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There was a post a while back around poor and homeless people encountering exactly this problem on a regular basis. Lots of people in the comments were incredib
by crooked-v 4y ago
There was a post a while back around poor and homeless people encountering exactly this problem on a regular basis. Lots of people in the comments were incredibly dismissive and sometimes actively malign about it.
Edit: One suggestion from me would be to try and start the dead phone connected to power but with the battery physically removed (assuming it's removable). That might bypass whatever issue it's having and let it start up.
- Gigachad 4y agoProblem is that support people mistakenly resetting account auth when the attacker calls up and social engineers them is a bigger and more common issue than people’s only device dying. Not to say that’s not a thing that happens, but it’s a smaller of the two problems.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoIt's a smaller of the two problems for the company. If you are really poor, losing access to your online life because you couldn't pay your phone bill or something can be a huge, huge problem. I have been homeless. I'm not currently. But this is an extremely stressful situation that could do all kinds of damage to my life if I can't get it sorted.
- fncivivue7 4y agoWe're talking about hackers getting access to users accounts, that's not a Google problem, that's an everyone problem.
- Gigachad 4y agoBack at the start of 2FA rolling out it used to be an absolutely massive issue where the attackers would call up support and tell a sob story and have the account reset and in the control of the attackers. As a user it doesn't matter how well you manage your own security when that can happen.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoYes, I am well aware of that. I have been on Hacker News since 2009 under my Mz handle and I have a Certificate in GIS from UC-Riverside, the most respected GIS program in the world at the time that I attended (2002, IIRC). I don't try to crow about being some kind of tech genius because for the HN crowd I'm not. But I'm not poor due to being mentally retarded or something. I have an incurable medical condition as does one of my adult sons.
- Waterluvian 4y agoPerfectly average geographers on HN represent! I feel like seeing another GISer in the tech world is like seeing someone from your country while on vacation. You’ve just got to say hi because it feels so rare. Edit: thanks! Solved. I’ve deleted this part of the comment because I always feel very socially awkward and afraid I’ll make others feel awkward.
- password4321 4y agohttps://doreenmichele.blogspot.com https://doreenmichele.blogspot.com
- alpentmil 4y agoSorry for the pain If you have been in hn so long you do know the numerous times people have lost accounts by not having backup to 2FA. TOTP is the only option.
- crooked-v 4y agoI'm sure plenty of people would rather live with the small chance of a hacker even wanting to gain access to their account than the very large chance of eventually losing access to the account entirely.
- bawolff 4y agoAlthough they probably wouldn't want to live with all their emails being discarded because gmail becomes so easy to hack and everyone assumes gmail accounts are spammers.
- Friday0722 4y agoHuge amounts of spam already originate from gmail addresses, so I don't think this is a good example. That's not to say that I think security should be weakened, though - it should not, but for other reasons.
- yellowapple 4y agoI already assume all mail I receive is spam, Gmail or no.
- charcircuit 4y agoLosing access because someone stole your account is even worse because of how much access a Google account gives someone.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoHonestly, I would suspect that for many homeless people, the "losing access" part is much, much worse than "someone else having access".
- kelnos 4y agoI think the GP's point was that the "someone else having access" bit affects everyone, not just homeless people, if the company makes it easier to reset/regain access to accounts. Bottom line, though, is that these companies should be required to find a way to maintain that high level of security, but also have a process so anyone who loses account access can get it back in a reasonable amount of time.
- nradov 4y agoOnce a hacker gets access they immediately change the password, and then the homeless person loses access anyway.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoHaving spent nearly six years homeless and also had a college class from SFSU in Homelessness and Public Policy and having written about homelessness for years, I can assure you that for the vast majority of homeless people, losing their physical phone or being unable to pay for it is a much bigger problem than other people wanting to break into their accounts and steal their identity or some such.
- katbyte 4y agofor the rest of us having a hacker gain access to our accounts and stealing money or scamming others is a far greater risk. And for google a far more common occurrence. There is a reason there are so many safeguards in place and its because hackers are trying all day every day to break in and steal identities and money. Homeless people don't need to use 2fa if they are so unconcerned with someone stealing their account or identity. For the rest of us 2fa and making it hard to steal accounts is 100% a must.
- bawolff 4y agoI sympathise that this would be really difficult for homeless people. But i am not homeless. I'm sorry if this is cold, but should i have to have an insecure account because homeless people exist? Its not like google has a monopoly on email service providers.
- DoreenMichele 4y agobut should i have to have an insecure account because homeless people exist? No, of course not. This is like when people who drive get chuffed about pedestrians wanting their lives to work and acting like "Well, if we do anything for you, then my life will fall apart." As if we can only build a world that works for cars or build a world that works for non-drivers and the other camp just has to accept a sucky life and all kinds of flak for not liking it. What in the hell makes you think someone must get screwed and it might as well be those who already have the least? No one is asking you to get screwed here.
- bawolff 4y agoBecause the topic of this thread is suggesting google should reduce security for everyone. You can't have google letting people back in their account unverified if they ask nicely not affect other people with accounts.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Beltalowda 4y ago> the topic of this thread is suggesting google should reduce security for everyone I don't really see that anywhere; I think you're jumping to conclusions. Every system will need to have some escape hatches, whether that's a governmental bureaucratic process or a Google account recovery process. Because no matter how well you design a system some folks are going to fall outside of it because the world is complex and the number of possible situations are too many to capture. "Yes, but it's only 1%" – yes, but it's 1% for system A, and a different 1% for system B, etc. and it all adds up. All of this is why things like appeals exist in many processes, and why we have judges in addition to mountains of laws. None of this is perfect by any means and there's lots that can be improved, but at least there's the recognition that The System isn't perfect – even if it's more symbolic than anything else at times. If I lose access to my HN account then that might be annoying, but fundamentally it's not really a big deal, at least not for me. But some accounts/services are connected to all sorts of things and much more important than some HN account and connect to "real life" in much more complex and impactful ways. You can't on one hand have a service wanting to become central in people's lives but on the other hand also just shrug at the edge cases and pretend it's not your responsibility when people get screwed over.
- loco5niner 4y agoIt's not just a company problem. Having someone hack my google account then getting access to my bank account would be just as bad on a personal level. My whole live is managed online too.
- crooked-v 4y agoThe solution to that is to make the increasingly intrusive security processes an opt in, not to completely write off anyone who can't reliably keep a particular physical device on their person and working indefinitely.
- Gigachad 4y agoIt used to be opt in until the icloud hacking saga where the public demanded something be done. So it was decided users want mandatory security by default. Almost all of these services provide backup codes you can write down on paper as well. Sure, some people are going to lose their only device and the bit of paper, but at that point if you have literally nothing to identify yourself with, it's going to be hard to provide a secure service to you.
- btilly 4y agoIt can still be opt out with a fallback on the old approach of security questions. The name of your first pet, your favorite teacher, etc. It doesn't matter how much in general 2FA works out better for most people, there are lots of people for whom it is not viable. They know who they are. Give them an option that doesn't make their life worse.
- alasdair_ 4y ago>Give them an option that doesn't make their life worse. This is the sort of thing that really should be handled by government
- Friday0722 4y agoThat might help for a certain subset of people in this scenario, but there are also people with subtle mental conditions that, while capable of living productive lives, are also unable to deal with MFA. There are also the elderly and non tech-literate.
- kelnos 4y ago
- phpisthebest 4y agoThe problem here is there are ways to allow for both but they are labor intensive and Google (and other tech companies) do not like things that do not scale because it cost them $$$, they prefer no customer service and automation using Security as a cover for their poor practices. In this instance if they need a code why is there not a process to hell use US Mail and send a paper code to the registered address of the account owner? Analog is often the solution to these type of problems
- marcus_holmes 4y agoTying someone's identity to their phone number is not the answer, though. I have this at the moment - I'm travelling, moving country every few weeks, so I need a new SIM card and phone number every few weeks. My phone number is temporary at best. I'd massively prefer to take the risk of my identity being stolen than constantly fighting security measures that assume people never change their phone number (or country of residence, etc).
- katbyte 4y agoYou don't need to use a phone number for google. I don't have a phone number attached to my google account at all due to the risk of sim swapping despite asking my carrier to lock it, instead i have multiple hardware keys and devices + backup codes in a safe deposit box.
- gibolt 4y agoYou do for lots of other things (and many people have it for Google as well). Most banking or payment, a random selection of apps that decide you now need verification, new apps in the new country...
- crooked-v 4y agoIf Google ever thinks you're doing something suspicious, they'll just make you authenticate using a physical device instead, by way of Android functionality they never told you about or asked you about using. Hopefully they won't demand you authenticate on a device that's defunct.
- zelphirkalt 4y agoMaybe, since Google wants to be that important to people's lives, they should be force to have representatives, to whom one can go and have things sorted. Needs to check your id and then phones home (...) to get your account unlocked.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> support people There are no "support people". Let's stop trying to humanise a giant, hostile algorithm.
- donmcronald 4y ago> There was a post a while back around poor and homeless people encountering exactly this problem on a regular basis. Lots of people in the comments were incredibly dismissive and sometimes actively malign about it. Even worse than that, they're often connecting from public IPs that are "suspicious" which causes automated systems to treat them more harshly. In Canada it's gotten to the point where you need an internet connected device to participate in the most important systems; government, banking, etc.. It's very sad that device can't be supplied by the libraries. They have them, but big tech discriminates against anything that's not a personal computing device.
- phpisthebest 4y agoIn the US if you are under 135 percent of the Federal Poverty Level you qualify for a free Mobile Phone with internet service. I am surprised Canada does not have a program like that
- nszceta 4y agoThat program is not available in every State iirc
- doubled112 4y agoWild guess: Bell, Rogers, and Telus probably wouldn't allow it because they couldn't milk Canadians for as much then
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- password4321 4y agoLibrarian's Letter to Google Security https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304320
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoSee also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33120534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33120534
- walrus01 4y agoI think a part of the problem is that the US doesn't have a vast and widespread ecosystem of cheap, relatively simple, slightly rugged android phones like a developing nation market does. Go look at what you can buy for an Android phone if you exchange 100 USD to rupees in Rawalpindi Pakistan for instance. Now imagine you drop your phone or screw up its hardware somehow and want to get it repaired, you can probably fix it at a local repair shop (some 1-man operation in a tiny retail stall) for $20-30 max with basic hand tools. Those guys might have a collection of pieces of the same model phone you have, or the ability to take 4 dead phones and mix/match pieces to make 2 working ones out of them and then re-sell them, etc.
- denkmoon 4y agoWhile we were all watching CCP implement their social credit system, big tech gave us one while our gaze was elsewhere. These algorithmic systems can pretty quickly make you an unperson in our society.
- soco 4y agoTheoretically one is implemented by state's request and the other happens while the state is busy looking away. Yay for freedom but when you're at the receiving end of the digital stick, is the difference really significant?
- ImHereToVote 4y agoIt stings less when an unaccountable group of technocrats ruin your life for some reason apparently.
- gnicholas 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33120534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33120534
- nathan_f77 4y agoIs there anything I can do to help poor and homeless people with technology? I'm in New Zealand and I would like to find some more ways to help people.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoLow hanging fruit: donate old but still usable tech to local programs that pass such out. Volunteering at local organizations that do such work is another possibility. I wrote a piece called So You Want to do a Website to Help the Homeless that might interest you: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/05/so-you-want-to-do-website-to-help.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/05/so-you-want... The local police department does -- or did at one time -- pass out flyers I made listing online resources for the homeless and there is an edited version of those flyers here: http://www.eclogiselle.com/2020/10/free-and-custom-flyers-as-lightweight.html http://www.eclogiselle.com/2020/10/free-and-custom-flyers-as... I tried to establish some kind of homeless smartphone project. It never went anywhere. If you want to read what little I did as food for thought for what you might do, you can start here: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/04/project-homeless-smartphone.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/04/project-hom... If tech is your thing, coolios. Run with that. Better to do something than to do nothing. But if you really want to make a dent in homelessness, my research suggests that this is mostly a housing supply/housing affordability issue. We aren't building enough new housing and what we do build tends to be too big and tends to require a car to make life work, which is an additional big expense and -- at least for some people -- a logistical issue even if they had the money. Some handicapped people simply don't drive. Some seniors simply don't drive anymore. Etc. So if you really want to work on homelessness, I would encourage you to educate yourself about housing issues in your neck of the woods and try to get involved. I write about my ideas about what I would like to see for the US here if you want to look that over: https://projectsro.blogspot.com/ https://projectsro.blogspot.com/