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Comment by rsbadger | Hacker News Reader

The only purpose of this link was to verify that the email address is valid. Once it’s verified, you can login.

I have seen services where you have to click a link every time you want to log in

They are called magic links... only thing magic about them is their ability to annoy me

I think they exist to simplify the flow for the subset of users who end up using the Reset Password link each time their session expires.

And I think that subset is much larger than some would expect.

This. You'd be amazed how many users just do a password reset each time to login instead of remembering their login info.

My father has insisted on doing this for over 20 years, but he doesn't know how to do it himself. I expect a password-reset phone call from him every 2 or 3 days and have done since 1998. Just recently he had someone from his bank's IT department call him directly about resetting his password over 500 times.

I'm not sure if he's still doing it but someone put together https://theuserisdrunk.com/ and https://theuserismymom.com/ a few years back... I wonder if you could do something similar here, given the level of absolute predictability that seems to be involved.

I sadly can't put my finger on what's so compelling about this, just that my "oh that person should talk to a UX team lead!" meter just went plink

Or "passwordless" login, and I love it. Not many people use password managers and will reuse passwords between websites (I.e. their bank and some random unsecured SaaS product). One-time emailed passwords are an easy way to avoid this problem and have a fairly secure site (mind you, it's only as secure as their email). You can layer 2FA on top of this too.

It's only annoying if the site is constantly timing you out so that every single visit you need to resend. Why not just use secure cookies to remember the user for say a week?

>They are called magic links... only thing magic about them is their ability to annoy me

I love them and prefer them to creating yet another account with a password.

Me too!

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