I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi • Hacker News Board

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#411

Post by andrewaylett » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #403

dpark wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually set up gmail to send through an external server? I had no idea they’d support that. Running an SMTP server is absolutely not something I’m willing to do, though. Aside from the general setup/maintenance hassle, all the big companies are aggressive at blocking spam and private SMTP servers are just tough to keep unblocked these days (or so I read).

If you have GSuite you can, but I doubt it is possible for individual accounts. [1,2] You can however send email to google's SMTP server, using an ordinary gmail account [3]. This is how email clients (Eudora, Apple Mail, sendmail) work. The only trick is that they force it to be authenticated and encrypted. I believe (but have not verified recently) that if you send an email with an email address/domain other than o…

It is, I do -- inbound email forwarded to gmail, outbound from gmail goes out through my server and while it's obvious it's from gmail, it doesn't actually include my gmail address anywhere.

Sending from Google's servers using my address would cause SPF and DMARC failures, so if you want to do that then they'd have to make sure it's clear that the mail is actually from gmail.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#412

Post by gregd » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #338

r00fus wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite their size and breadth, they still don't understand customer support. Cue Larry Page's view on customer support circa 2000, and it still makes sense. Leaders fundamentally don't change views like that, and it impacts the organization - look at Zuckerberg's formative views on privacy.

I didn't previously know what Larry Page's view on customer support circa 2000 was: But while it's easy to scoff at Page's quirks—his odd obsessions, his unrealistic expectations, his impatience for a future dangling out of immediate reach—sometimes his seemingly crazy ideas wind up creating breakthrough innovations, and skeptical Googlers wind up admitting Page was right, after all. That was the reaction in 2003 whe…

Yeah but it doesn't work.

It's one thing to be able to "answer questions". It's an entirely other thing to have access rights to actually solve a problem and the authority to do so.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#413

Post by andrewaylett » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

For all that "legal tender" as a concept is so often misused, this is actually pretty much the poster-child case where it's necessary: you one someone money and they're refusing to accept payment. Offer them some legal tender, they're required to accept _that_ in payment of your debt.

Of course, Google being a tech company that might not motivate them to solve their tech problems so it might not fix their other account issues. But it really should fix the phone company side of the problem, allowing the number to be ported out.

Or maybe I'm overly optimistic.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#414

Post by ardy42 » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

MyNameIsFred wrote: post #333

gameswithgo wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's an unsolvable fraud/scammer problem. credit card companies and traditional banks and credit unions handle it fine. >Too many people, scams and fraud become big problems. if the solution to fraud is un-fixable account freezes, you have not actually solved anything. It is fraud itself.

They most certainly do not "handle it just fine". They are highly scammable, they know it, and it's "solved" my moving as much of the burden and repercussions onto the consumer as possible. I've had my identity stolen, and both my wife and I have been mistaken for somebody else. There ARE way to move past this condition (inline with Google Pay, apparently), but it's just done via trust. Or apathy. Or acceptable risk.…

>>>it's an unsolvable fraud/scammer problem.

>> credit card companies and traditional banks and credit unions handle it fine.

> They most certainly do not "handle it just fine". They are highly scammable, they know it, and it's "solved" my moving as much of the burden and repercussions onto the consumer as possible.

That's false. I'm credit card companies are required by law (at least in the US) to shield customers from the repercussions of credit card fraud.

I've had my card number stolen twice, once by someone who used it in the same metro area as I live in, and it both cases it went about as smoothly as you could imagine.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#415

Post by buro9 » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

013a wrote: post #57

iandanforth wrote: post #29

The lede here is somewhat burried: "From what I’ve since learned, if a card in your Google Pay is stolen, or someone uses your Payments account fraudulently, or anything happens that leads to a security flag being raised, it can lead to your Google Payments account being frozen. ... If you can’t use Google Payments, you can’t pay for Google Fi This, fundamentally, is why I can’t suggest anyone use Project Fi anymore.…

One thing I can suggest; if you're deep into google products, you should be paying the $5/month for a G-Suite account with your own domain. You get access to better business-class support. Fi is now also supported on G-Suite accounts. It's a no-brainer. It sucks that their personal account support is so bad, but there is a solution.

I've had such bad experiences on G Suite I've just gone back to the consumer Google One world of regular Gmail: https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d292906...

I would not recommend G Suite to anyone who is a consumer or household any longer.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#416

Post by PavlovsCat » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

rroblak wrote: post #100

Google is, fundamentally, an engineering company. Despite their size and breadth, they still don't understand customer support. Their approach is to use software to solve problems, and they insist on doing so even when it's clear that software isn't up to the task. Unfortunately, customer support is a hard problem. Despite all of the advances in NLP, I still abhor automated customer support systems when I have a comp…

Good engineering, just like good customer service, is super easy if you put integrity first and don't compromise it. Don't grow beyond your capabilities to handle your stuff with integrity, done.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#417

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

jrobn wrote: post #335

velosol wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of Google's use of 'From' and 'Sender' headers in gmail. If you setup an SMTP server to send your emails from for your @example.com address then Google won't mess around and the emails appear to actually come from the email address you want out there, not your @gmail.com.

Or just pay Fastmail $30 a year for such an important 21st century utility such that e-mail is. I don't use gmail for anything else except throwaway accounts. Who wants to run an SMTP server.

Crazy how many people don’t view email as a critical part of life infrastructure worth paying for.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#418

Post by stolsvik » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #237

wyldfire wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is also a problem with Square, and Stripe, and Paypal ... it's an unsolvable fraud/scammer problem. It's compounded by the fact that Google has the primary element of your 21st century identity: your email address.

I recommend anyone who likes Gmail to use your own domain name@example.com and just forward all messages to your Gmail address. Only give out your own example.com email and set it as the reply to. Even the cheap budget registrars offer email forwarding for free and I have never had any trouble. This gives you the benefits of free Gmail without handing your entire life over to them. At least with a tld there is some d…

Agree, and I've been doing this for about a decade with very little problem. (Google do add both a Sender and From, with the Sender being your GMail-address. But that has not been a problem.)

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#419

Post by marcus_holmes » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 3:44 PM UTC

s17n wrote: post #315

s17n wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tying to a physical location actual serves an important function in that it introduces an asymmetry between you and a potential attacker / identity thief - it's much cheaper for you to physically show up at your local courthouse to contest something than it is for an attacker to fly in. Any suggestions for how to solve this?

By "solve" I mean come up with another similar asymmetry which doesn't depend on your physical location being constant.

I dunno, that kind of starts with the assumption that people live at one address, in one country. This is what I'm pointing out: that assumption is not true.

I accept that I'm an edge case, but a large minority of (for example) Australians have dual nationality, and will have lived in either of the countries that they're citizens of for long periods of time. Some haven't settled on one yet, and skip back and forth every few months/years. All of them (us) have stories of identity systems, bureaucracy and banks not understanding that they moved country.

You're asking for a replacement asymmetry when the thing you're replacing in the first place isn't actually useful.

But, to answer the question: email is the one thing I'm pretty sure that I and I alone can get to. I have two email addresses, from different providers, using 2FA (google Authenticator on my phone). The 2FA bit is probably enough asymmetry.

However, even that, I could lose: if I fall into a swimming pool while carrying my backpack and phone, I'd have a hard time proving who I am to anyone until I got everything back up and running. Even worse, if I fell into a swimming pool while moving accommodation I'd have my passports in my backpack... not a comforting thought at all.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#420

Post by wpietri » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #369

wpietri wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think engineering is the problem here. As an example, Toyota, a very engineering-driven company, is also famous for customer focus. I think the problem is that Google is mostly about selling users' eyeballs to their real customers, advertisers. That's not a business of making individual users happy; it's essentially statistical in nature. With a search engine, if something works for 80 or 90% of people, that'…

it costs $xxK to buy a car. It costs 0$ to use Gmail, Drive, Youtube, etc. These two are not gonna have the same level of customer support. Fi is a paid service, and I do expect it to have a better support (which in my own experience, they do), but to compare Google as a whole to Toyota doesn't seem fair.

Fair or not, I think it's accurate. If it costs $0 to use something, you're probably not the customer. You're the product.

I agree Fi is different, and I think it's reasonable for you to want better support. I'm saying that since Google is not used to lines of business where they actually have to care about every user, I'm saying it's unsurprising you won't get it.