>That's not how it works in the real world. That would be a fraudulent request and I suspect they'd invite legal trouble by impersonating someone else to access a computer system.
Emails are not people. You can impersonate a person, but you can't impersonate an email. If I own a company and I issue the email dick.less@privateequity.com but then have to fire him... using this email address to transfer company assets back to someone who can be responsible for them isn't fraud (for that purpose, at least). How is this not the same issue?
This would be a coherent argument if the paper was submitted by an email address. Instead the paper was submitted by a person. The email address serves to identify the person. Only the person can redact the paper.
If you misrepresent that you are dick.less then yes that would be fraud. They say only the authors can submit withdrawal requests, so you would have to present yourself as the author even though you aren't. That's fraud.
Although not explicitly stated, i read previous comments as using dick.less@privateequity.com to cancel his personal Netflix account. (Let's say that privateequity.com allowed personal usage of company email.)
I see a difference between accessing an email account and impersonating the previous account holder.
Emails are not people. You can impersonate a person, but you can't impersonate an email. If I own a company and I issue the email dick.less@privateequity.com but then have to fire him... using this email address to transfer company assets back to someone who can be responsible for them isn't fraud (for that purpose, at least). How is this not the same issue?