One of my banks uses email two factor auth- if I lost access to the email account and had no accessible backup email set I can see how being locked out of the email account would deny access to the bank account.

but surely you can show up at your bank with identification and get the email changed?

What if your bank account is at Monzo, or any other online-only bank that seem to be the fastest growing personal banking sector at the moment.

This is a good reason why you should probably avoid neo-banks.

Last I used one of those they wanted me to take a photo of myself with ID and I think record a video.

Unless your bank is IN Gaza ...

Depends how close your closest physical branch is. It may be hours away because of where you live. Or it may be a flight away because you're abroad.

You can call your bank. They can verify your identity over the phone and banks do so routinely.

Some banks do so routinely.

Not all banks in all countries do this. One of my banks required me to email my passport, drivers license, and case number to the person I was talking to over the phone in order to prove my identity.

My passport was 1000 miles away. My drivers license was expired (was living in NYC at the time, and not driving). My bank had no physical branches outside of the state of Louisiana.

All of this after answering the security question, and providing my SSN. How I eventually was able to re-enable my account was calling a friend who worked in the mortgage department to have my account reset. If I didn't have a friend at the bank, I wouldn't have been able to reset my account without flying either back to NYC or having a family member drive me from Texas to Louisiana.

The BBC has edited the article and the line I quoted I can no longer find. I was pretty sure that particular person the quote was from was described as living in the US (as is another one of the examples in the article).

One of the other individuals in the article lives in Saudi Arabia, which has a very highly developed banking system.

Don't call Gaza using the public phone system while you're abroad?

Not all banks have a physical presence.

Well, if you truly cannot operate without access to your email account should also have a game plan for if you forget your password to your email and cannot access your email account.

My grocery story requires email 2FA to log into it these days. Losing access to my email address would probably be more work than if I found myself having to move house.

Why does your grocery store require a login?

Online ordering and delivery I'd assume

To track customer behavior.

well, consider the life of an immigrant ( mine ). i have bank accounts in India and the US. when i need to access my Indian accounts from the US, they provide me a 2fa code via sms and email. i don't have international roaming on my Indian SIM. Its active, but not really working in the US. losing email access means i lose access to some of my bank accounts.

There's a lot of neo-banks these days out there who have no physical offices, no phone numbers to call, nothing. If you lose access to them, you're basically going to have to pray that their support staff is willing to listen to you (assuming you can even reach them) and believe you when you tell them who you are.

Unfortunately I suspect more and more people are making accounts at banks like that and storing significant amounts of money in them.

in part yes, if you have a physical bank next to you it’s easy right? just go

but if the bank is in another country … it might be literally impossible to recover it