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

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

tech.vijayp.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 299 posts

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

#251

Post by yc-kraln »

fghgfdfg wrote: post #247
maccard wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What particular google services do you rely on that can't be replaced? I'm using fastmail for mail & calendar services, duckduckgo for search, firefox instead of chrome, sync rather than google drive.

I've had terrible experiences with duckduckgo. I really want to switch, but I've never been able to justify the costs. Every now and then I give it a shot but the results from DuckDuckGo just aren't there. Sometimes they aren't even in the ballpark of what I'm looking for, while Google nails it - what I want specifically is in the top 3, and the whole rest of the first page is related. I don't know if this is because…

I'd suggest trying Qwant as well. Just remember, the way Google can give such good results is that they mine your life.

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

#252

Post by Accacin »

fghgfdfg wrote: post #247
maccard wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What particular google services do you rely on that can't be replaced? I'm using fastmail for mail & calendar services, duckduckgo for search, firefox instead of chrome, sync rather than google drive.

I've had terrible experiences with duckduckgo. I really want to switch, but I've never been able to justify the costs. Every now and then I give it a shot but the results from DuckDuckGo just aren't there. Sometimes they aren't even in the ballpark of what I'm looking for, while Google nails it - what I want specifically is in the top 3, and the whole rest of the first page is related. I don't know if this is because…

Just use !g, it's not perfect but it's fast.

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

#253

Post by tdkl »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #120
marco1 wrote: post #26

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. Can absolutely confirm that. However, there's place for both Gmail and FastMail. Just know what you pay and what you're entitled to get for that price.

For some people, email is not a big part of their lives, and it's probably fine to have a free service. But I'd argue almost anyone for whom email is a daily necessity, you should be paying for a certain quality of service. I mean, your email is the core of your online identity, and if it vanishes, such as the dozens of stories we've heard of Google terminating people's account without warning, it can be devastating…

> For some people, email is not a big part of their lives

Email is a big part of everyone's lives, who made an online account somewhere. Not to mention if they paired real identity and/or money to those accounts.

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

#254

Post by morganvachon »

fghgfdfg wrote: post #247
maccard wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What particular google services do you rely on that can't be replaced? I'm using fastmail for mail & calendar services, duckduckgo for search, firefox instead of chrome, sync rather than google drive.

I've had terrible experiences with duckduckgo. I really want to switch, but I've never been able to justify the costs. Every now and then I give it a shot but the results from DuckDuckGo just aren't there. Sometimes they aren't even in the ballpark of what I'm looking for, while Google nails it - what I want specifically is in the top 3, and the whole rest of the first page is related. I don't know if this is because…

Try startpage.com, it searches Google anonymously so Google can't build a profile about you and place you in a search bubble.

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

#255

Post by Chris2048 »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #24
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.

I did it recently, and burned myself, because I forgot my password and had no way of recovering the account. As far as I know, my account isn't banned, though.

I moved country, and had to wait to visit the country I registered in to get the account back.

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

#256

Post by morganvachon »

x1798DE wrote: post #84
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 certainly could be an issue , but honestly even if it were possible to set up my own mail server, that's even worse for pseudonymity than a google account because ICANN records are public and I'd be the only one using my domains. It would make it much easier for some random person to uniquely identify me, which is a worse threat than Google identifying me by my phone number. This is one of those situations where a…

> ICANN records are public and I'd be the only one using my domains

Several domain registration services and hosting providers offer to mask your whois information by making themselves the point of contact. Some include this as part of your package; Tiger Technologies does this as a free opt-in. Namecheap offers it as a paid add-on via WhoisGuard.

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

#258

Post by claudius »

emeidi wrote: post #257

I stopped reading here: "While Bob didn’t have multi-factor authentication enabled"

You shouldn’t have. Google trusted the phone too much, using it instead of the user-supplied secrets to determine who was allowed to access the account. Whether or not the account used multi-factor authentication seems quite perfectly irrelevant?

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

#259

Post by ollie87 »

darkhorn wrote: post #133

In Turkey, if you apply for a new SIM card (let's say you have micro and you want nano) then you cannot access your bank account (for example Garanti Bank, probably other big banks too). Doesn't matter whether you try to access the bank via your PC or phone or via your home telephone, a massage appears saying that your SIM card has been changes and thus you need to re-validate yourself. So, this means that the banks…

Not sure I like the idea of the state being so heavily involved in this process.

Then again as a UK citizen they probably have access to my phone any way.

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

#260

Post by ollie87 »

wyclif wrote: post #8
zitterbewegung wrote: post #2

Adding a phone number that people KNOW about can make it LESS secure. A workaround is to get a phone number that is only used for identity verification and not given out to anyone.

One way to accomplish this would be with, ironically, a Google Voice-type service (but associated with a completely independent email provider)

Not really, there are phones out there that have two SIM-card slots.
Post reply on HN