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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

#141

Post by ge96 »

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 get these voicemails almost daily it's a cutoff message talking about "a loan just came across my desk"

It's such a good tactic too to start the voicemail with the conversation already going people are like "what? who?"

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

#142

Post by xp84 »

cute_boi wrote: post #62
goldenarm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding how easy simswap is in 2026, it's dangerously stupid from Google to rely on SMS

I don't know why verizon etc.. don't charge like $0.25 cents per sms. Then these provider would stop sending too many sms.

They used to do just that, though people could pay about $25-30 (in like, 2008 dollars! So that’s closer to $47 today) for ‘unlimited text plans’.

I know you mean charge just these bulk senders, but if they didn’t charge consumers a similar rate too, whoever wants to spam SMS can just set up farms of consumer SIMs and dump them onto the network that way. In fact, they already do this.

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

#144

Post by pavel_lishin »

AstroBen wrote: post #106

Register your own domain and use that for your email, and you'll no longer be held hostage by Google. Takes almost no effort and will cost you a few dollars a month.

But what do you actually use as the email host? If you just set up your own mail server, you're almost certainly going to have everything you send go straight to spam.

You still need to register with someone like google, or Proton, etc.

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

#145

Post by Daedren »

Reminds me of Telegram that forces you to pay premium to login to a new device depending on the country. Login, not registration. This is all due to the cost of SMSes of course.

You can bypass this if you have a passkey, but phone and password isn't enough. No idea why they opted to do that, it's not like passkeys are indicative of any device binding.

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

#146

Post by webdoodle »

TimByte wrote: post #131

This feels like one of those "security" changes that also happens to conveniently eliminate a lot of privacy-preserving workflows

Because it is. Total surveillance only works if the people are forced to wear the tracking collar. The next steps are tying it to CBDC, that require a phone number to access your wallet, and tying it to realid/passport to restrict travel.

2FA has become the wedge to break privacy into a million shards.

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

#147

Post by Barbing »

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

They seem unable to prevent phishers from using their acquisition, AppSheet, to send relatively convincing, targeted (to nobodies like me) emails that make it to primary inbox.

So, pleas ignored, forward these recruitment scam emails to the legal/fraud/phishing teams of the impersonated brands. For a company without the appearance of caring (in my opinion), perhaps law firm letterhead can encourage necessary prioritization.

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

#148

Post by jdiff »

user_7832 wrote: post #52
mghackerlady wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when your phone can't do that? I use a flip phone. It can't scan QR codes despite having a camera

Technically if you can copy paste the qr code into any qr reader website and manually do it, I think it's possible? Assuming it doesn't change the code very rapidly every few seconds.

Would be a bit silly for it to rapidly change given that manual action must be taken after scanning even on well supported devices.

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

#149

Post by csomar »

dewey wrote: post #9
dvh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same 5 urls has been used for 3 months

That doesn't really change the fact that it's hard. Do you know how many full movies are on YouTube that infringe on copyright? How many pirated streams are hosted on S3? How many piracy sites are behind Cloudflare. It's just very hard to police at scale and if something is flying below the radar it will be there for a while. They probably spread out their assets over many accounts, or even use misconfigured buckets…

This argument actually doesn’t work in Google/your-point favor since finding pirated content on Google is now practically impossible.

The reality is, Google is driven strictly by incentives and there are no consequences for letting spam/scams run wild vs. pirated content which gets automatically removed when a DMCA notice is received.

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

#150

Post by xp84 »

thrownaway561 wrote: post #27
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.

Everyone hates on Microsoft, but their platform is 50x better than Google. Personally nowadays I would be looking at Proton if I was going to setup a workspace for my company.

I have to say, I’m finding the “New Outlook” deeply unsatisfying coming from a GSuite company the past 4 years. MS was better in 2021 than it is now. The new one reeks of Jony Ive style minimalism. I constantly can’t find anything I need, and it takes a lot of fiddling to do simple things.

I generally have rooted for MS over GOOG on this type of thing, so I am not saying this out of fanboyism.

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