Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

discuss.privacyguides.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 549 posts

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

#391

Post by p-e-w »

bachmeier wrote: post #266
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…

> and certainly aren’t obligated to provide it for free And I'll stop you here. It's less than obvious that there's no obligation. If you provide a critical service that folks rely on at a price less than your cost, you drive out competition, and it's a critical part of your own business model, dropping the service without warning is IMO on the border of what Google should be allowed to do.

I’d say that if Google suddenly stopped providing Gmail for free, destroying the primary means of communication for billions of people, governments would be justified in immediately nationalizing Google with no compensation.

Corporations aren’t magical entities that somehow exist outside of social obligations and can do whatever they want as long as their own terms of service permit it.

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

#392

Post by chrsstrm »

tardedmeme wrote: post #377
chrsstrm wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can reach a point where the phone number you used for 2FA has been "used too many times" and then you're stuck in the middle of registration. There doesn't seem to be any documented limit anywhere and the only solution people have been able to use is find someone else to help you verify with their phone number. What makes this more difficult is when you get logged out of one of your accounts, they ask for a phone…

IIRC the limit is 4 accounts and it's documented somewhere.

I'm constantly spinning up new accounts for clients and I've used my number on way more than 4 accounts, so maybe it is on a rolling basis over some time period?

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

#393

Post by [deleted] »

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]

[deleted]

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

#394

Post by chrsstrm »

cube00 wrote: post #372
chrsstrm wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can reach a point where the phone number you used for 2FA has been "used too many times" and then you're stuck in the middle of registration. There doesn't seem to be any documented limit anywhere and the only solution people have been able to use is find someone else to help you verify with their phone number. What makes this more difficult is when you get logged out of one of your accounts, they ask for a phone…

>find someone else to help you verify with their phone number Very risky, either of you gets banned (it's a risk given now ban happy Google are) you'll both lose your accounts.

The number is not associated with your account, it is just used to verify legit account creations. Retroactively nuking an account due to using a "banned" phone for account creation verification would be wild and not in Google's best interests.

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

#395

Post by protocolture »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #177

People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…

>They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used.

Google used to literally have a counter inside Gmail showing how your account had a super huge and always increasing amount of storage. The courted their current market position. This isnt "Oh how did we get here with our big bleeding hearts" its just enshittification.

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

#396

Post by eks391 »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #331
ccppurcell wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. G…

Google has support?? How did you find it, and what other services besides gmail does it cover?

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

#397

Post by gloosx »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #177

People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…

This comment somohow makes it look like google is a non-profit charity organisation.

Isn't it the corporation which makes super-profits and gmail is just part of the equation?

I highly doubt that anyone would ever riot over loss of access to email, nor that it's some critical piece of infrastructure, there are dozens of other communication methods online today.

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

#398

Post by DANmode »

chickensong wrote: post #322
DANmode wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone didn’t read all of the words ^_^ Infrastructure costs were marginal, near 0, because SMS was just 140 bytes of text stuffed into already-occurring network traffic between phone telco.

I did some work with Verizon and an IoT customer was asking about SMS pricing and the VZ guys laughed and said it cost less than a penny for every 1M SMS.

and that’s only because an accountant demanded a cost of goods sold!

Continuing that behavior until everybody’s grandma had iMessage, is a large portion of why I don’t trust a telco!

(Not building out the full range of rural etc network they promised to, while cashing all of the government subsidies, struck me wrong as well.)

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

#399

Post by otterley »

p-e-w wrote: post #391
bachmeier wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and certainly aren’t obligated to provide it for free And I'll stop you here. It's less than obvious that there's no obligation. If you provide a critical service that folks rely on at a price less than your cost, you drive out competition, and it's a critical part of your own business model, dropping the service without warning is IMO on the border of what Google should be allowed to do.

I’d say that if Google suddenly stopped providing Gmail for free, destroying the primary means of communication for billions of people, governments would be justified in immediately nationalizing Google with no compensation. Corporations aren’t magical entities that somehow exist outside of social obligations and can do whatever they want as long as their own terms of service permit it.

> Corporations aren’t magical entities that somehow exist outside of social obligations and can do whatever they want as long as their own terms of service permit it.

Where's your support for this statement in the law?

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

#400

Post by vel0city »

s1mplicissimus wrote: post #323
WalterBright wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except gmail is hardly a cartel, etc. I've never had a gmail account.

I'd assume that you also never tried running your own email server and have the email actually delivered to a gmail address, then.

I've self-hosted email systems for businesses for nearly 20 years. I've actually had far easier times delivering to Gmail/Workspace clients than Outlook. Outlook constantly breaks strict DKIM with some of their protection scanning nonsense for emails that seem to get good deliverability almost everywhere else.
Post reply on HN