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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

#231

Post by abandonliberty »

incompatible wrote: post #142
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…

So I've heard, that it's difficult to get a human involved if you have a problem with Google's free products. The article says "Eventually, with the help of Google’s customer support and some ex-colleagues who still work at Google, Bob was able to get his account back." For the average person who doesn't have ex-colleagues who still work at Google, or who's name isn't Linus Torvalds, it will be far more difficult.

You're a product, not the customer. How well do we treat most livestock?

I recently realized Windows 10 is going the same way and unfortunately it's much harder to not use your OS than Google or FB, and impacts your ability to use other purchased software.

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

#233

Post by Symbiote »

weaksauce wrote: post #216
eveningcoffee wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be that this persons knows something more that we do not (does not seem to be the case) or has very different experience. I do not mind this. It is indeed possible that the cause of the ban originated from some other source as from entered personal details and sequence of actions. It actually motivates me to create another experiment. While this statement will be really buried, it reminds me that we still shou…

From what I can tell from a few days ago, you can't create a new account without a phone number.

From just now, I went to gmail.com and created a new account without entering a phone number or email address.

I then went to Youtube and uploaded a video.

I signed out, then in again. Google asked for a number and recovery email, but let me press "Done" without providing one.

I'll sign in later from a different IP, and see what happens.

Edit: I've come across [1], which says a phone number is required to upload videos longer than 15 minutes to YouTube, or in some cases to upload anything.

[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/171664

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

#234

Post by monkbroc »

softawre wrote: post #140
jakub_g wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is perfect, but IMO when it comes to security, Google goes to great lengths to make stuff in the web secure, probably the most from all the bigcorps out there. They are very aggressive about fixing TLS/SSL-related issues (finding and fixing vulnerabilities, deprecating old ciphers, promoting new stuff like cert pinning and HSTS, lowering SERPs in Google for non-https websites; they've also put in place means t…

> Google customer support is totally another pair of shoes Pair of shoes! Nice. I tend to say "why the face" a lot in our internal chat at work. Now I have another one (POS)

Also try "what the hat". Heard it from my 5 y.o. son.

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

#236

Post by yann63 »

abandonliberty wrote: post #231
incompatible wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I've heard, that it's difficult to get a human involved if you have a problem with Google's free products. The article says "Eventually, with the help of Google’s customer support and some ex-colleagues who still work at Google, Bob was able to get his account back." For the average person who doesn't have ex-colleagues who still work at Google, or who's name isn't Linus Torvalds, it will be far more difficult.

You're a product, not the customer. How well do we treat most livestock? I recently realized Windows 10 is going the same way and unfortunately it's much harder to not use your OS than Google or FB, and impacts your ability to use other purchased software.

> it's much harder to not use your OS than Google or FB

I think the exact opposite. Using Linux instead of windows 10 is easy. But not using any google service can be pretty difficult. Good news, there are some initiative to "ungoogle" the internet, such as Framasoft.

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

#239

Post by gambiting »

Ha! My telco in UK(giffgaff) does not have any phone customer support, so the only way anyone could ask for an account transfer would be through a webform....after logging in to my account. Doing which would also send a notification to my email address. Feels slightly safer now.

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

#240

Post by pdkl95 »

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.

> it is fact

No, it's a hasty generalization[1] where personal experience is assumed to match other cases.

Of course Google could have simply stated the reason for the suspension clearly, if they weren't so reliably opaque in support and service management issues,

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization

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