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

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

#451

Post by scythe »

Bakary wrote: post #111
angry_octet wrote: post #19

This problem, and the not-my-problem responses, really highlight the self centered mindset we have encouraged. What if that homeless person was your substance-abusing sibling? A friend from school with mental health issues? We need to collectively take more responsibility for those in the worst situations. If you've every tried to teach an old person how to use 2FA you know it's an uphill battle. Using a fingerprint…

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.…

>In this case, we actually aren't being ambitious enough. Why are we having a system where we give out phones every 12 weeks to each homeless person? We'd probably save money for the program by developing some sort of dedicated device designed to be harder to steal or lose. Maybe a high-autonomy low-powered KaiOS smartphone that can be attached as a strap? It's not like the current devices are working.

You're putting the cart before the horse. The far simpler solution is for the government to provide the homeless with email. Now the auth can work however you want.

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

#453

Post by tayo42 »

tbagman wrote: post #309
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.…

Homelessness in the US is a complex problem. I found the Soft White Underbelly interview series by Mark Laita insightful when learning more about it: https://www.softwhiteunderbelly.com Mark spent considerable time earning the trust of LA's skid row population – a large roadside tent community – and has a series of 1:1 interviews with a slice of the population, exploring their histories, challenges, preferences, and…

I have a feeling that the issue isn't homelessness really, but the kinds of people that end up homeless cause problems anyway. Someone won't stop being violent or committing crime because they got moved from a tent to a studio.

I don't think the temporally homeless, like someone down on their luck. makes up the issues people have with homeless. You see some crazy person, then you see that person is homeless, your answer to that is "oh give them a studio apartment!" and not lets help them with their issue. Police should be policing violent people, for some reason instead of that we want to build homes in the middle of nowhere and drop them off their. They're still going to cause issues.

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

#454

Post by [deleted] »

Bakary wrote: post #111
angry_octet wrote: post #19

This problem, and the not-my-problem responses, really highlight the self centered mindset we have encouraged. What if that homeless person was your substance-abusing sibling? A friend from school with mental health issues? We need to collectively take more responsibility for those in the worst situations. If you've every tried to teach an old person how to use 2FA you know it's an uphill battle. Using a fingerprint…

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.…

[deleted]

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

#455

Post by pfooti »

edgecasestdio wrote: post #296
arbuge wrote: post #181

You lose your entire Google account if you lose your 2FA device or number (assuming it's a phone number), for any reason. Even if your Google account is set up with a non-Google email address which you still have access to, and you still know the correct password. And there's nobody you can reach at Google about it, no appeals process, nothing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33098261

I verify that this is true at the time of posting. In previous volunteer work at a non-profit run by university students, the organization assigned a free Gmail account to each executive. Each year, we ran into a problem where the executives would change, and we needed to transfer the Gmail account to the new person. Problems would happen when the new person tried to log in to the account. Since the login was from an…

FWIW, if you're the administrator of the organization, you can disable 2FA from the admin console for that user's next login. I've done this a few times for similar reasons.

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

#456

Post by bgro »

Does anyone else notice old accounts that were working fine in the past randomly get demanded to enter your phone number for verification. "We detected unusual activity" is such an obvious lie.

When setting up thunderbird, I've had multiple Google accounts lie about suspicious activity and demand I go through about 10 captcha checks and enter my old password and answer my security questions and verify my phone number. After passing all of that without error, they STILL won't let me log in with a blanket statement about security.

Why oh why would they ask users to jump through extreme hoops just looking for any possible questionable failure to point to as an excuse, but still reject you after passing everything? If you're not going to let people use their account, farming free AI detection and personal information out of them doesn't seem like a legitimate tactic one should be doing.

They discriminate against some phone numbers too. They have to be in whatever they think the correct country is, they often can't be VOIP or VOIP related, and there's unknown blacklists of some famous numbers sometimes.

What happens when we run out of phone numbers? I won't be surprised when accounts start getting banned for "sharing" or "ban evading" phone numbers (aka getting a new phone number for any reason) because it screws up their ad tracking of you... Or they'll force you to first log into an account in order to delete it even though it belongs to somebody else. Or your new phone number you bought specifically for authenticating a separate account is banned (just like voip number) because a previous user was banned using it.

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

#457

Post by webdoodle »

I went cellphone-less 2 years ago, and have experienced this first hand. I've been locked out of my Gmail, Ebay, LinkedIn, and other services multiple times. I was unable to apply for government services either, until I finally found a decent soul that used there own phone to register me. But they shouldn't have needed to do that, and we shouldn't be required to have a spy phone just to be part of society.

These spy phones and the apps they peddle have become a plaque upon humanity. They use addiction and coercion (denied services) to keep you under there spell. The worst part is that they are being forced upon our children, way worse than the tobacco industry ever tried.

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

#458

Post by 8note »

tsimionescu wrote: post #437
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the service is truly vital it should be provided by the government, not Google. The government would also be free to set security policies and provide support at the level and cost demanded by the public. It is not and should not be the role of a private enterprise to act as a backstop for the fabric of society when it is not in their interests or their customers' overall interests.

The vital services are provided by the government, but require an email address. Some people have trusted Google to be their email provider, and Google is failing some of those people by denying them access unnecessarily.

If vital services rely on email, email is a vital service

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

#459

Post by a_JIT_pie »

valenterry wrote: post #220
judge2020 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely vividly remember needing it a few years ago, but right now I can try to sign up and it says "Mobile Number (optional)" (Maybe that's based on some security heuristics).

Yeah and it also only works on your phone (or if you know how to make Google think you are on your phone) and in certain countries. All to my knowledge and based on my tests.

I thought the same but I just tried on firefox desktop (Windows) and spun up a new google account with email, password, fake first+last name and fake bday. Really, I was expecting to be stopped at "Phone Number required" but it is indeed optional.

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

#460

Post by yamtaddle »

the_only_law wrote: post #62
stevesearer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad helps people navigate the system to find housing. Recent story was a 65yo + veteran living in a shelter. They hadn’t started collecting social security due to some debts and was worried it would ALL be garnished. After explaining that veterans get expedited in line for housing and that they would still get almost all of their SS, they have applied for it and should be housed soon. It doesn’t surprise me at all…

> They hadn’t started collecting social security due to some debts and was worried it would ALL be garnished. Is this common? I knew a guy who had the same mindset. I ended up paying him in cash for some work, he was convinced that if he made any money in a traditional role it would be instantly garnished.

Real, actual people exist who turn down raises because they're convinced it'd cause them to lose money, because they don't understand how marginal tax rates work. I don't mean low-income earners who may in fact lose out or not gain from a raise due to benefits cliffs, I mean people earning low-six-figures who think if their pay goes any higher "my tax rate will go up and I'll lose money" and are weirdly resistant to being convinced otherwise.
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