Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 250 posts

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#11

Post by bell-cot »

vort3 wrote: post #3
14 wrote: post #2

The only solution I can see is buying a burner phone to avoid these situations. Yesterday tried to set up a new to me used iPhone 7 for my son. It too forces a phone number from you. I had to link my phone number to his phone which I didn’t really want to do.

Can you recommend me any real working website where I could buy cheap one time virtual number that could be used to enable 2FA for my account? And I hope they will never ever again ask me to confirm anything using that number.

Ah... I sense a very lucrative, low-ethics business model in providing "cheap one-time virtual [phone] numbers" to be used for security-sensitive purposes.

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#12

Post by scintill76 »

14 wrote: post #2

The only solution I can see is buying a burner phone to avoid these situations. Yesterday tried to set up a new to me used iPhone 7 for my son. It too forces a phone number from you. I had to link my phone number to his phone which I didn’t really want to do.

Can you ever “burn” the number though? I’d be scared they will require you to receive a SMS token on it later, when they feel like it.

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#13

Post by markdown »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #7

I guess I'll just have to stop using google. Welcome to the club. The fastest way to convince me *not* to use a product is to attach a "Google" label to it. Nothing Google has to offer justifies the drawbacks. NOTE: I do use an Android phone --- but only after it has been thoroughly de-Googled --- starting from a stripped down, bare metal device that won't even power up.

HN needs a bot that posts an inb4 comment every time there's a post about Google or a Google product.

These predictable responses don't add any value whatsoever, and they're tiring to read.

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#14

Post by superkuh »

vort3 wrote: post #10
superkuh wrote: post #8

Good thing I switched to running my own mailserver in 2013. Now I'm completely independent of google and google accounts. If my @gmail.com email stops working with Thunderbird or other imap clients then that's that. I'm done using gmail. Google hates open protocols. Don't let their claims of OAuth being open fool you. They don't use OAuth, they use OAuth 2 which is the mega-corp version shoved down the IETF's throat…

I have a small free VPS and free domain name (whatever.duckdns.org). Do you think I can make a mail server that works, that could send emails that won't end up in spam folder of other people, and that I could use to create accounts? I have thoughts of running my own mail server, but a lot of sites just won't let you create an account if you don't provide «trusted» email, and by «trusted» most of the time they mean gm…

Well, the best time to start is now... but without a domain name I don't think you'll have much luck. If you want to learn how to set up and run a mail server I cannot recommend https://workaround.org/ispmail enough. These tutorials cover all the background and high-level concepts for why you're doing things in addition to the details needed to implement a proper mailserver.

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#15

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

Every new feature from Google is a middle finger to their users, then you get some corporate double speak about how it's all well and good and how it makes the product better.

Get a Fastmail account, I got one after I got tired of google breaking my IMAP settings every other week. They're cheap, they have most everything you'd need from an email provider, and they don't require a special app like proton.

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#16

Post by mxuribe »

So, at what point will there be a legitimate third option other than Google android phones (and associated ecosystem) and Apple iphones (and associatyed ecosystem)??? And, no, i don't mean rooting a phone, etc. to install Lineage or other alternative operating systems on it. I mean, i want to go out, buy a phone that is decent enough for the basics of what i need to do and is de-googled...not too crazy expensive like an iphone, and comes with legitimate support from a manufacturer. Its exhausting!

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#18

Post by im3w1l »

vort3 wrote: post #6

It's not even about not willing to spend 1$ for a random phone number. Here's a list of things that are wrong with what Google does: - If you want to read your email, you have to use app specific password. I'm ok with that. - You can't generate app specific passwords if you don't have 2FA enabled. That's some artificial limitation made to force you into adding phone number to your account. - You can't use authenticat…

> That's some artificial limitation made to force you into adding phone number to your account.

Agreed

> You can't use authenticator app to enable 2FA. I have no idea why SMS which is the least secure way to send information is a primary method and authenticator app which can be set up by scanning QR from the screen without sending any information at all is «secondary» and can only be used after you give your phone number.

The amount of people getting locked out of their account because they lost the phone with the auth app would be unacceptably large, is my guess. Like people lose their phones all the time. Simjackings are rare.

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#19

Post by markdown »

14 wrote: post #2

The only solution I can see is buying a burner phone to avoid these situations. Yesterday tried to set up a new to me used iPhone 7 for my son. It too forces a phone number from you. I had to link my phone number to his phone which I didn’t really want to do.

Wait, you didn't want to add a phone number to a phone?

Re: Google's most ridiculous trick to force users into adding phone number

#20

Post by snihalani »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #15

Every new feature from Google is a middle finger to their users, then you get some corporate double speak about how it's all well and good and how it makes the product better. Get a Fastmail account, I got one after I got tired of google breaking my IMAP settings every other week. They're cheap, they have most everything you'd need from an email provider, and they don't require a special app like proton.

I tried fastmail and then there was no search on the drive aspect. had to move back to google
Post reply on HN