would be trying to brute force account enumeration. It would be totally fine to confirm the existence of an account in a web form in this situation as it is not a flow that can be easily brute forced for free with little effort or info needed (like a credit card).
This is not true if the signup flow is implemented correctly. Signing up for an account should always respond with the same message "we sent an email for you to confirm your account signup". The owner of that email address then receives an email - either 1) normal signup process, or 2) "did you just try to sign up? You already have a valid account for this email address."
This way you cannot tell via the signup web form alone whether an account exists or not. You need to have access to the email address.
I find it ironic that the css "when/else" draft spec uses "if" for describing the conditional scenarios in plain english. As if the spec itself admits the syntax they are choosing is clearly sub-optimal.