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

discuss.privacyguides.net

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

#431

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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]

> the existence of an immense right-wing propaganda machine

The biggest trick corporate oligarchs have managed to pull off is convincing people that consolidated markets are "right-wing". Adam Smith is in the public domain, you can read it for free:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300

A core premise of the book is basically that competitive free markets are good, antitrust is important and government regulations have a tendency to favor cronies and impair competition.

The cronies, of course, don't actually like competitive free markets, so they pervert this as "government regulations including antitrust are always bad" whenever someone wants to do some trust busting. Which in turn sets up their own misconstruction as the straw man to knock down whenever they want to demonize competitive free markets in order to sustain or create regulations propping up their monopolies.

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

#432

Post by bigstrat2003 »

idle_zealot wrote: post #307
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?

Depends on the health of our institutions. In the US at least they're legally obligated not to by the highest law in the land. It gets ignored now, but it's a more promising path to privacy-preserving digital infrastructure than letting the private market handle it.

Unfortunately, the Constitution has been flagrantly ignored by the federal government for close to 100 years now, if not longer. Everything that FDR did was blatantly unconstitutional, but nobody stopped him, nor did they roll it back when he was gone. The Constitution has no real practical power to restrain the government if the people don't exercise their rights as voters to hold it accountable, and it is abundantly clear that the unconstitutional stuff the government gets up to is (largely) actually pretty popular.

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

#433

Post by zx8080 »

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.

Don't bullshit to us here, please.

Google scan billions people's emails (including very sensitive ones like medical record letters) to then show relevant ads AND sell the data to some partners (hundreds of them).

It's not called "public infra for free". It's the serious for-profit business. The surveillance capitalism on the march.

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

#434

Post by userbinator »

webdoodle wrote: post #146
TimByte wrote: post #131

This feels like one of those "security" changes that also happens to conveniently eliminate a lot of privacy-preserving workflows

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.

Total surveillance only works if the people are forced to wear the tracking collar

Better to call it a noose. Because you can also be entirely "unpersoned" online if you don't comply.

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

#435

Post by Gigachad »

flumes_whims_ wrote: post #84
arjie wrote: post #58

I went through it to register just now. No QR code required. Same flow as it has been for years: 1. Personal/Child/Business 2. First/Last 3. Pick email 4. Date of Birth 5. Backup email / Skip 6. Password 7. Enter phone number 8. Confirm with 2FA code 9. Done. I just made the email testregistrationflow@gmail.com and have since forgotten the password. So that’s one burned. But feel free to try testregistrationflow1@gma…

Probably depends on how "trust worthy" you seem to Google for them to trigger this requirement. Things like using Linux, using Firefox, using a VPN, etc.

Or it's just being A/B tested right now.

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

#436

Post by bigstrat2003 »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #192
AstroBen wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it an issue? I don't care what other people do with their email.

Because when most people use the one email host, they neglect all other users. Even my yahoo email is regarded as second grade citizen now. A hospital straight told me they refuse all yahoo addresses.

I mean, that's certainly retarded, but most businesses aren't that stupid in how they choose to run things. I've never, not even once, run into a business who cares what your email is. They will use any address you want, whether you have a known provider, or self host.

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

#437

Post by onetokeoverthe »

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.

[dead]

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

#438

Post by rc_kas »

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.…

I use proton, but it is not better than gmail. The user interface is explicitly inferior, and that is the main thing I care about.

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

#439

Post by alex1138 »

MichaelRo wrote: post #316
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…

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. This argument would have flown 30 years ago with Yahoo. Since then we had Uber pumping so much money into a losing business until it drew the competition bankrupt. And now we have AI pumping so much money into a losing business until they hopefully replicate Uber, only won't work and signs are all over the wall that…

(Please understand I'm being sarcastic. You should interpret this post as a joke)

Hi. I'm a VC bigwig and I'm very interested in purchasing your company. I, too, believe in Not Being Evil

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

#440

Post by BenjiWiebe »

vel0city wrote: post #400
s1mplicissimus wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. Outlook is the main source of deliverability headaches.
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