Yahoo Mail Moves From Passwords To Push Notification Sign-Ins (tumblr.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A revamp of Yahoo Mail includes a new feature which eliminates the password from the sign-in process on mobile platforms, instead relying on the user's phone number as a token of authenticity. Notification-based sign-ins are a network-heavy commitment used with less frequency during some online banking authentication procedures, and by Google and others in specific events such as the need for a password reset. But Yahoo is well-motivated to improve security after a 2014 data breach led to a mass-reset of passwords for affected users.

Comments

Selling Cell Numbers to Advertisers?

[Irate Engineer]

Yahoo Mail has been my throwaway email since about forever, and I have no desire for it to be anything other than that. Yahoo is in such straights now that I would have to read the fine print about what they'll be doing with my cell number and would be very leery about handing it to them. It wouldn't surprise me if this is less a security ploy than a data-mining revenue enhancement ploy.

So essentially the phone is my security credential

[QuietLagoon]

So if someone gets my phone, they can access my Yahoo accounts because all the knowledge needed to access my Yahoo accounts is contained on the phone and/or Yahoo will message it to the phone.

.
What am I missing? This does not sound more secure at all.