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One of my GMail accounts was fairly recently disabled due to Google not recognizing any device logging into the account. I had to dig up some old Android phone
by bitL 7y ago
One of my GMail accounts was fairly recently disabled due to Google not recognizing any device logging into the account. I had to dig up some old Android phone to even attempt recovery which was unsuccessful. After I involved some of my Google contacts, the account was back within 2 days, yet while my phone can log in, none of my other computers are allowed to log in. I am guessing something in their ML system went seriously wrong in some corner cases (in my case, accessing the same account from >10 computers/phones/tablets on different operating systems via Firefox with private browsing, likely triggering their anomaly detection).
- shadowgovt 7y agoYeah, unfortunately, that smells a lot like a coordinated attack on a specific user's account. Do you have the enhanced security features turned on? Google's systems trust the logins more if you have to 2-factor them against a phone or somesuch.
- bitL 7y agoNo enhanced security, I travel a lot abroad with different phones and can't handle SMS or some type of authenticator reliably. I completely get it being flagged, I even wrote ML/DL-based anomaly detector for mobile stuff myself, but it really gets in the way, so I switched my primary account over to ProtonMail.
- shadowgovt 7y agoI hear that. :) I had the opposite problem not too long ago; was away for a relative's wedding and had my phone die during the trip. Even after replacing the phone, getting back into my Google account on the new phone was a chore, because the phone that died was all my trusted devices (2FA key holder and receiver of phone calls for verification at the same time). Oops. :-p
- bitL 7y agoYeah, it feels like walking on eggshells these days wrt security... Either paranoid, or locked out.
- a1369209993 7y ago> was all my trusted devices (2FA key holder and receiver of phone calls for verification at the same time). That's not actually two factor authentication anymore. Also that's pretty typical of 'two' factor authentication systems IME.