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

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

#321

Post by sholladay »

I wonder how WebAuthn Passkeys will fare here, as they can replace both passwords and existing 2FA systems.

With Passkeys, your credentials will automatically sync between devices. So as long as you have some way to log in to your main account (Apple/Google/Microsoft, etc.), then you should be able to maintain access to all other accounts, even if you’re always moving between devices.

And there is a solution to the single point of failure problem as well, because there is a built-in flow where you can copy the credentials to other platforms, in case you lose access to your main account.

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

#322

Post by clint »

warent wrote: post #198
peatmoss wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Unfortunately it's more complicated than this. There have been nonprofit organizations and government initiatives to give homeless people space in unoccupied hotels for example. What ends up happening is they generally just destroy the living space in a variety of ways. It's because the majority of homelessness is an issue of mental health. In the USA, there are pretty much zero mental health resources for people in…

What you describe is not "giving the homeless a home" its giving them a temporary, poor substitute for a home that they have no personal interest in"

Also your sweeping statement about the destruction of their living space smells to high heaven prejudiced thinking based on myth or hearsay rather than actual data.

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

#323

Post by jochakovsky »

sb057 wrote: post #320

FWIW I have pretty much given up on trying to use any sort of online banking or other financial website because I do not have cell service at my home, and practically every financial institute requires SMS 2FA these days.

Some carriers have apps to allow you to receive an SMS over data (eg. Message+ on Verizon)

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

#324

Post by etchalon »

This could be remedied with "Custodian" 2FA, couldn't it?

Allowing for a case-worker, for instance, to act as a secondary 2FA method, and making it easy for the custodian to update the users information.

Wouldn't be all that different than corporate ownership policies or family accounts.

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

#325

Post by paganel »

arubania2 wrote: post #266
paganel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone in their 70s keep I'm in my early 40s, computer programmer, and I've temporarily lost access to my WhatsApp account because I don't have a recent enough mobile phone, and the phone that I do have doesn't have a relatively recent OS installed. It's a 4-year old (I think I've got it for 4 years) iPhone SE, on which I never updated the OS because I hadn't feel the need to do it. When I started getting pop-ups…

What‘s your speciality in programming? Keeping all your software, and that includes the OS, up to date, is one of the most important aspects of personal security.

I also don’t have a WiFi password at home, if it matters. Of course, I don’t have Internet banking nor do I do much (if at all) money-related things with my phone, something tells me that makes me more secure than people who trust Apple and Google with their money (at least the local banks have to answer to the authorities).

What’s your employment specialty that makes you trust Apple and Google?

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

#326

Post by cscurmudgeon »

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…

Or by removing barriers for new housing. A lot of these are govt created barriers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-st...

But yeah let us blame Google.

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

#328

Post by hairofadog »

Kalium wrote: post #238
angry_octet wrote: post #19

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…

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…

I guess I don't see a lot of difference between the practical results of loudly proclaiming empathy vs. loudly proclaiming cynicism.

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

#329

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Bakary wrote: post #111
angry_octet wrote: post #19

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…

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.…

Look, I'd love to fix homelessness in America! Really, I would! But Google's policies are causing people to get locked out of their accounts now, today.

Google could put a toggle in Google Account settings titled something like "Allow anyone who knows my password to log in to my Google account (less secure)." It could sit above a description of the risks involved. It would need to be disabled by default, and it wouldn't help users who don't know about it. It certainly would not fix homelessness in society. But it would do a lot of good for a lot of people!

Would this option lead to some increased number of hacked accounts? Probably, but these would be accounts that explicitly opted in to that risk! I think it's excessively paternalistic to not provide the option. Every life situation is unique, and people know their own lives better than Google does.

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

#330

Post by spinlock »

Bakary wrote: post #111
angry_octet wrote: post #19

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…

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.…

Yup. Why break 2FA when we could have the Obamaphone program work with the case workers so that they don’t loose track of people in the first place?

Also, homelessness isn’t the problem we think it is. It’s millions of problems. Any solution will never help more than a subset of the homeless population. We need to iterate on small solutions to make progress.

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