When I was consulting it was common for companies to add my professional e-mail to their services, because forcing me use an e-mail provided by them could be used as proof of employment, and that's something they didn't want.
They used to create an account using my professional contact email without asking, of course, and it would give me all sorts of problems with some SaaS services. Stuff similar to the ones in this post. Most of the time it was harmless (I'd lose access to another client), but it was always a headache.
The middle-of-the-road solution for me was to nicely ask them to remove it and use something like companyname@mydomain.com.
Of course the @mydomain.com solution didn't work for long as well (thanks, Salesforce), so I started using throwaway Google Accounts.
> They used to create an account using my professional contact email without asking, of course
I don't understand how this is an issue. Just don't confirm the account. Or are there SaaS platforms where you can add users with arbitrary emails without confirmation?
> Or are there SaaS platforms where you can add users with arbitrary emails without confirmation?
In my experience, yes!
But the problem is not so much them adding without asking, it's the fact that the SaaS companies are making random assumptions regarding who owns the email account, or who owns the domain name of those accounts, and not letting users know that before accepting. Apparently only gmail/hotmail/yahoo are safe, unfortunately.
Of course there are! And it's all part of SV culture.
A few years ago I tried to sign up to LinkedIn only to find out I already have an account. But it was not my account - it was someone else's, who has a similar name (and apparently thought my email address was his? I don't know...). I could reset the password and log in to his account. I was a bit scared when I contacted LinkedIn support, because I was worried they would accuse me of hacking. Eventually they disconnected my email from his account.
Now, I know that LinkedIn isn't a SaaS platform, but you would think that such a big company wouldn't make such rookie mistakes. Even if they launched without email confirmation, and added it later, there should be some mechanism to "fix" the old accounts.
I think it's especially common for mobile apps to accept emails without validation: I have a couple of accounts for different people with similar names on my rarely used gmail email.
They used to create an account using my professional contact email without asking, of course, and it would give me all sorts of problems with some SaaS services. Stuff similar to the ones in this post. Most of the time it was harmless (I'd lose access to another client), but it was always a headache.
The middle-of-the-road solution for me was to nicely ask them to remove it and use something like companyname@mydomain.com.
Of course the @mydomain.com solution didn't work for long as well (thanks, Salesforce), so I started using throwaway Google Accounts.