"It always made me wonder how someone is supposed to get their first address... or how someone can live with one address, which should be a perfectly normal thing."
Yeah this was my thought also, although i understand the backup option for recovery, but thats already present with a phone verification.
I actually do have other email addresses, i'm just surprised by the irony of it, especially that there is no workaround, for a tech company powerful like microsoft, making just viewing personal email via their service so unpleasant..
I think part of the issue is that our email address has largely become our identity, much like our phone number has. If someone gets into your email, they can effectively take over your whole life. This has caused the security around it to go up, but ironically, this leads to more account lockouts, which then locks the user out of a lot of their life with no way to recover.
It's a bad system all the way around. I've been debating a few moves and I've been kicking the can down the road, because I'm worried about some of these sharp edges.