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Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

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Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#71

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Yes I had the same issue and wrote an hackernews comment[0] and was gonna write a blog post but laziness (but I am glad that privacyguides wrote an article!)

I also want to share a comment that someone (Velocifyer) added on my comment:

"If you make a blog post, make sure to also comment on how the audio reCAPTCHAs are nearly impossible and are blocked on public VPNs. The visual reCAPTCHAS have vauge instructions (they say “Select all squares with busses.” when they mean “Select all squares that have a bus or part of a bus and do not select any other squares.”. For 2 years I could not figure that out so I had to use the audio captchas but then Google blocked them on public VPNs and also made them almost impossible. I could only figure that out when Google Gemini clarified it for me."

Also another fact that I had discovered but to upload youtube vidoes more than 15 minutes you have to do this verification with sms and I found that its system of sending sms was quite finnicky and (too much limits is actually just one try)

Google and other tech giants's recent changes/lobbying are really impacting the open internet and it feels to me like we as people who have knowledge about these topics must do something to reform things as I simply cannot ask people who are technically unaware about these topics to fight for these changes unless we advocate and educate them about it

Most people just have simply way too much of other issues to fight for these things that they have almost taken for granted, but this to me means that the responsibility is on us people who are technically sound to fight against the attacks on open internet if we wish to preserve it.

I think my point is that we all might be waiting for other people to protest against these tech giants but I think that the world is looking at us people for such protests, Let's hope that we are able to educate more people and the open internet is preserved.

Our small steps might mean a lot in the future and so to not be dis-illusioned to make small steps thinking that they might be too small but we have to fight tech giants if we wish to preserve open internet. Every step is meaningful no matter how small

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48042596

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#73

Post by arjie »

Almondsetat wrote: post #67
arjie wrote: post #58

I went through it to register just now. No QR code required. Same flow as it has been for years: 1. Personal/Child/Business 2. First/Last 3. Pick email 4. Date of Birth 5. Backup email / Skip 6. Password 7. Enter phone number 8. Confirm with 2FA code 9. Done. I just made the email testregistrationflow@gmail.com and have since forgotten the password. So that’s one burned. But feel free to try testregistrationflow1@gma…

"A tester in A/B testing situation swears that B tester is not telling the truth"

It certainly disproves a headline saying “Gmail now requires scanning a QR code”.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#74

Post by nottorp »

b112 wrote: post #30
windexh8er wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hilarious. Microsoft has had many issues and outages with M365 in the last few years. I mean, I guess if you don't rely on mail, then sure.

If one takes the comment to mean, 50x better for support, I can believe that. After all, 50x almost nothing can be achieved fairly easily.

Maybe MS actually has support. The UI is so much worse than Google's (which is bad enough for communication compared to Slack) that you just cannot win though.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#75

Post by afavour »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #60
abirch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's AI that's doing a lot of it. For a lot of spam, scammers would want to exclude anyone who may not fall for the scam due to the costs associated with dealing with people who won't pay you. Now that AI decreases the need for a human scammer to scam, expect them to start to widen their scam nets.

The decline had been happening long before AI hit mainstream. It's been a _lot_ of years that I've hesitated to answer calls from unknown numbers.

Yeah this feels like one of those cases where the term "AI" gets broadened out so far it becomes meaningless.

This stuff is automated. The ability to automate spam calls (using the same form of APIs developers love, like Twilio) make it absurdly easy for one person to set up a spam machine. No AI required.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#76

Post by tclancy »

dvh wrote: post #4

Any Gmail person can tell me why Gmail is tolerating Gmail phishing emails that use Google's own services (e.g. https://storage.googleapis.com/savelinge/ ... ? More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46665414

Ah! I have no answer for it, but am happy, Virgil-like, to now have a theory why the same stupid, obvious "Costco" spam from an @gmail.com address keeps showing up in my inbox no matter how many I mark as spam.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#77

Post by raincole »

Aurornis wrote: post #23

> Supposedly, using the QR code on the smartphone triggers an SMS sent from your phone to Google in order to verify your phone number. Does anyone have a better source of information than this one forum comment from someone who thinks scanning a QR code is enough to get your phone to send a text message? EDIT: It’s just an SMS URI. It doesn’t automatically send anything, just opens a text message for you to send. Thi…

But isn't phone number verification usually works like... Google sends you a SMS, not the other way around?

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#78

Post by adrian_b »

traviswingo wrote: post #48
torben-friis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spam is getting horrible lately. I get all sorts of new techniques including: - using legitimate sites to bypass filters, like sending you a bill through a legitimate bill-creation site - pretending to be a tracking service for something you supposedly ordered, then over the course of days pretending the package got lost on the way and offering a discount code for the 'purchased' amount, expecting you to use it on th…

I can’t prove it, but it feels like the world recently decided that spamming/scamming is acceptable, so the number of spammers/scammers has increased dramatically. The number of spam calls, texts, emails, iCloud account unlock requests, etc I’ve received in the last year is insane.

I believe that these spammers now concentrate their efforts towards e-mail addresses hosted by major providers, like Gmail.

The reason is that I have an opposite experience, during the last couple of years I have received much less spam messages than before.

I have hosted my own e-mail server for more than 2 decades. Previously, I had to filter large quantities of spam messages, but lately the number of spam messages is much less than 10% of the total number of received messages.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#79

Post by bilalq »

8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #3

Recently helped a small business set up a Google Workspace account and we hit a wall during registration. Told the owners that if Google is already being difficult during signup, imagine being locked out later with client work on the line. Pulled up a few horror stories about Google lockouts to drive the point home. They ended up with another workspace solution.

When trying to upgrade from the Business Standard to Business Plus plan, Google will reduce your workspace storage from 2TB/user to 0 bytes for up to 24 hours while it upgrades you.

These are actual quotes from support:

> Upon checking, I see that the storage is showing as 0 bytes, because of the upgrade that has been done from business standard to business plus. Not to worry as this is very normal.

> I understand your concern and how important it is for the storage to be updated due to the business requirements. > > To give you full transparency into what is happening: when a Workspace subscription is upgraded, our backend systems must first detach your previous Business Standard storage allocation before provisioning the new Business Plus limits. During this transition window, the quota temporarily defaults to zero.

> Now please turn ON user storage limit nor shared drive storage limit. Once you turn ON, please wait for 5 minutes and then please turn it OFF.

^ That last attempt to try to force storage quotas to reset faster didn't work, btw. Still took hours.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#80

Post by abirch »

afavour wrote: post #75
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decline had been happening long before AI hit mainstream. It's been a _lot_ of years that I've hesitated to answer calls from unknown numbers.

Yeah this feels like one of those cases where the term "AI" gets broadened out so far it becomes meaningless. This stuff is automated. The ability to automate spam calls (using the same form of APIs developers love, like Twilio) make it absurdly easy for one person to set up a spam machine. No AI required.

You're correct about the calls, but the ability to talk with the people was the rate limiter. Even if you have many people in Cambodia or India, the scammers still needed to scam more than they paid out. Now you can have AI bots that do the first level of filtering.

Unfortunately scamming is a business and if certain actions become less expensive, I would expect more of them.

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