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Ask HN: Gmail account security

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Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#771

Post by sbst32 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #737
sbst32 wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit ironic that you're bashing Google and praising Go in the same paragraph, never mentioning that Go is designed and supported by Google.

I think that was part of the point. Google made Go and then when OP wanted to use Go, their bosses said “use Java” (and took a month to do something that could be done in a few days)

It could be part of the point but it does not sound like it.

It could say - Google is bad in that and that BUT it has Go. Or it could say - Google designed Go and is interested in its adoption BUT its own managers don't think that Google developers want to learn Go.

But instead it says that Google documentation "does not teach you how to fish" and "you're not sure how to proceed" and at the same time Go somehow gets away with it - "At least with the Go libraries it's feasible to read the entire source code and flesh out things on the edge of documentation".

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#772

Post by KennyBlanken »

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.

> A better system for filing tickets internally and for filing and triaging tickets from external users would be a tremendous asset for Google.

The problem is not that they don't have a tool; they could easily build one almost overnight. They have a glut of very competent technical labor, lots of capital, infrastructure up the ass.

They don't care.

The tech people are convinced they're geniuses who build stuff that never breaks.

The business people think they've figured out every problem a user could have and are satisfied that the documentation and snippets of help text are sufficient.

The accountants say "it would cost us more to create such a system and staff it than we would lose in business from not addressing it."

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#773

Post by CRConrad »

Silhouette wrote: post #770
CRConrad wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...insane to allow broad access to medical records through any centralised system any time soon. > It is unfortunate because obviously in principle a single centrally-administered records facility with robust security and audit trails for all access and a Hippocratic Oath level of privacy protections would be far better than the status quo in many ways. Funny, one would have thought that pretty much is the status q…

The NHS isn't really a single body at all. It's a vast, unimaginably complicated network of healthcare professionals, medical facilities, managerial organisations, supply chains, and so on, under the shared banner of being public-run and with strategic leadership appointed by the central government (modulo some devolution to different parts of the UK at various scales). In normal circumstances an individual's primary…

Ah, thanks!

I kind of assumed there was some public administrative service run by the national government behind it all. That would have been the logical entity to run a central storage repository, and perhaps to administer and maybe even define the storage and transmission format(s). IMO.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#774

Post by logicallee »

WithinReason wrote: post #655
logicallee wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(edited) If you don't mind sharing, what is the bug? - My comment originally read as follows, 2 people downvoted it. >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 as…

You just found a bug in Google Calculator. You wrote "calories" but Google is giving you the answer in "kilocalories". If you change "calories" to "kilocalories" the answer doesn't change. I wonder how many times in the past has it given you the wrong answer without you noticing?

I agree with the other person who replied to you. By 3000 calories I meant 3000 Calories, which is how people use it. My input is sloppy, Google turns its output into something rigorous.

As the other person replied, it is labelled precisely.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#775

Post by logicallee »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #676
WithinReason wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just found a bug in Google Calculator. You wrote "calories" but Google is giving you the answer in "kilocalories". If you change "calories" to "kilocalories" the answer doesn't change. I wonder how many times in the past has it given you the wrong answer without you noticing?

That's what people mean by calories, it's not a bug. It even labels it precisely!

Yes, I agree.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#776

Post by jayzyone »

Google is not the only one. Amazon froze my account for suspicious activity. I had a fire and had to suddenly move leaving a delivery at locker also changing my address and password all on one day. I forgot to change the phone number, cause that phone died in the fire. I waited out my suspension, now I can't get into the account with my new phone. Top it all off I'm deaf and can't talk to customer service.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#777

Post by velosol »

Hard_Space wrote: post #509
somehnguy wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The only alternative I found to Fastmail that was somewhat competitive in terms of tech & security features and not one of those countries was mailbox.org but their webmail is not Fastmail's and Germany isn't far behind those 5.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#778

Post by alexb_ »

GFischer wrote: post #750
alexb_ wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alphabet as a whole is an organization built by the immense money that comes from monopolizing digital advertising (through some very... unscrupulous means) and then run by people deluding themselves into thinking they can do anything else. There's a reason everything is "killed by google" - I'm not exactly sure anyone there knows how to do damn near anything that isn't propped up by investor hype and the money they…

The YouTube thing is false as of a few years ago. If you have noticed, they've crammed it full of ads. https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22596592/google-q2-2021-r... I think it's projected to earn 20 billion this year.

Thanks for this. I've heard recently that, in its current form, digital advertising is extremely overpriced and propped up by misleading metrics [1] and might take a downturn in the future, but I also don't really know much about it and and that point it's just speculation.

[1] https://hbr.org/2021/02/what-digital-advertising-gets-wrong

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#779

Post by velosol »

alisonatwork wrote: post #246
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.

This is exactly my experience too. My Google accounts just randomly decide to stop working from time to time, and if I no longer have the same phone number that I did before (or if I'm traveling overseas and cannot get a "confirmation call"), there is no way at all to get in. Usually after a mysterious and unexplained period of time, my account gets un-flagged again and I can log in as per normal. The first time this…

Having a VPN back to your home IP really helps with the overseas logins in my experience. If it doesn't work turn on the VPN and it sees you coming from a 'trusted' IP and you're set.

The fact that I've had to learn this through trial & error and spend time & money setting up a personal VPN host is crazy.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#780

Post by klabb3 »

balls187 wrote: post #569
klabb3 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is definitely doing non-trivial fingerprinting Can confirm. To generalize and understand why, big corps have to deal with an insane amount of (often automated) abuse, so they build profiles using data collection to assess your risk level. Being in the wrong cohort (say unusual browser, small country, rare language, use a vpn etc) can affect your score. Basically it's these massive bayesian filters that output ho…

> Obviously this is well established in the insurance and finance industries, but make no mistake, it happens everywhere. Speaking from someone in the US--in both insurance and finance I can get a person on the phone to resolve my issue. Specific to finance, there are a number of consumer laws that protect me. If I'm denied credit based on my credit history, I'm allowed to know why. If my credit score is not accurate…

> Stripe, Amazon, Apple, to name three all have great support.

True, but they have actual customers. As a user of Gmail, I can hardly be considered a customer.

Google ads has customers though. Their support probably isn't great either, but does it need to be? Where else are you gonna go?

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