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Ask HN: Gmail account security

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Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#501

Post by gruez »

lucb1e wrote: post #365
gruez wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google thought the IP address was in Russia and I guess that makes it suspicious? (Feels a bit odd that entire countries are basically banned. I'm not sure why you immediately jumped to the conclusion that google is blocking entire countries. It seems fairly reasonable to block signins from russia if the account was created and has a history of signing in from another far-away country (eg. US). >Not as if criminals…

I'd be very surprised if I came to the US (not that I'd ever want to do that) and Google blocked my account there just because it is far away from my home location. People do travel, appearing far away is not uncommon, especially during a holiday season between Christmas and New Year's. It didn't have a problem logging in with the same laptop from another place in Germany earlier that day. There are surely more facto…

> I'd be very surprised if I came to the US (not that I'd ever want to do that) and Google blocked my account there just because it is far away from my home location. People do travel, appearing far away is not uncommon, especially during a holiday season between Christmas and New Year's.

1. even though people travel, I suspect it's far more likely that a random russian IP accessing an american account is because the account got hacked. at the very least there's a good enough chance of an account compromise to request additional verification. Obviously locking the account entirely (effectively banning it) is unwarranted, but I don't think "well people travel" is a valid excuse to ignore a red flag.

2. google probably considers far more factors than just geoip. it probably also checks whether you're logging in from a new device or not (via cookies and/or fingerprinting), and whether your other devices have moved to the new country (eg. android phone or chrome browser on your laptop). I wouldn't be surprised if it scanned your email to see if you have an itinerary booked or your search history to see if you looked up russian vacation related queries.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#502

Post by dleslie »

graderjs wrote: post #500
leoh wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

It plays out with Amazon absolutely crushing Google when it tried to be a consumer marketplace, and even trouncing Google at providing web infrastructure services.

If, somehow, an antitrust ruling split ads from the rest of Google the non-ads remainder wouldn't last more than a few years.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#504

Post by footlose_3815 »

leoh wrote: post #470
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.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#505

Post by cheeze »

napsterbr wrote: post #477
shitloadofbooks wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logging in from a known VPN IP will likely flag the activity as even MORE suspicious from Google's AI's POV.

Perhaps a better alternative than VPN (given it may look suspicious) would be to spin up an $cloud instance at whatever location and using a SOCKS proxy. I used to do this back in the day to augment my Netflix selection.

This is no better. All the big cloud providers have their CIDR ranges published

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#506

Post by marwatk »

Osiris wrote: post #318
Masema wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this! Kind of. I bought a domain and was lucky enough to get in to a custom domain email (and more) service with a big company years ago when they had a free version. Unfortunately... it was Google (so kind of hiring the wolf to care for my sheep, as it turns out). And now they're cutting off all of us free tier folks. Which I can't fault them for, but still blame them for. Because I'm petty and entitled or wha…

Same here and it's a massive problem because nearly all of my digital presence is associated with, not just that email address, but that Google account specifically. I'll lose important things like my Google Voice number that I've had for a decade unless I pay for a business account.

You can transfer your Google Voice account to a regular GMail account despite their documentation claiming otherwise. See:

https://github.com/marwatk/gsuite-to-gmail/#google-voice

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#507

Post by ngold »

rzz3 wrote: post #499
ngold wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer. I'm a new Google play thing, by giving them money. Just registered a website through them and am about to release a game on the playstore. Fully dependant on zero custom service now. The one thing I've never understood about google. Some sort of law for a trillion dollar company to have customer service or something. Google should be employing 10's of thousands of customer service employees to take calls…

More laws aren’t always the answer. Really, we should just be using a company that gives a shit about its users.

True.

The sheer scale of not giving a crap is what is truly impressive. Alphabet has built a monster system meant solely to not have a phone number. That's a scary innovation.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#508

Post by marwatk »

somehnguy wrote: post #360
Masema wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this! Kind of. I bought a domain and was lucky enough to get in to a custom domain email (and more) service with a big company years ago when they had a free version. Unfortunately... it was Google (so kind of hiring the wolf to care for my sheep, as it turns out). And now they're cutting off all of us free tier folks. Which I can't fault them for, but still blame them for. Because I'm petty and entitled or wha…

Same situation here. Have you done the research yet to decide on a new service, or are you planning on starting to pay? For me ideally I would like to move to something else (even paid) just because someday Google deciding to block me for whatever reason scares me quite a bit after having everything for the last decade attached to this account. I would like to export my emails, switch my domain to the new service, an…

I've been working on this but my family is pretty hung up on Google Photos so we're migrating most things there trying to preserve as much as possible. We're doing Google One family. As much as Google has annoyed me with the change, the other options weren't any better (O365, iCloud+, random non-FAANG services)

I'm documenting everything here if you're interested:

https://github.com/marwatk/gsuite-to-gmail/#google-voice

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#509

Post by Hard_Space »

somehnguy wrote: post #360
Masema wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this! Kind of. I bought a domain and was lucky enough to get in to a custom domain email (and more) service with a big company years ago when they had a free version. Unfortunately... it was Google (so kind of hiring the wolf to care for my sheep, as it turns out). And now they're cutting off all of us free tier folks. Which I can't fault them for, but still blame them for. Because I'm petty and entitled or wha…

Same situation here. Have you done the research yet to decide on a new service, or are you planning on starting to pay? For me ideally I would like to move to something else (even paid) just because someday Google deciding to block me for whatever reason scares me quite a bit after having everything for the last decade attached to this account. I would like to export my emails, switch my domain to the new service, an…

Having had my primary Gmail account blocked twice in the last two months, apparently through VPN usage, I became sufficiently terrified to decide to start to move all my email to my own domain.

I adopted Fastmail for my domain email, and it has been a good experience (I do know that Fastmail is a five-eyes company with all the related issues around privacy, and I researched alternatives for several weeks, but I guess in the end I was willing to trade privacy for ease-of-use, uptime and various other factors).

Now I am looking into getting away from other Cloud-provided backups such as Prime Photos, iCloud, etc., moving to self-hosted NAS storage.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#510

Post by Groxx »

Yep. They're getting aggressive with 2FA too. More ways to lock you out of your account in opaque, unpredictable ways with no support whatsoever.

I'm very glad that I've already started moving my accounts off.

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