We understand phone numbers are very personal and tied to our identities and giving them away on the internet makes us all a bit uncomfortable. But there are good reasons why we have chosen to use phone numbers instead of email addresses on FrontPage. Here is a short list:

• Discouraging spammers and trolls: Many FrontPage services tend to have commentary enabled within posts or in a forum where members can engage and voice their opinions. But any such forum attracts the attention of professional spammers or certain members who’d rather troll than engage meaningfully. Using phone numbers helps to control/blacklist/ban such actors much better.
• Discouraging habitual free (trial) loaders: FrontPage services are run by creators who make a living by providing value to their subscribers in exchange for subscription purchases. However, certain folk tend to misuse free email addresses by taking trials one after another from different accounts. This directly hurts the creator’s livelihood. Phone numbers are not foolproof but discourage this behaviour much better compared to email addresses.
• Emails are too clunky: Consider the following: Emails are long and hard to type with @s and dots. This leads to mistakes which send confirmation emails to nowhere or someone else’s account who may mark it as spam. Emails need to be confirmed outside in some other client but not everyone (non-techies especially) has an email client set up on their device with that particular email.
• In India, a significant number of people don’t have or use emails actively: A whole generation of people is coming online using messaging apps primarily for communication and email use is not nearly as popular as in the west.
• We already sell to you, selling you out hurts our business: FrontPage creators are already selling you something that hopefully you’d want to pay for. Selling your phone number breaks your trust in us and simply speaking hurts our business.
• We don’t spam with SMS: The only time you may get an SMS from FrontPage is security reasons: OTP validation etc. Every other kind of interaction is via app notifications only and can be toggled at will.

We hope this helps to understand why we ask for phone numbers, if not allaying all the fears. In case of questions or suggestions,  please do get in touch with us at – dev at crowdware dot in.