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SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

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Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#121

Post by scrollaway »

Analemma_ wrote: post #107
ineedasername wrote: post #84

Google really fails hard in the face of providing support when issues like this occur. The average person has to try various automated account recovery options which, as in the author's case, are readily changeable the moment the account is compromised, rendering them somewhat useless, and then users are out of luck. It's a situation that is mind-boggling. Users as asked to place a significant chunk of their digital…

> People who pay for G-suite have real support, even ::gasp:: telephone support. Why on earth does google not offer this to consumer users? I know people are getting sick of this phrase, but I'm going to repeat it here anyway because it answers your question perfectly: why doesn't Google have customer support? They do, but if the product is free, you're not the customer. As you note, Google does have real customer su…

As someone using G Suite for personal purposes I'm glad to pay for support honestly (+ the peace of mind of being mostly in charge of my data, not having it be mined for whatever purposes).

Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#122

Post by OJFord »

bocklund wrote: post #99
chongli wrote: post #4

This is a good place to remind everyone of Google Takeout [1]. Back up all of your data. Don't let this horror story happen to you. [1] https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

I was just about to set this up to automatically put everything in my organization's Box every six months, but: > With access to your XXX@YYY.ZZZ Box account, Google Download Your Data can: > Read and write all files and folders stored in Box Nope. Download link it is.

To be clear though, unless Box does actually offer a finer-tuned 'write to specific dir' access control, that's not nosey Google's fault.

Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#123

Post by roywiggins »

mceachen wrote: post #57
heliodor wrote: post #34

A few suggestions: 1) Call your cellphone carrier and ask to set up a password/PIN to be used for when you call into the customer service phone number. 2) Consider your phone number and SIM card insecure. The phone carriers are ignoring the SIM swap problem even though they know how much damage it's causing. Give your phone number to as few companies as possible. Phone services such as Google Voice work without a SIM…

> Call your cellphone carrier and ask to set up a password/PIN Note that, at least for TMobile, AT&T, and Verizon, the password/PIN is presented to the CSR in plaintext (as they verify the pin over the phone verbally). I'd assumed they'd transfer to some pin-capture applet to verify, but nope. > Use an authentication app, such as Google Authenticator If you decide on Google Authenticator, make sure you scan the barco…

> scan the barcode with 2 devices

You can print out a copy of the barcode and keep it somewhere safe. It's a little bit scary as that barcode is a super powerful extra key but, you will have a key that will work and not be reliant on any device to store it.

Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#124

Post by usrusr »

Analemma_ wrote: post #107
ineedasername wrote: post #84

Google really fails hard in the face of providing support when issues like this occur. The average person has to try various automated account recovery options which, as in the author's case, are readily changeable the moment the account is compromised, rendering them somewhat useless, and then users are out of luck. It's a situation that is mind-boggling. Users as asked to place a significant chunk of their digital…

> People who pay for G-suite have real support, even ::gasp:: telephone support. Why on earth does google not offer this to consumer users? I know people are getting sick of this phrase, but I'm going to repeat it here anyway because it answers your question perfectly: why doesn't Google have customer support? They do, but if the product is free, you're not the customer. As you note, Google does have real customer su…

> Why waste money on support for them?

On the other hand, a paid edge case support option for otherwise free services would be a win for both sides. If only the long term projection of the resulting incentives would not be so ugly...

Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#126

Post by r1ch »

sdinsn wrote: post #103
zyx321 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they get your 4-digit PIN? Don't you have to enter it on every reboot?

Phones' PINs aren't connected to SIMs. I have to enter my PIN on reboot, even if I removed my SIM. Putting the SIM in a phone without a PIN results in nothing being required. Edit: Thanks for correcting me- I guess my SIM does not have a PIN.

SIM cards themselves can have a PIN attached to them too, usually with a lockout after 3 unsuccessful attempts. The card is supposed to be secure against tampering, but since it's running an OS which receives very little scrutiny and runs lots of legacy tech, there are likely all kinds of exploits to reset / root the SIM and bypass any PIN protection. It's still useful against casual theft though.

Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#127

Post by roywiggins »

andybak wrote: post #87
Tepix wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not "defend" yourself by not relying on gmail? It's not exactly the first time this has happened.

Is there anything specific to Google about this? Could it be the same story about another email provider? And if not then why not? Is it because Google is a bigger and more obvious target or something specific they are doing badly? If you think people should switch then these are the kind of questions you should answer.

A smaller, paid provider may make it easier to get someone on the phone to resolve problems when things go wrong. Having better support than Google would not take much.

Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#128

Post by jchw »

archi42 wrote: post #104
jchw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Chromium is needed to add keys, which effectively means you can’t enable Advanced Protection without Chromium. I personally ran into this wall. I acknowledge that this sucks, as a person that intentionally only uses Firefox, but to be clear logging in and most other operations work absolutely fine with Advanced Protection. Does it really disable all API access? I thought it only blocked certain OAuth scopes, bu…

Seems like Firefox U2F is just disabled by default: https://www.yubico.com/2017/11/how-to-navigate-fido-u2f-in-f... (tl;dr: Open about:config, search for u2f, enable) With that done, GitHub prompts me for my key. My Linux office workstation is missing the necessary udev rule, so I couldn't test more. (Funnily, pressing Cancel caused them to send me a SMS, so their 2FA is practically worthless).

Oh yeah, I’ve set all that stuff up already and I am able to login; NixOS makes it mostly pretty easy.

Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#129

Post by btrettel »

jandrese wrote: post #116
btrettel wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree that POP is pretty easy and worthwhile here. One caveat: I'm not certain that it's identical to what Takeout provides. I downloaded the mbox file via Takeout and the Takeout version was a fair bit larger than my Thunderbird mbox file as I recall. Maybe Thunderbird stores the emails more efficiently than Takeout? I should examine this more closely. As far as I am aware there are no missing emails in Thunder…

The takeout file might be compressed too. Most mail clients don't bother to compress anything.

Yes, it was zipped, but I was comparing uncompressed. I've now checked. There's about a 500 MB difference for about 10 GB of emails. So not too bad, but appreciably different.

Re: SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help

#130

Post by 3JPLW »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #120
CloudNetworking wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your frustration, but I also think they have a point. What you're telling us is all based on your educated guesses as to how they might have pulled this. There are things that feel a bit weird and I'm guessing you have no evidence to prove them, such as the scammer shipping the real SIM back to Atlanta in time before you realise the issue. How did you realise the SIM card you were handed was fake? Couldn…

That might be reasonable. It also makes the scam OP is guessing happened a pretty good criminal scam, since the police will refuse to investigate it... I mean, what possible additional evidence could one plausibly have that the guessed scam is indeed what happened? Which is the scary thing about all these SIM-theft things. It clear happened , there's really no way for the victim to know how/where/what/when/who.

It certainly took me quite some time to put all the pieces together — and I'd wager very few folks defrauded like this are able to realize exactly what happened.

I do wonder if it's still happening...

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