Toad on the road

It's toad-squashing time for drivers. As a pedestrian, I can generally manage to avoid them as they screech across the carriageway.
Godd news: the car repairs have been authorised. Bad news: it'll take another month.
Received an email claiming to be from the Prudential (with whom I have some pension investments) asking me to register on a link to receive a secure message. I can log in to my account to read messages (and there wasn't one waiting for me) and, if they've got my email ...
This is the email equivalent of an unknown number calling you up and asking you for personal information before telling you what they're calling you about. I refuse to do this, even if I happen to be waiting for that organisation to contact me about something. We need to have some way for the businesses you deal with who decide to call you from unpublished numbers to hand you some sort of token that assures you they are who they say they are before you pass their security test. But this seems too hard a concept. I got the latest one, who asked me to verify my email address, to send me an email at that address so I knew I was speaking to them. Give them their due, they did. The whole system needs to give each party trust and confidence, not just the business party (and I know they have data protection duties),