Re: Changing details by email.

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:

"For the security and protection of your details we are unable to
deal with your change of address by e-mail.  You can provide the
information either by contacting us on [....] or you can write to us
at [...]"
 
Because phoning and writing are so much more secure.

Small correction, at least for the phone: it /was/ previously more
secure.

Am I missing something here, or is this just standard bureaucratic
nonsense that is perpetuated because no one with the power to change
things looks at the rationale behind these decisions?

It's one part of each.

For a good long time, email was trivial to forge, and expecting a lowly
minimum-wage boiler room worker to know how to read email headers with
sufficient detail to detect a forged email was a no-go.

This was the original source of the "don't do X via email" rules.  And,
much like the use of Fax in the medicial environment (at least in the
US) once something like "email is too easy to forge, don't use email
for account changes" filters into the burearacy such that it makes a
rule, then the rule remains stuck long past the time when the rule no
longer applies (email with DMARC, DKIM, and SPF is reasonably
authenticated, in fact likely a better authentication than the usual
"who are you, where do you live" questions used to authenticate.  over
a phone call).

As to "phone" -- a similar issue applies, only the reverse situation. 
In days long ago, when phone service was from one very regulated
monopoly (in the US, AT&T), the "phone" was very secure (ignoring the
issue of "how do I make sure the voice I'm hearing belongs to person
X).  At that time the phone network was both closed, quite proprietary,
and due to the high regulation, also quite secure (to an extent). 
Enough such that the various bureaucracy's formulated their rules that
"phone calls are secure -- so making this change over the phone is ok".

However, today, the phone network is effectively as "open" as the
Internet, and no more secure than any other very "open" system.  But,
because the bureaucracy's long ago set in stone their rule of "phone is
secure" they continue to operate as if it is just as secure as it once
was, even though for mere pennies one can obtain phone numbers at will
and forge just about everything related to a phone call.