Ask HN: Gmail account security • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#461

Post by RubyRidgeRandy » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

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…

only tangentially related but that phrase is a pet peeve of mine. You are always the product if you are using software - free or paid. Netflix is sure as hell going to use your data the same way youtube would.

The only exception of course is most but not all FOSS.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#462

Post by KarlKemp » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #268

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #8

Had this. It was telling me to try again 'later'. Ok, i did 'try later' every day for three weeks, and they didn't let me in. Using the very same IP address as I used to always access it, no less. Then, I gave up, moved all my services to another email account, and after 2 or 3 months tried logging in, and it suddenly allowed me to log in. Needless to say, I will never again use gmail for critically important things.

Yeah this sounds like utter bullshit to me. What if you're travelling, all your devices get stolen, and you're logging in from a public computer or friend's computer to contact your family? This is mindblowingly idiotic. Do they have such a bad vacation policy for their employees that not a single ONE of their engineering managers has experienced the above? Do they just sit in front of their desks for 365 days a year…

It's definitely more complicated than that. I travel a lot, sometimes to places where borders are dotted lines, cities use a script I can't read, but every hill is "charlie-5" or somesutch... VPNs, public terminals, government networks on .mil. domains, etc.

I have been quite impressed with the improvement they've made in the last year or so regarding these locks. It's probably a sudden change when you've been more predictable before that gets flagged.

Only trouble I sometimes run into is Google Search (or Books?) locking me out with increasingly difficult captchas if you keep running searches for 18 hours straight.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#463

Post by rssoconnor » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

dddddaviddddd wrote: post #143

exolymph wrote: post #7

Wasn't aware of this, but can't say I'm surprised. Personally, I'm still happy with Fastmail, which uses customer subscriptions fees to fund a professional support department, as well as contributing to email-related FOSS. (Among other things, obviously.)

I moved my email to Fastmail this week in the wake of the Google Apps announcement. Having your own domain is great since your email becomes provider-agnostic. While Fastmail had a great import tool, I could have transferred my Gmail myself from backups. I'll be ready to do the same if Fastmail goes under or is no longer competitive.

I've heard this from a several posts this week. Genuine question: since maintaining GSuite is expect to cost $6/user/month and Fastmail costs $5/user/month, do you really find the $1/user/month in savings worth the trouble of moving email providers and losing Drive/Docs etc.?

I'm planning a move too, but Fastmail's price doesn't strike me as competitive enough compared to Google's price. Amazon WorkMail is $4/user/month and Rackspace Email is $3/user/month.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#464

Post by octoberfranklin » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

For over a decade I refused to give Google a phone number.

Eventually they locked me out and demanded that I verify my account via SMS using a landline telephone number I hadn't had access to in over 8 years.

Obviously since this was a landline, I could not possibly have given them this phone number for verification purposes and forgotten that I had done so. Evidently they scraped the phone number out of my email; I'd had PacBell e-bills emailed to that gmail address.

Google is unreliable.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#465

Post by anonymousiam » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

Facebook is the same way. If you don't have their cookies, but know your account name and have the recovery email, you still cannot log in after resetting your password unless you are stupid enough to send them a copy of your photo ID.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#466

Post by drivebycomment » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

trasz wrote: post #406

snowwrestler wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this with a regular Gmail account. The kid just can’t log into it until they are 13 or older. Google also now offers child Google accounts for kids under 13, which are limited and tied to a parent’s account through an app called Family Link. This is how you can set up a Chromebook for a kid, for example. This limit of age 13 is not arbitrary by Google; it’s their way of complying with a U.S. federal law ca…

It’s not arbitrary within the US, it’s arbitrary everywhere else, where the US law doesn’t apply.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409?hl=en

It's clearly not just US that they are not arbitrary. You could argue for countries not listed above it is arbitrary but it is clearly a legally safer option for a US corporation, so not really arbitrary.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#467

Post by nocommandline » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:13 AM UTC

I just had this experience yesterday! I entered the correct password, the right recovery email, even asked for a code to be sent to the recovery email address and entered it but Google still didn’t allow me log in.

I had the same experience last year with the gmail account I created for my app. I travelled and Google didn’t allow me login from my laptop (cos I was in a different country). Entered the code from my recovery account and still no show.

In both instances it asked for a phone number to send me a code. If it refused to accept the code from my recovery email, why would the one from a text message be different. Besides, I didn’t want to provide my phone number to gmail

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#468

Post by zuccs » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:14 AM UTC

I actually found the solution to this last time I had it. I get it all the time on legacy G Suite accounts that are still hanging around that I never log in to.

I think it's this link: https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery (don't go through the usual forgot email/password process on the login page or you get that stupid AI loop).

I think it helps to use Google Chrome too.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#469

Post by sofixa » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:14 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #266

SMAAART wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't know if it's FUD, but it's true. It happened to a person I know, and in her case, the resolution was "ask around until a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend works at Google". She literally had to ask her friend, who asked me, I asked one of my friends to ask one of his friends who works at Google to put in an internal ticket. It was thankfully resolved quickly (she lost access to all her work materials…

Google now have support, including phone and chat, via Google One ( basically if you pay for extra storage for Gmail/GDrive/Photos/etc.).

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#470

Post by leoh » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:14 AM UTC

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…

You are actually pointing out a tremendous opportunity that Google has internally and externally. I work at Google and recently tried to file a bug about the calculator embedded in search. It was dastardly difficult to find how to file the ticket. It took me maybe an hour. A better system for filing tickets internally and for filing and triaging tickets from external users would be a tremendous asset for Google.