Ask HN: Gmail account security • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#381

Post by Hnrobert42 » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 2:50 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #332

alerighi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution is, buy your own domain. It's cheap and it will cost you only 20$ a year or something like that. I'm not saying run your own email service (I do, but I recognize that it's complex and not worth for most people), but use a public email service (like also GMail) with your own domain. That way at least if you no longer can access your account, or you get banned, or whatever, you don't loose your address (sin…

I agree with the advice to get your own domain, and then use a service to manage email for it. But don't use GSuite/Google Workspaces/whatever they're calling it now. Your Google account will be somewhat crippled and will be missing a bunch of features, because Google has just decided GSuite accounts should not have those features. And you can't convert your account to a regular Google account. I really want to untan…

What features does GSuite lack?

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#382

Post by Semaphor » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 2:50 AM UTC

theothersen wrote: post #106

austhrow743 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to hear. I’ve been with them for a few years and support was one of the reasons I moved over from Gmail but I’ve never actually needed it.

I tried it, they are responsive and helpful. A bug I reported is actually sent to the development team, and it's fixed. It took 5 weeks, though.

Hah, I had a bug/request for clarification (their rewriting of media queries), it got escalated 2 times to the dev team, and it took 2 or 3 weeks to get that answer :D

Had one other contact that was handled by normal support, that was just a day.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#383

Post by thrwyoilarticle » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 2:53 AM UTC

grishka wrote: post #310

inetknght wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Security questions. Yeah, right, please give us what amounts to a password, but that other people likely know, and that we'll probably store in plaintext. You'll use this much weaker backup password if you forget your real one. A good password manager, such as KeePass, will generate a passphrase . That is, words. Use that instead. Even if they ask "what is your mother's maiden name" just make up a passphrase. > -…

> A good password manager > a password manager solves the problem Sorry but as a software developer myself, I can't trust a piece of software to store all my passwords and thus be a single point of failure for my entire digital life. > This is false. I know many people who share computers. With a single OS user account? Even android tablets these days come with multi-user support. > I treat all my computers as shared…

As a software engineer you should know that you could use multiple redundant open source password managers with your password database backed up multiple times and remove your current single point of failure (your memory).

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#384

Post by windex » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 2:55 AM UTC

I am going to try and avoid google from here on out. Far too much instability around the google services I use the most. It's unfortunate that I've used the gmail id for just about everything including taxes. I feel google is entering a phase where it will look at all of its services for cutting down on "freebies."

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#385

Post by jpalomaki » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 2:56 AM UTC

bpye wrote: post #176

parhamn wrote: post #67

They also do this thing now where they block [1] smaller browsers (even ones using the latest version of chromium) under the guise of security. According to their docs they're fighting MITMs by generally disallowing any browser they can't identify (so the big few). If you're not on a whitelisted browser by Google, you can't log in (effectively, use) any of their properties. This feels very anti-competitive to me. Not…

Wow, that's awful. I wonder who's idea it was? Is it doing anything more than checking user agent (trivial to spoof), because if not that seems entirely hostile.

Likely the goal is to protect users from malicious apps, trying to get user to log in on a hosted browser component in order to scrape their data (or perform activities on behalf of user).

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#386

Post by eddieh » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 2:56 AM UTC

Yup, I am effectively locked out of a few email addresses I rarely used as well. I haven’t found a solution. I just moved everything important off of Google and would never trust them with anything at all—ever.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#387

Post by nopenopenopeno » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 3:00 AM UTC

parhamn wrote: post #67

They also do this thing now where they block [1] smaller browsers (even ones using the latest version of chromium) under the guise of security. According to their docs they're fighting MITMs by generally disallowing any browser they can't identify (so the big few). If you're not on a whitelisted browser by Google, you can't log in (effectively, use) any of their properties. This feels very anti-competitive to me. Not…

What is a MITM?

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#388

Post by astrange » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #294

svnpenn wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please dont post links to programs that arent even publicly available.

AFAIK There's nothing wrong with doing so. The comment was on topic, and the project is interesting. One of the most discussed projects on HN in the past year or so has been GPT-3 which is (was?) pretty hard to get access to.

GPT-3 is pretty open at this point.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#389

Post by _7kjo » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 3:02 AM UTC

I’m in the same situation and have an account that I have a password to, but cannot login to for the same reasons.

Google is one of the companies I’d trust the least for anything critical.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#390

Post by mike503 » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 3:04 AM UTC

pronlover723 wrote: post #130

PaulHoule wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Google’s nonexistent customer service I’d be afraid of being locked out for any arbitrary reason and having no recourse no matter what recovery procedures I prepared for. Contrast that to my bank where I can go to the branch, show ID, and get problems logging in resolved.

FYI, google has customer service if you're paying them. I pay $6 a month for gsuite. I've contacted customer service 3 times. Got them instantly.

+1 on this. I’ve actually had them call me back proactively multiple times on a simple case too. Obviously it’s all anecdotal. But I have been happy with them (when paid)