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

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 770 posts

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

#281

Post by daniel-cussen »

peatmoss wrote: post #182
Bakary wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#282

Post by mihaaly »

arbuge wrote: post #181

You lose your entire Google account if you lose your 2FA device or number (assuming it's a phone number), for any reason. Even if your Google account is set up with a non-Google email address which you still have access to, and you still know the correct password. And there's nobody you can reach at Google about it, no appeals process, nothing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33098261

I took three steps against this happening:

  1) Not providing phone number for 2FA. Never.
  2) Using multiple (3 pcs.) physical keys for 2FA (like Yubikey and similar). Authentication app is an alternative for one choice of 2FA (but not the sole one!)
  3) Only using a limited set of Google functionality. Use for secondary purposes mostly.
Well, the last one is mainly to mitigate the consequences if happens anyway, for other reasons too (like with that poor guy who made picture of his own naked baby for a remote diagnostics with his doctor and the Google locked him out for months - and still counting at the time of the article - for child pornography)

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

#283

Post by jakelazaroff »

Bakary wrote: post #268
jakelazaroff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your comment because it gradually stumbles upon the actual solution. We aren't being ambitious enough, but developing a device designed to be harder to steal or lose is timidly incremental. By the last paragraph, we're talking about ending homelessness entirely. That is an ambitious — but achievable! — goal, and one that actually addresses the root of the problem.

If you mean a stumble in the sense that I'm not truly aware of the implications of what I'm proposing, that's not really the case. I personally believe we could be yet more ambitious than what I am describing here, but I realize that most people aren't going to be on board. So the next best thing is to propose a different framework of looking at the problem and a different methodology for looking for solutions. A ded…

Just to clarify, I meant “stumble” as in it seemed to be somewhat stream of consciousness; just happening to end up at “give everyone a home” rather than planning a route there from the opening sentence.

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

#284

Post by angry_octet »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #255
judge2020 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The correct answer is not depending on the largesse of businesses. It is using government resources to provide methods for identity verification, communications, and various other bare minimum needs for living. To be fair I don't see how any government system can do better regarding identity on the internet. Login.gov is one of the best services I've used for access to usajobs/SSA/etc but it follows some of the sam…

The US government uses the USPS to do identify verification for passports. If it can handle identity verification for passports, why would it not be able to handle identity verification for other purposes, such as replacing or reauthorizing one’s MFA device? Hell, it should be trivial to offer federal government provided emails with ID verification with customer service in the event of loss of device/loss of ID/death…

The USPS and banks would be ideal identity validators. Having run a few mail servers I don't think the Govt is best placed to do that, but they could outsource it to google, with a few tweaks to allow identity attestation.

Many other countries have a central government portal with secure messaging, with federated identify. Heavily reliant on 2FA of course.

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

#286

Post by Kalium »

gsatic wrote: post #279
Kalium wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. Let's play a game. Let's say I care. Let's say I care a lot . I care so much that I'm willing to make it my personal problem to address the very real, very pressing needs of a critically vulnerable and marginalized part of my community from inside Google. What am I going to do? Is anyone going to be happier if I stand up and proclaim loudly how much I care? Probably not. Could I say "Gee, what if we just let ever…

What do you think the moral of Jurassic Park was? If you dont know how to control what happens in the park you build, then the park will be shutdown. In the case of Google its not hard to speed up the process of shutdown. I just encourage them to keep working on more and more mindless ivory tower trash like Pixel phones, watches etc and inject more Ads into everything. They dont have the imagination for anything else…

It seems to me that Google is in full control of what they've built here. They've chosen not to put in the effort to find a way to meet the needs of this portion of their user community.

On the one hand, this can be quite reasonably derided as a lack of imagination. Surely there must be a way to do it!

On the other hand, well, we as a society accept that businesses are generally allowed to decide they just don't want to be in a market segment or produce some features. Bridgestone is not compelled by law to have a store in every neighborhood. Montblanc is not forced to produce disposable ballpoint pens.

Perhaps we should treat this as Google admitting the limits of what they're willing and able to build. There is no shame in knowing your limits.

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

#287

Post by jupp0r »

GMail requiring a password makes my grandparents loose their access what feels like every time I visit them. I can imagine that homeless people are facing that problem on top of the ones described in the thread as well.

GMail offers backup codes to somewhat solve the phone number problem by the way.

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

#288

Post by foobarian »

peatmoss wrote: post #182
Bakary wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Homelessness can be solved by providing housing.

They used to be called asylums, and the problem is what to do if the homeless person refuses to go. I wonder why you don't hear about homelessness in totalitarian states...

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

#289

Post by Edman274 »

Bakary wrote: post #183
kthejoker2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wtf Calling homelessness a "niche" .. peak apres moi le deluge

This is the sort of performative response that is the problem. Let's say we force Google to switch off 2FA. Now we have exposed millions of people who don't know any better to phishing attempts and financial loss. And the group we are trying to help isn't really better off. There are so many other questions we could be asking. Why are they directed towards picking Gmail by default? Why is the system to give a replace…

> Why is the system to give a replacement phone every 12 weeks instead of investing in a dedicated device that's much harder to damage or lose? Why is keeping the same number a hassle?

If you're homeless, you're getting robbed. It doesn't matter that a yubikey would be worthless to a person mugging you, they'll take everything including the worthless stuff. Or you're being picked up by an ambulance and taken to a behavioral health center after a mental health crisis and when they do that they take your clothes off and stuff goes missing, even if it's worthless.

Keeping the same number usually requires paying into an account which requires being able to make consistent payments, which is not easy to do. Or a credit card or bank account is required. You are maybe unbanked in this scenario.

> Why are we tackling the problem with caseworkers instead of something more ambitious, that would ironically be less costly in the long run?

Caseworkers make practically nothing. Does your solution get rid of human beings to act as agents for people who sometimes lose touch with reality? Will there be an AI assistant to guide someone through a schizophrenic break and get them to a hospital and help get them reoriented after they regain contact with reality? That's what's necessary and you're treating actually understanding what they're going through as if it's virtue signalling.

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

#290

Post by joshka »

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…

Replace something you know, something you have with something you know, someone you know or something similar.
Post reply on HN