211–220 of 770 posts
EDIT: It looks like you can turn off 2FA, I think I'm going to do that now so I don't get locked out of my Gmail.
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>Maybe the solution should be to have some basic free state-paid email provider for those people. They are not forced to use Gmail specifically (albeit the number of non-sucking and free email providers is probably close to zero). You don't need to use Gmail. There are a lot of good free mail providers.
And what happens if I've already been using that gmail address and then become homeless? I guess too bad! Should have thought of my future homelessness when I was signing up for an email service a decade ago!
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I wonder how many people suffer identity theft versus how many have a working recovery email but are denied to use it because some algo finds it suspicious that you moved country or logged in from a linux machine? The key takeaway is not about how we should promote 2FA or how we should promote long ass passwords, the main issue at hand is google's neglectful lack of customer support. I was once caught in this non-sen…
> the main issue at hand is google's neglectful lack of customer support. Customer support is the main entrypoint into 99% of sim swapping attacks and would be similarly for any targeted account takeovers. What sort of information do you possibly think would be enough to prove someone actually owns a Google account over the phone?
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…
It’s a problem all around - the elderly are most vulnerable to the types of account takeovers that MFA will prevent.
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This is missing the forest for the trees. Of course we'd be more emotionally involved if it was someone we knew, that's not hypocritical. Most people aren't against fixing societal problems, either. As it stands, homelessness is definitely something that affects a ton of people so it definitely is our problem as long as we are city dwellers. The problem here is that misapplied empathy can lead to terrible decisions.…
> Actually giving homes to the homeless would probably be cheaper than whatever we are doing now, even taking into account the mental illness and drug-abuse problems that factor into this. This point is worth reiterating. Homelessness can be solved by providing housing. Yes, homelessness is a complex multi-faceted problem, but the first order solution to the problem is to provide housing. Homelessness is a problem wi…
Some homeless people aren't capable of the maintenance of a home due to mental or physical issues.
Some homeless people refuse to accept help for mental issues for fear of being trapped in a psych ward.
Simply put, you need to split homelessness into temporary and chronic populations. For the temporary group, homelessness is the problem. For the chronic group, it is a symptom. Treating the symptom will not have a long-term impact on much of the population.
Source: conversations with a social worker friend who spent years working with the homeless population in our metro area.
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What if that homeless person was your substance-abusing sibling? A friend from school with mental health issues? I think we also have to realize that not everyone who is homeless has problems that can explain it away. It's easy to look at someone who is homeless and tell yourself, "Oh, he's a dope addict. He did this to himself." It's only very rarely true, and you're only making excuses for not helping another human…
The "quiet homeless" who can hold down a job are also likely to be able to keep track of a phone or other two factor device. If we can "solve" the problem for the dopest of dope addicts, the problem will also be solved for the homeless barista. That still doesn't solve the problem for homelessness, of course.
While I agree that there's a lot of generalization here, a lot of the point of supporting the homeless in the first place is that big tech should support everyone, even if they are indeed someone who "can't keep the same cell phone number for more than 4 months at a time" (via the source twitter thread) as if they're a government that must cater to its citizens.
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Did you recently try to create a gmail account? If not, I suggest you try it right now. Maybe you will be surprised. Hint: it is still possible to create a gmail account without phone number, but it has become quite tricky to do so.
> it is still possible to create a gmail account without phone number Nope. Not possible. Oh how I would love to be proven wrong though.
Potential solution, the Obamaphone program keeps using the same phone number for an individual instead of totally new ones every time they lose a phone.
this feels like a workaround. We should not be treating phonenumbers as SSN round two, where everyone relies on it for your identity, and it should never be changed because of how much shit was needlessly tied to it. I rue the day I need to change my phone number and my digital identity becomes a huge headache, especially for far flung services that decided they wanted my phone number, but I wouldn't have considered…
I'm not proposing a solution for the real issue, simply a way of making things easier for people who have a hard enough time already.
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Not only have I not said that Google doesn't offer 2FA - yes they do. However, Google tries _very hard_ to prevent people from e.g. creating a gmail account without a phone number. Try it if you don't believe me.
I definitely vividly remember needing it a few years ago, but right now I can try to sign up and it says "Mobile Number (optional)" (Maybe that's based on some security heuristics).