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After I deleted my personal google accounts, I was left with work google accounts I would have to maintain. I have been bitten by this problem more than once,

After I deleted my personal google accounts, I was left with work google accounts I would have to maintain. I have been bitten by this problem more than once, resulting in: - losing some accounts forever - losing temporarily access to accounts, preventing me to work for some time - forcing me to go through recovery procedures with tedious docs and hostile UI, wasting my work time I eventually found a trick: buy 3 yubikeys, attach each of them to all your accounts, have one on my key ring, one in my desk, one in my bag. Now, the only thing google ever ask is the yubikey, no matter where I connect from, and I always have one on me. It doesn't require a smarphone, a phone number or an email. I'm still trying to get rid of as many google accounts as I can, though. Personally, I'm very caution about any dependency on google services, and professionally, adamant to avoid dependency as much as it's reasonably possible. I used to be a google fan 20 years ago. Between the bad user support, the privacy invasion, the decreasing search quality, the monopolistic practices, the censorship, the DMCA situation, the product cancellations, the term of use / price switcheroo and those shenanigans, they are consistently destroying my faith in them. But they will not pay the price for it. First, they have enough money to make mistake for a long time without even noticing. Second, they will pull off a Microsoft PR stunt in 15 years, and everybody will forget and forgive.

mgkimsal 3y ago
Somewhat unrelated, but I got one of those Google Titan fobs. The one time I needed it to work - authenticating from a new-to-me- computer - it just... didn't work. I plugged it in and... nothing. No popups, no reaction at all. Thought it was broken, but it worked back on another computer when I tried it later. No idea how that this future is supposed to be better. Perhaps titans are just duds? A couple yubikey-focused friends have used theirs for years, but I wonder if they only talk up their successes, and don't mention the failures?
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  Yukibey based workflow are finicky. Sometimes, I need to try several times and reload the page or unplug/plug back for it to work. Sometimes, I need to switch key. It's like arch linux. Everybody tells there is never a problem with it, because, well, geeks lie. Doesn't mean it's not useful. I have a part of the article "Why not tell people to "simply" use pyenv, poetry or anaconda" (https://www.bitecode.dev/p/why-not-tell-people-to-simply-use https://www.bitecode.dev/p/why-not-tell-people-to-simply-use) talking about this lying problem. But I probably should make it a separate article, because that's an independent issue in itself.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    I use Yubikeys (on my Arch Linux machines..) - only problem I've had was soft-bricking one by entering the wrong password (GPG passphrase) more than my max. (Ironically while setting up another as a spare - with a different password, then mixed them up.)
- Spooky23 3y ago
  My company uses these tokens and buys Yubikey or Titans depending on price. They are pretty similar although Yubi has more features (that we don’t use) I don’t recall having a failure over about 3000 devices. Usually the issue is people lose them. You have to have a system that makes sense to use them successfully. The upthread guy is talking about multiple accounts lost forever, etc. Sounds like a mess. The same problems exist on other platforms. Ever support challenge response tokens? Lol.
  - skinkestek 3y ago
    My YubiKey has failed me a number of times. I have had to register it again and again. Lately there has been less problems but I have no idea why.
- vel0city 3y ago
  The only time I've had frustrations with my yubikeys is not being able to redirect them in some RDP sessions when logging into an account that's wanting a yubikey to authenticate. Otherwise, my keyring one that I use the most (original NFC) is nearing a decade old and never fails. I use it almost exclusively in Windows and ChromeOS.

mgkimsal 3y ago

Somewhat unrelated, but I got one of those Google Titan fobs. The one time I needed it to work - authenticating from a new-to-me- computer - it just... didn't work. I plugged it in and... nothing. No popups, no reaction at all. Thought it was broken, but it worked back on another computer when I tried it later. No idea how that this future is supposed to be better. Perhaps titans are just duds? A couple yubikey-focused friends have used theirs for years, but I wonder if they only talk up their successes, and don't mention the failures?

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Yukibey based workflow are finicky. Sometimes, I need to try several times and reload the page or unplug/plug back for it to work. Sometimes, I need to switch key. It's like arch linux. Everybody tells there is never a problem with it, because, well, geeks lie. Doesn't mean it's not useful. I have a part of the article "Why not tell people to "simply" use pyenv, poetry or anaconda" (https://www.bitecode.dev/p/why-not-tell-people-to-simply-use https://www.bitecode.dev/p/why-not-tell-people-to-simply-use) talking about this lying problem. But I probably should make it a separate article, because that's an independent issue in itself.
- OJFord 3y ago
  I use Yubikeys (on my Arch Linux machines..) - only problem I've had was soft-bricking one by entering the wrong password (GPG passphrase) more than my max. (Ironically while setting up another as a spare - with a different password, then mixed them up.)
Spooky23 3y ago
My company uses these tokens and buys Yubikey or Titans depending on price. They are pretty similar although Yubi has more features (that we don’t use) I don’t recall having a failure over about 3000 devices. Usually the issue is people lose them. You have to have a system that makes sense to use them successfully. The upthread guy is talking about multiple accounts lost forever, etc. Sounds like a mess. The same problems exist on other platforms. Ever support challenge response tokens? Lol.
- skinkestek 3y ago
  My YubiKey has failed me a number of times. I have had to register it again and again. Lately there has been less problems but I have no idea why.
vel0city 3y ago
The only time I've had frustrations with my yubikeys is not being able to redirect them in some RDP sessions when logging into an account that's wanting a yubikey to authenticate. Otherwise, my keyring one that I use the most (original NFC) is nearing a decade old and never fails. I use it almost exclusively in Windows and ChromeOS.