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Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

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Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#331

Post by bigfatkitten »

ccppurcell wrote: post #296
redserk wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. I’ll stop you here. Google offered it for free and, at the time, offered such an high amount of mail storage for free it sounded insane. At the time, my ISP gave me a 25MB or 50MB inbox and that was considered pretty decent, when Google was trying to get people in with 1-2GB. They absolutely have a right to take ant…

Also they make it really difficult to mass delete stuff. I'm basically stuck paying for their storage because I don't really have the skills to self host (but I'm working on it!)

They make it impossible to delete stuff if you stop paying!

I was on Google Workspace for about 10 years. I moved off their service because the mandatory Gemini price hikes meant that it no longer represented value for money.

I get excessive storage utilisation warnings for some shared drives I used to have but because I no longer have a paid up license, I can’t manage shared drives anymore. So I can’t delete them.

Google’s “support” team in India told me all sorts of lies about how to resolve the issue, but they’ve finally settled on a position that I would need to reinstate my Workspace account, at my own expense in order to delete the data to stop the emails and save Google money.

They refuse to acknowledge the patent absurdity of this situation and escalate it to someone who can actually fix it.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#332

Post by drchaim »

It was easy to see coming, and it’ll spread further and to more services. In fact, recently they even forced old accounts to log in or they would delete them.

It’ll happen with social media accounts and other things too. The account creation date is going to become an even bigger heuristic in their spam models.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#334

Post by rixed »

The days of my old google account that predates real identity policies are numbered...

People already assume that your "google name" is your official name, so much so that I had to patiently explain a delivery man once that the funny nickname he had for some reason in the delivery notice did not match my ID because that was an old google account from a time when it was usual to use any funny handle for your account.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#335

Post by DANmode »

jeroenhd wrote: post #155
DANmode wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There weren’t any infrastructure costs to sending the first SMS ever, there shouldn’t be any remaining for the consumer today unless you’re a real unfortunate soul.

Exchanging SMS messages with any sort of reliability (like not losing your messages when you go through a tunnel) requires running an SMSC. That costs money. Furthermore, carriers still charge each other for exchanging SMS traffic, though many of them just charge the difference rather than sending each other bills. This approach is quite costly if you're out of the country, though. Sending an SMS is hit and miss when…

Are you one of the unfortunate souls I mentioned?!

PS Has the bio trap snared any robots yet?!

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#336

Post by Barrin92 »

idle_zealot wrote: post #312
donkyrf wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That our education system wasn't resilient to that well-funded propaganda machine is what reflects poorly on it. That such a machine is allowed to exist reflects poorly on our institutions more broadly. I'll never blame human greed. Systems are designed for humans, if they fail to account for human nature then they're bad systems. I'm not really interested in litigating whether humans as a species are bad.

>Systems are designed for humans

They also happen to be designed by humans, and if you're just begging to have the system fix people's beliefs about corporate greed for you but don't think people themselves are at fault I have no idea why you'd think the systems would be fixed.

Always these complains about corporations or systems or institutions, the responsible person is never "I". If you're unwilling to take responsibility for your institutions why do you think they'd fix your problems? The beauty is people always get the institutions and rulers they deserve, it's not some mysterious system that allows these things to happen, it's you and I.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#337

Post by eep_social »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #187
webdoodle wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is. Total surveillance only works if the people are forced to wear the tracking collar. The next steps are tying it to CBDC, that require a phone number to access your wallet, and tying it to realid/passport to restrict travel. 2FA has become the wedge to break privacy into a million shards.

I prefer TOTP, but service providers seem to prefer their own apps or sms.

Phone numbers have become the unique identifier used to build profiles of people and the providers can still claim “security” when they change it to pursue that revenue stream.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#338

Post by ipaddr »

donkyrf wrote: post #291
idle_zealot wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel like a lot of very intelligent people here basically start at a first principles belief in property rights, and discover or dispute all of the rights and protections put in place over centuries to patch up the issues that occur when that philosophy meets reality. It reflects poorly on our education systems that these apparently weren't covered or were unconvincing when presented. Or maybe it's just a ref…

[flagged]

How can we end up blaming the right wing when the propaganda machine is bigger on the other side and even bigger on the government side It's always someone else

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#339

Post by WalterBright »

s1mplicissimus wrote: post #325
WalterBright wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that if the government provided email, that the government wouldn't keep track of everything you did on it?

Do you believe the government doesn't keep track of your email, just because it's hosted on googles servers?

I used a private mail server for years, and the government didn't keep track of it. Of course, what happened at the email's destination, who knows?

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#340

Post by chatmasta »

Is this for GMail only or just Google accounts? A while ago I was able to signup for a Google account with an iCloud relay email, and it _seemed_ like I had to give my phone number or use Google Authenticator… but I worked around it by using Chrome Devtools to create a virtual WebAuthN device, after which I was able to scan a QR code for 2FA with 1Password.
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