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Ask HN: Gmail account security

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Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#701

Post by slig »

moralestapia wrote: post #315

Google is absolute trash now compared to what it was. Most accurate search engine is now almost useless even for VERBATIM queries; queries that took milliseconds earlier (they even built a product around that, Google Instant), now take 2-3 seconds on average. Best email service, now feels clunky and slow plus the spam algorithm not only stopped working, but is now working backwards . Everything just worked and it was…

>Best email service, now feels clunky and slow plus the spam algorithm not only stopped working, but is now working backwards.

That's annoying, and they don't even care anymore. Now I have to check my spam folder multiple times a day. A lot of legitimate email is going to spam and vice-versa.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#702

Post by staticelf »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #586
steelframe wrote: post #445

Once upon a time I worked at Google. I returned to Austin to visit old friends and took the opportunity to visit the Google office there. The Googlers sitting around me were primarily corporate sales. They weren't getting any corporate sales calls at all as far as I could tell, but there was one extremely irate user who was locked out of their GMail account and was repeatedly calling them because they were the only h…

Even when you have paid Google products that come with support, it is really awful. They once asked me to submit a business case justifying how answering my support question benefited Google. Just a simple clarification of something in their documentation. I was already under pressure to migrate to Office360, I stopped fighting after that. My employer is a huge AWS user and Google is constantly chasing us with a trea…

I work for a small company and we used to use AWS. I think their support sucks. Especially since there is no group accounts and the bills went to another persons account that ended his job at the company.

I had to login to both mine and his account in order to complete my support request or they wouldn't help me. When I called them it was like any crappy indian support team which I barely could understand.

Compare that to DigitalOcean for example, there you can actually group resources for an org and their support is actually knowledgeable about their products and can answer questions even about implementation details. Also, you don't need a PhD in order to understand the UI which is a great plus.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#703

Post by ftrobro »

alephnan wrote: post #552
graderjs wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is why Amazon is playing the long game with their obsessive focus on customers. I don't know how that really plays out where the rubber meets the road but that's what Jeff bezos always keeps talking about.

I worked at both Amazon and Google. It was only at Amazon where I was exposed to the Craft of software development. Personally, I feel there is a nuanced difference to the role at Amazon being SDE ( Software Development Engineer ) whereas Google is SWE ( Software Engineer ). It's almost like Google thinks Software Developers are lower tier than Software Engineers, but I'd like to think of myself as doing more than ju…

Thanks for the insights! Surprising that Go met resistance internally at Google, considering that Go is created by Google and that Google have been sued by Oracle for using Java in Android.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#704

Post by wruza »

Protip: log in to youtube with this account. (Or is it “log into”, “login to”, not sure)

Less reliable way: log out of all google, login to all of your “best” accounts, then login to this one. When you are logged in and google knows they were logged in at the same time before, restrictions get relaxed (there is sort of a “skip security” button, or a similar setup).

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#705

Post by Silhouette »

blfr wrote: post #699
Silhouette wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you lose your 2FA device then you lose access to everything if there is no alternative recovery mechanism. I recently started working with a client that uses cloud-hosted everything and mandates 2FA for all accounts. They asked me to install Google's authenticator app for that purpose. So far, so reasonable. However of those different services, only one provides recovery codes as a standard part of its 2FA reg…

Another scenario where yubikeys shine: you can have multiple. Keep one in your main computer, one on you, and one at your parents's place, or even a safety deposit box if you're feeling fancy.

Definitely an advantage. Of course like any other back-up it's only worth anything if you test each copy regularly!

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#706

Post by 4cao »

Mirrors my experience.

I moved away from Gmail for most of my mail a while ago for privacy reasons, and in anticipation that something like this would happen eventually.

Not much later, I was locked out of a Gmail account I had for an extensively long time (created back when Gmail was still in beta and by invitation only).

I know the password, I know the recovery e-mail address, and have access to the recovery account, yet I'm not allowed to access the Gmail account or recover the password regardless. Go figure.

The account was used mainly for all kinds of registrations where I expected I might end up getting spammed but I definitely wasn't doing anything suspicious with it. I didn't bother too much trying to restore it but any attempts would have likely failed regardless.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#707

Post by ftrobro »

tsm wrote: post #664
kelnos wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the advice to get your own domain, and then use a service to manage email for it. But don't use GSuite/Google Workspaces/whatever they're calling it now. Your Google account will be somewhat crippled and will be missing a bunch of features, because Google has just decided GSuite accounts should not have those features. And you can't convert your account to a regular Google account. I really want to untan…

> Google has decided to finally pull the rug out from under those of us who signed up for GSuite when it was free…and will start charging later this year. Do you have a citation for this? I heard last year they were going to start charging for new accounts, but that since I set it up on my domain in 2008 I was grandfathered into the free plan indefinitely.

The email has not been sent to everyone yet, but it mentions "transition all remaining users".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#708

Post by harel »

kelnos wrote: post #332
alerighi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution is, buy your own domain. It's cheap and it will cost you only 20$ a year or something like that. I'm not saying run your own email service (I do, but I recognize that it's complex and not worth for most people), but use a public email service (like also GMail) with your own domain. That way at least if you no longer can access your account, or you get banned, or whatever, you don't loose your address (sin…

I agree with the advice to get your own domain, and then use a service to manage email for it. But don't use GSuite/Google Workspaces/whatever they're calling it now. Your Google account will be somewhat crippled and will be missing a bunch of features, because Google has just decided GSuite accounts should not have those features. And you can't convert your account to a regular Google account. I really want to untan…

That's true about GSuite being crippled compared to Gmail, but I accepted that as the price to pay for having my main email use my own domain.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#709

Post by llampx »

DocTomoe wrote: post #691
jakub_g wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they don't want you to file the bug too easily? I imagine Google would getting 10,000s bugs per day if it was too easy.

I'd rather know where my ship is burning instead of closing my eyes and just having happy thoughts. But then, I am an engineer, not some marketing drone...

Rest assured that they fix their AdSense and AdWords bugs very very fast.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#710

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

alephnan wrote: post #552
graderjs wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is why Amazon is playing the long game with their obsessive focus on customers. I don't know how that really plays out where the rubber meets the road but that's what Jeff bezos always keeps talking about.

I worked at both Amazon and Google. It was only at Amazon where I was exposed to the Craft of software development. Personally, I feel there is a nuanced difference to the role at Amazon being SDE ( Software Development Engineer ) whereas Google is SWE ( Software Engineer ). It's almost like Google thinks Software Developers are lower tier than Software Engineers, but I'd like to think of myself as doing more than ju…

I'm a developer and a school admin, so I can comment on the Classroom point, at least: It is so comically clear that Classroom really was someone's clever idea to simply take existing Google Drive APIs and then create an LMS-like environment using that. Taken like that, it's actually brilliant and super clever.

The not-so-brilliant-and-clever part is that by virtue of being free and Google having so many schools captive with free GoogleEDU + Chromebooks, this is something running millions' of kids' schooling, especially now during COVID. But it seems, at every indication, to continue to be someone's pet Google Drive API project, so you see some insane feature omissions because it is clear it would probably require some sort of actual original development work besides the very minimal UI and overhead that Classroom provides. I need to thread lightly, though, 'cause I've made decent money (and had fun) implementing quite a few of these for my own school, but every single time its been clear to me that EVERY OTHER SCHOOL IN THE UNIVERSE would also want/need things like that.

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