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Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

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Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#21

Post by uup »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #15
Bakary wrote: post #3

I can definitely understand not realizing that you could lose access to your account if you lose your phone number. But once it happens the first time, could you not pick any free email that does not require 2FA, and warn fellow homeless to avoid gmail? I disagree with the idea that because a very, very niche audience is in dire straits that the design decisions should be based on their needs. The forced 2FA system h…

The phone number decision is stupid. I up and jump countries every few years. Each time, I'm switching to a new number. I'm the opposite of homeless, I'm that jet set elite. The idea that you want, need, should or will tie your identity to a phone number where people can always reach you is long outdated.

So use one of the other 2FA options.

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#22

Post by RupertEisenhart »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #15
Bakary wrote: post #3

I can definitely understand not realizing that you could lose access to your account if you lose your phone number. But once it happens the first time, could you not pick any free email that does not require 2FA, and warn fellow homeless to avoid gmail? I disagree with the idea that because a very, very niche audience is in dire straits that the design decisions should be based on their needs. The forced 2FA system h…

The phone number decision is stupid. I up and jump countries every few years. Each time, I'm switching to a new number. I'm the opposite of homeless, I'm that jet set elite. The idea that you want, need, should or will tie your identity to a phone number where people can always reach you is long outdated.

Sticking my German sim card into my phone for fifteen minutes in all sorts of random countries and continents and waiting for a number to come through always feels absurd.

I pray for the rise of esims! I feel like it's on the cards.

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#23

Post by abraham »

virtualritz wrote: post #10

Won't using e.g. Authy with Gmail for 2FA alleviate the need for a phone number after the initial setup (i.e. requiring a number only once, to initially enable 2FA)? https://authy.com/guides/googleandgmail/

How do you use Authy if you lose all of your possessions every few months?

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#24

Post by wavelen »

uup wrote: post #21
IIAOPSW wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phone number decision is stupid. I up and jump countries every few years. Each time, I'm switching to a new number. I'm the opposite of homeless, I'm that jet set elite. The idea that you want, need, should or will tie your identity to a phone number where people can always reach you is long outdated.

So use one of the other 2FA options.

afair you need to set up a phone number before you can choose to add another 2FA option (which is stupid imho)

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#25

Post by codegeek »

Maybe we can build some sort of a "reverse proxy" solution where you can get a number from Twilio etc and just forward to an actual phone number from your carrier. Bonsu, you can add some "firewall" rules and boom. If you lose your phone from your carrier, your twilio number is the same. Just change the rule in Twilio ?

Isn't there a service like this already ? If not, there is your billion dollar startup idea.

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#26

Post by gmm1990 »

jakub_g wrote: post #8

In one of the later posts, the OP writes that the homeless will lose any physical thing after N weeks. So what kind of 2FA would be homeless-proof? I don't see a solution. Also, fully acknowledging Google and other bigtechs 2FA is far from ideal: The other thing is, we want at the same time Gmail to be unhackable against best hackers and state sponsored adversaries for the billions of users, including high profile di…

Probably a dna solution, not that you'd want google to have that info directly.

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#27

Post by lxgr »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #14

I don't think access to email is the biggest concern the homeless have. It sucks, but there are alternatives besides gmail and if google is going to spend time on this, I'd rather they not and instead spend time on getting homeless into homes.

Who do you think would be spending time on this at Google? I highly doubt that their software engineers and product managers in charge of 2FA would, when idle between pull requests, go out and help the homeless.

Why not lobby those engineers and product managers to improve something that they are actually have agency and arguably a mandate to improve, helping users homeless and otherwise?

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#28

Post by lxgr »

b112 wrote: post #2

Google has a lot of issues, but the gist of these twitter posts, is that homeless people lose their phones multiple times a year, and their phone number, and this makes 2fa hard. But, I mean, why are they not railing on the phone companies, to make it easy for the homeless to keep the same phone number?! Why is this Google's fault?

It really is every company's fault that jumps on this absurd trend of seeing SMS-2FA as the be-all and end-all of user identification and verification.

Google is actually doing much better than the competition here in many aspects (e.g. it is possible to operate a Google account completely without a phone number for 2FA or account recovery), but as far as I understand, one is still required to initially create an account.

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#29

Post by remote_phone »

The biggest fallacy we have right now use that all use cases need to be treated equally and if they don’t then somehow they are being immoral.

Google is not being immoral.

The homeless people can use a different service.

Dealing with the use case of someone losing their phone every few weeks when you have billions of others to worry about is unreasonable. I think handling that situation should be considered out of scope.

Re: Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year

#30

Post by remote_phone »

angry_octet wrote: post #19

This problem, and the not-my-problem responses, really highlight the self centered mindset we have encouraged. What if that homeless person was your substance-abusing sibling? A friend from school with mental health issues? We need to collectively take more responsibility for those in the worst situations. If you've every tried to teach an old person how to use 2FA you know it's an uphill battle. Using a fingerprint…

No, people like you really highlight the “If they don’t help everyone then they are being immoral” mentality. Which is wrong.

Down grading security for the benefit of a tiny minority with an especially ridiculous use case is not the greater good. If the homeless people think they are at risk of losing their phone then they should pick another free email vendor.

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