Ask HN: Gmail account security

Or someone grabbed your backpack.

I understand why Google wants 2FA - it gives them a stronger claim to not provide support. Personally I don't want 2FA - I use strong passwords, and I don't trust them to provide support if my device is lost. Imagine a house fire, for instance, and losing not only your possessions but also basically all your online accounts. I have password backups, nobody has device backups.

If you don't mind sharing, what is the bug?

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My comment originally read as follows, 2 people downvoted it.

>I work at Google and recently tried to file a bug about the calculator embedded in search. It was dastardly difficult to find how to file the ticket. It took me maybe an hour. A better system for filing tickets internally and for filing and triaging tickets from external users would be a tremendous asset for Google.

I didn't work for Google directly but I did work via another company (Tech Mahindra) so I am saying this as somewhat of an outsider compared with you.

You mention a bug about the calculator embedded in search: could you give me the details, and I can try to get it solved via my Google contacts.

For context, in my personal experience as a user and engineer, the Google embedded calculator is the best product among all of Google's many offerings and works flawlessly for all inputs. I find it breathtaking. For example, here is how many feet times pounds you can turn 3000 Calories into:

https://ibb.co/qJ0Qz0L

it worked on my first attempt. What does this mean? Well here's a foot-pound: https://ibb.co/N3WCxYV

If you weigh 180 pounds you're not climbing Mt. Everest twice (29,032′) without burning 3000 Calories. (Even at 100% efficiency).

Try getting a result like that from any other calculator (though Wolfram Alpha gets close).

What's the bug you tried to report? (What did you enter, what is the correct output and why is it correct, and what is the returned output and why is it incorrect?)

I've never seen it make a mistake so far, and I use it heavily for all sorts of things. (Sometimes I force Google to show me the calculator by typing = at the end of my Google query.) Since the product works so well for me personally, I'd love to understand what problem you have with it.

Xoogler here - actually we used to say "if you are not buying advertising from us, Google can't help you at all".

And just recently I am great example of that. I used to have a Gsuite account at $6/per month for 3 years, then decided to give up on it b/c I wasn't using it. But unfortunately the domain expired before I could properly disconnect it and cancel my account. You can probably already imagine at this point what kind of hell I went thru with "google help". Ultimately I had someone from India called me 3 times to explain - the questionnaire they sent me has to be answer in specific format: each question has to have one paragraph space, then tab (9), then my answer. I kid you not! I spent 3 weeks, been transferred over email ticket about 10 times and every time they told me the same thing. Even if I did exactly how they want it - I guess email was automatically eating up the tabulate key and replacing it with spaces. Eventually a buddy of mine who still works there (different dept) told me customer support forwards your email to some account that parses message automatically, and they cannot even change one single letter in your message. Even when explaining them on the phone that I am following up with their stupid protocol of one new line, then tab, then my answer, then next line must be second question, their program must be messing it up.

Eventually I gave up on their customer support. It took me/them six months of chargeback disputes for $6 each month until my account must have popped out on someones screen and Google employee gave me 3.5 seconds of their time to click "close this account".