3 ms·

I'd be very surprised if I came to the US (not that I'd ever want to do that) and Google blocked my account there just because it is far away from my home locat

by lucb1e 5y ago

I'd be very surprised if I came to the US (not that I'd ever want to do that) and Google blocked my account there just because it is far away from my home location. People do travel, appearing far away is not uncommon, especially during a holiday season between Christmas and New Year's. It didn't have a problem logging in with the same laptop from another place in Germany earlier that day. There are surely more factors, but the deciding one here seemed to be the geoip. Perhaps anyone here can prove me wrong and confirm it's merely the distance that does it? Did anyone travel between two top ~50 HDI countries (not anything Google employees would consider putting on a blacklist, e.g. rich EU countries, Australia, USA, etc.) and had their login blocked with no way to access it?

gruez 5y ago
> I'd be very surprised if I came to the US (not that I'd ever want to do that) and Google blocked my account there just because it is far away from my home location. People do travel, appearing far away is not uncommon, especially during a holiday season between Christmas and New Year's. 1. even though people travel, I suspect it's far more likely that a random russian IP accessing an american account is because the account got hacked. at the very least there's a good enough chance of an account compromise to request additional verification. Obviously locking the account entirely (effectively banning it) is unwarranted, but I don't think "well people travel" is a valid excuse to ignore a red flag. 2. google probably considers far more factors than just geoip. it probably also checks whether you're logging in from a new device or not (via cookies and/or fingerprinting), and whether your other devices have moved to the new country (eg. android phone or chrome browser on your laptop). I wouldn't be surprised if it scanned your email to see if you have an itinerary booked or your search history to see if you looked up russian vacation related queries.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  "whether you're logging in from a new device or not (via cookies and/or fingerprinting)" Every login is a new 'device' because I don't have Google tracking me across the web. Fingerprinting, sure it can see I'm a firefox on linux with the usual browser features and fonts. All is as it usually is, nothing suspicious in this category. "whether your other devices have moved to the new country" I don't have any device pinging the mothership about my every movement so that can't be taken into account. "I wouldn't be surprised if it scanned your email" lol and I definitely don't have email from google, so that's also not a factor. I also highly doubt they're actually this clever, especially over six years ago. Huge amount of work to parse the email formats of the thousands of popular travel companies from around the world in fifty different languages.

by lucb1e 5y ago

gruez 5y ago

> I'd be very surprised if I came to the US (not that I'd ever want to do that) and Google blocked my account there just because it is far away from my home location. People do travel, appearing far away is not uncommon, especially during a holiday season between Christmas and New Year's. 1. even though people travel, I suspect it's far more likely that a random russian IP accessing an american account is because the account got hacked. at the very least there's a good enough chance of an account compromise to request additional verification. Obviously locking the account entirely (effectively banning it) is unwarranted, but I don't think "well people travel" is a valid excuse to ignore a red flag. 2. google probably considers far more factors than just geoip. it probably also checks whether you're logging in from a new device or not (via cookies and/or fingerprinting), and whether your other devices have moved to the new country (eg. android phone or chrome browser on your laptop). I wouldn't be surprised if it scanned your email to see if you have an itinerary booked or your search history to see if you looked up russian vacation related queries.

lucb1e 5y ago
"whether you're logging in from a new device or not (via cookies and/or fingerprinting)" Every login is a new 'device' because I don't have Google tracking me across the web. Fingerprinting, sure it can see I'm a firefox on linux with the usual browser features and fonts. All is as it usually is, nothing suspicious in this category. "whether your other devices have moved to the new country" I don't have any device pinging the mothership about my every movement so that can't be taken into account. "I wouldn't be surprised if it scanned your email" lol and I definitely don't have email from google, so that's also not a factor. I also highly doubt they're actually this clever, especially over six years ago. Huge amount of work to parse the email formats of the thousands of popular travel companies from around the world in fifty different languages.