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

381–390 of 770 posts

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

#381

Post by everforward »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #31
Bakary wrote: post #3

I can definitely understand not realizing that you could lose access to your account if you lose your phone number. But once it happens the first time, could you not pick any free email that does not require 2FA, and warn fellow homeless to avoid gmail? I disagree with the idea that because a very, very niche audience is in dire straits that the design decisions should be based on their needs. The forced 2FA system h…

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

In the US, they are a niche at 0.2% of the population. Vegans are an order of magnitude larger at 2%.

They are a vulnerable niche, but a niche nonetheless.

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

#383

Post by vorpalhex »

Entinel wrote: post #234
warent wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's because the majority of homelessness is an issue of mental health. This isn't true or at least it doesn't start that way. What people don't understand is that there isn't a single homeless population. You have people who are temporarily homeless and people who are chronically homeless. The temporarily homeless are people who lost jobs, fell on hard times, etc etc. The simplest solution for them is yes to give…

We're pretty good at getting the temporarily homeless into housing. Obviously any improvements are good, but fundamentally the issue is with the chronically homeless who often have other factors going on.

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

#384

Post by spoonjim »

I don't think changing Gmail to meet the needs of the homeless, at the risk of everyone else's security, makes any sense. Instead there should be a different email service that the homeless use, perhaps government provided if there's no business model in it.

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

#385

Post by chimprich »

Google's 2FA is dreadful. 2FA is a good idea when it's added with consent, but Google adds it behind your back in ways that are both infuriating and brain-dead.

I've been caught out recently twice: once I was away on work and had to access my email. Google demanded that I verify it using my phone that I'd previously accessed my work email with. However, this phone was just a phone I use for development, had never had a sim card inserted, and was on my desk at home. I hadn't agreed that it should be used for 2FA. It was tremendously inconvenient because I needed to find where my hotel was.

Another time recently I managed to destroy my phone in an accident and got the phone replaced. Despite taking the sim card from the old phone and putting it in the new one, doing a factory reset on the old one, and it not being active for a week, Google still demanded I 2FA authenticate on the old one.

I feel these problems could have easily been avoided, but it's typical latter-day Google experience: a tin ear for the customer experience and a general attitude of automation knows better than users.

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

#386

Post by paganel »

flerchin wrote: post #374
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…

If your face hurts, maybe you should stop punching yourself in the face. Update your software.

Equating lack of software updates to punching oneself in the face is part of the whole problem.

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

#387

Post by Kalium »

themitigating wrote: post #375
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…

Empathy is the motivation and starting point. Even if you don't go beyond that step you can vote for those that will. "Sometimes problems are just hard. Taking ownership and feeling empathy and sincerely wanting to solve the problem does not render them easy." No one said it did and it's better than not caring at all.

While I agree that empathy is the motivation and starting point, I do want to note that a lot of people in this discussion do seem to sincerely believe that this problem would be easy for Google to solve if they just cared enough. The framing of "Google's product designers should talk to my unhoused friends" in the tweet linked seems invested in this idea.

What if the most empathetic answer here is "This isn't really the right service for you"?

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

#388

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #347
lxgr wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do think that doing something useful is useful, even if it is easy.

and thus does the problem continue because those who could help are too busy making themselves feel better with as little effort as possible. It's 2FA ... for homeless people.

Partial solutions that take minimum effort are great. It's like replacing a single incandescent light with an LED. Sure it doesn't solve climate change, but it definitely helps, and doing easy helpful things is way better than not doing them and complaining that the problem is big.

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

#389

Post by thereddaikon »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #329
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.…

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 woul…

This is a result of taking a product made by someone else for a certain purpose and then using it for one it isn't intended. Its not Google's fault gmail is a bad fit here. They didn't design it with this use case in mind.

The solution is to use one that is. Why are case workers directing the homeless to setup gmail accounts? Because they haven't been provided with a better solution by the system they work within.

So its the government's problem to fix. They are the ones handing out phones and setting the expectation to communicate through email. So they can either design an email service themselves that fits their needs. Or they can work with an industry partner, such as google or someone else to provide the service.

Normal gmail is a one size fits all commodity solution. It works well enough for most people, most of the time. Specialized problems call for specialized solutions. Complaining that google didn't think of you is misplaced.

Post reply on HN