761–770 of 770 posts
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That headline number is garbage. It’s 550,000 people at any given time.
It's certainly not garbage, read it again: people who have "experienced homelessness at some point in their lives".
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What‘s your speciality in programming? Keeping all your software, and that includes the OS, up to date, is one of the most important aspects of personal security.
I also don’t have a WiFi password at home, if it matters. Of course, I don’t have Internet banking nor do I do much (if at all) money-related things with my phone, something tells me that makes me more secure than people who trust Apple and Google with their money (at least the local banks have to answer to the authorities). What’s your employment specialty that makes you trust Apple and Google?
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Why does email need to be a regulaty utility when there are other methods of communication?
Great question! The long version (if it’s patronising please skim forward, I’m writing as an explainer for anyone else that comes along): E-mail was originally a means to communicate informally between two participants over the Internet. In this early version of the system the message would leave your machine, go to your Mail server, then the recipients mail server, then their inbox. This would complete the transmiss…
"If one day you lose access to the account (in that you insert your password and the provider says no), you will lose access to your entire e-mail history"
This comes down to personal responsibility assuming you lost the password or even if it's the companies fault you should prepare for thus.
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> we need ideas like to 2FA to gain traction as widely as possible No, 2FA needs to die in a fire. Easily circumvented in most social attacks that actually matter, false sense of security, massive timewaster/usability-hell/pain in the butt, acts as a novel social/corporate/accessibility barrier to technology for a large number of previously unaffected groups, and poses a threat to software freedoms. There are many wa…
What are the other ways?
Then, all the "common sense" stuff: encourage use of password managers to discourage password re-use, having actual humans providing actual customer support when suspicious activity is flagged, companies educating about safe practices like banks do now (e.g. always call back to a trusted number), spam prevention at the ISP level, SSO authentication, VPN ...
At the very least there must be better ways to do two-factor authentication than what is the standard default.
And to top it all off, on many services, if you cant get all that to work, all you need is your "memorable word". *facepalm*
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> 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? Almost every free email service I've tried now requires a phone number to setup. Even protonmail required it for a brief while, although they now are back to captch…
Fastmail doesn't require a phone number for 2FA.
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It's certainly not garbage, read it again: people who have "experienced homelessness at some point in their lives".
Yes and that “experienced homelessness” figure includes people who moved in with friends, family, or relatives. The headline number is garbage.
Not garbage :)
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So you don't want Google to do anything or what is the purpose of all this verbiage? Which moreover, unjustly dismisses whole issue as "marginal benefit to thousands". Being able to keep/recover email address is so much more than a marginal benefit, and there are many more than thousands of homeless in the US alone.
Maybe Google can do something. Just it probably shouldn't be something that alters security measures for billions. I'm not dismissing the whole issue, just that it was presented in a way that's not actually conducive to helping the homeless. If you remove forced 2FA, you would be dismissing the hundreds of thousands (at minimum) of tech illiterate people out of the 1.5 billion users who would get cleaned out in the c…
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Google only allows non-U2F 2FA methods (like TOTP) to be enabled AFTER enabling a hardware U2F device. And signing up without a working mobile number is impossible. Anyone who says that's not true hasn't actually tried in the last several years.
I definitely had TOTP before I had U2F. I think you mean after enabling SMS 2FA, not U2F.
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> Practically, we need ideas like to 2FA to gain tractionas widely as possible, while realising that isn't everywhere. thats just one opinion on security. you see this world where google is an identity provider, and you prove your identity to it via a librarian or bank. i dont. an internet service should absolutely never require any form of government id nor separate network like cell.
You're failing to read my argument: for some people normal 2FA is too hard, and they need help from a local organisation. But not for ALL people. Just for the people who need it. You keep using TOTP and GPG email all you want, just don't get in the way of them getting basic services like social security.
shut the fuck up. of course someone named octect is the most braindamaged fuck on earth.
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There are over half a million homeless people in the USA right now. And only a quarter are "chronically homeless", meaning for ober a year or more than once. There are many, many people who will be homeless for a few months at some point during their lives.
There are 1.5+ billion gmail users. I don't have stats, but that intuitively means millions of vulnerable people who could be scammed or phished or whatnot because they would never think of using 2FA at all. Among those half a million homeless, how many use gmail and are unable to change for whatever reason? Among those, how many have issues with 2FA? Thus we advocate for increasing the vulnerability of millions to d…
The number of gmail users in the USA is obviously significantly lower, and the number of homeless or people in similar situations globally is obviously significantly higher.