31–40 of 350 posts
Obviously there must be a process to gain access when your phone with an authenticator app is lost or destroyed. Why is that process not working?
There was a post a while back around poor and homeless people encountering exactly this problem on a regular basis. Lots of people in the comments were incredibly dismissive and sometimes actively malign about it. Edit: One suggestion from me would be to try and start the dead phone connected to power but with the battery physically removed (assuming it's removable). That might bypass whatever issue it's having and l…
Even worse than that, they're often connecting from public IPs that are "suspicious" which causes automated systems to treat them more harshly.
In Canada it's gotten to the point where you need an internet connected device to participate in the most important systems; government, banking, etc.. It's very sad that device can't be supplied by the libraries. They have them, but big tech discriminates against anything that's not a personal computing device.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you should take your phone to a store which can fix your phone. Googles code doesn't come as an SMS it comes as a notification from the Google app. Almost lost an account to this last week. Turned off 2fa.
I'm in a small town. I have no car. I no longer drive. I don't see well enough. I work from home due to my medical situation. I have no friends locally who can drive me someplace. Etc etc etc. This is a non-starter for me. I need Google to fix this. I can't do anything about the busted phone at this point.
I know it's of no consolation for you OP at this point though.
Is that SMS codes or an app? How can you know they're being sent to the dead phone when it's dead? Maybe they were never being sent to that number at all? Obviously there must be a process to gain access when your phone with an authenticator app is lost or destroyed. Why is that process not working?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use authy (free) for 2FA TOTP and have it set up on my work laptop, my home laptop, and my phone. As long as least one of those is still good, I should still be able to get in. I honestly don't know what's going on behind the scenes to know if this is not as secure as it "should" be. But this was my reaction specifically to the non-SMS TOTP 2fa: Wait, if I lose my phone there's literally no way possible to get in?…
> As long as least one of those is still good, I should still be able to get in. Google has, in some cases, started requiring auth codes sent to specific devices , even if you're already using your own configured TOTP 2FA.
Is that SMS codes or an app? How can you know they're being sent to the dead phone when it's dead? Maybe they were never being sent to that number at all? Obviously there must be a process to gain access when your phone with an authenticator app is lost or destroyed. Why is that process not working?
I know because the messages on my NEW phone that I am trying to set up state "We sent this to (your old phone -- identified by type of phone, which is different from the model I am setting up).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you should take your phone to a store which can fix your phone. Googles code doesn't come as an SMS it comes as a notification from the Google app. Almost lost an account to this last week. Turned off 2fa.
I'm in a small town. I have no car. I no longer drive. I don't see well enough. I work from home due to my medical situation. I have no friends locally who can drive me someplace. Etc etc etc. This is a non-starter for me. I need Google to fix this. I can't do anything about the busted phone at this point.
This is my nightmare. This is why I refuse to use 2FA. (Except on services that require it, and I wish they didn't require it.) Am I worried about getting hacked? Absolutely! But when I weigh the likelihood of (1) someone else getting into my account without 2FA and (2) locking myself out of my own account with 2FA, the latter seems much more likely! I understand how backup codes work. I promise you I will loose them…
I use authy (free) for 2FA TOTP and have it set up on my work laptop, my home laptop, and my phone. As long as least one of those is still good, I should still be able to get in. I honestly don't know what's going on behind the scenes to know if this is not as secure as it "should" be. But this was my reaction specifically to the non-SMS TOTP 2fa: Wait, if I lose my phone there's literally no way possible to get in?…
There’s a fire or gas explosion or earthquake or something, and you need to leave all those behind. What do you do?
> Oh, everyone else is just hoping they never lose their phone? Really?
I would be very, very surprised if that’s not what the vast majority of the population is doing. Many people have a phone as their _only_ computing device, and no printer, and don’t really understand why they should be carrying around scrawled codes in their wallet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution to that is to make the increasingly intrusive security processes an opt in, not to completely write off anyone who can't reliably keep a particular physical device on their person and working indefinitely.
It used to be opt in until the icloud hacking saga where the public demanded something be done. So it was decided users want mandatory security by default. Almost all of these services provide backup codes you can write down on paper as well. Sure, some people are going to lose their only device and the bit of paper, but at that point if you have literally nothing to identify yourself with, it's going to be hard to p…
Just make it opt out... You 2fa, do a song and dance, and 2fa is gone