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Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

tech.vijayp.ca

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Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#201

Post by winter_blue »

alasdair_ wrote: post #129
exelius wrote: post #12

> I'm curious [...] why Google doesn’t temporarily disable accounts so impacted until a human reviews activity. Because Google doesn't have humans reviewing anything unless there's a direct link to marginal revenue/cost avoidance attached to that interaction that can be priced in. Their business model is to achieve scale through automation and machine learning; which means not doing things that would require manual i…

>they've got a less-than-stellar reputation for support of paying customers I've actually had surprisingly good support from the $150/month plan for their cloud products. They get back to me quickly and give good advice (with custom code samples when needed).

Yep, I've had an email account with Google Apps in the past, which costs $5/month, and their customer support was amazingly and surprisingly good.

I just wish I could pay $5/month for my regular GMail account and be guaranteed the same level of support.

Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#202

Post by eveningcoffee »

jcsvyu789jh wrote: post #151
eveningcoffee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did it. Then they banned it. Having my phone number or any other hard identifier is none of Googles business.

Do you disagree with their right to specify the terms of use as to include a phone number, or do you just not like the rule?

I think that giving such agencies the power to identify unique individuals is not beneficial for the humankind.

Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#203

Post by eveningcoffee »

dimino wrote: post #197
eveningcoffee wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who are you then? :) But I am willing to create another more controlled experiment.

I'm concerned about your ability to control the necessary variables. For example, any one of your anti-tracking measures (you're big into Internet privacy, yes?) may be triggering the suspension.

My only concern in that point of time was giving out the phone number, as it will give Google an unique identifier without the ISP and state cooperation. As such I did not use any additional measures.

I am grateful of your comments as it will motivate me to give it another try.

Btw. in fact I do not use regularly any anti tracking measurements. I am only protecting the local businesses against their own stupidity.

I really would like to keep visiting my favorite supermarket regardless of their decision to include their video ads into the Youtube videos I happen to watch time to time. Some careless fools already lost me as an client, I would not like to let this happen again.

Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#204

Post by eveningcoffee »

dimino wrote: post #195
lucb1e wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've made your opinion clear. Why continue to try pushing it as fact? There are a thousand factors at play in spam/fraud/whatever detection, how can you possibly say with a straight face that you're certain the phone number is not a leading reason?

It's not my opinion, it is fact. There was a reason he was suspended, and it is not his phone number not being attached to his account. Also, I didn't say anything about leading reason.

So perhaps you will care to elaborate this a bit more?

Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#205

Post by rohitarondekar »

Would using a dedicated phone number (sim) that is not shared with any other service protect you from this? Basically nobody besides Google and you would know of this number. In India dual sim phones are very common and I've been thinking of getting a second sim (phone number) for this purpose.

Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#206

Post by rsync »

cmdrfred wrote: post #41
vonklaus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main issue is that google doesn't accept certain senders anymore. As a generic thread about running a mailserver/mail service pops up here often. That means users are shoveled into about one of 4 "acceptable" providers which have control of the entire market. They demand, full name and usually gender, mobile, alternative email and more. So you get pushed into their information pipeline to stop "spam".

It accepts my personal mail server just fine. You need to support encryption, spf, and dkim but mail will flow no problem to gmail users in my experience.

Not mine, FWIW. Ten out of ten score on mail-tester.com, a clean IP that I acquired 15 years ago ... and further, gmail watches people daily remove my one-to-one correspondence from their spam folders.

And yet, most (but not all) new gmail recipients will not see my emails until they remove them from their spam folder.

Google does not want people to self-provide email and there is no incentive for them to do so.

Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#207

Post by guelo »

exelius wrote: post #12

> I'm curious [...] why Google doesn’t temporarily disable accounts so impacted until a human reviews activity. Because Google doesn't have humans reviewing anything unless there's a direct link to marginal revenue/cost avoidance attached to that interaction that can be priced in. Their business model is to achieve scale through automation and machine learning; which means not doing things that would require manual i…

Interestingly, one of the features announced for the new Google Pixel phone is some kind of free live support, though they didn't say which Google products are covered. It is an expensive phone but if the support includes help with other consumer cloud products it might be worth the price of admission.

Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#208

Post by reitanqild »

jandrese wrote: post #73
jcoffland wrote: post #60

> This pattern seems like something security software should be able to detect: a password reset with incomplete information, followed immediately by a change in recovery email, name, and two-factor-auth settings, coupled with a “my account has been compromised” help request is highly suspicious. This series of events could easily occur in legitimate cases. Say you lose or destroy your cellphone. Since you only ever…

At the very least, any change to the email address should send out an email to the old address stating "If you didn't make this change, click on this link to have your account frozen until you do a password reset." It's silly to depend on an email for authentication, then allow the hacker to just delete the email address before they change the password. Giving the old address the right of first refusal defeats that k…

Not sure but I think I have seen hotmail/live do this?

Re: Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure

#210

Post by ocdtrekkie »

datguacdoh wrote: post #179
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why last weekend I moved to FastMail. I've filed two support tickets since, and both were responded to in an hour or two. For the trivial cost of half a Netflix subscription, the most vital thing I have on the Internet is supported by real people. It's hard to justify Gmail these days other than the frustration of migrating off of it. As a side perk, Australia has no equivalent to a National Security Letter,…

I get responses to my Google Apps support questions pretty quickly and I'm just using this for my personal family accounts, so I'm not paying them tons of money. I don't think it's really fair to say they should provide support for their free tier which hosts mail for a billion people and compare it to a service that hosts, what, maybe a million?

The problem is that the burden of responsibility Google carries for those accounts is huge. The amount of money, private information, treasured photos go over their systems... with no support?
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