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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

It'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.

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It'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.

Losing access because someone stole your account is even worse because of how much access a Google account gives someone.

Honestly, I would suspect that for many homeless people, the "losing access" part is much, much worse than "someone else having access".

I 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.

Once a hacker gets access they immediately change the password, and then the homeless person loses access anyway.

Having 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.

for 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.

The issue though is 2FA is now required. That's literally the whole reason of this post.

according to google you can turn it off: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1064203?hl=en&co=...

Kind of. The problem is that even when 2FA is disabled, Google's security panopticon will sometimes insist on additional verification anyway, even if you know your password, if it thinks something is suspicious.

If you don't have a verification method—or cannot access it—Google will literally just lock you out.

I have personally experienced this on accounts I don't access regularly.

Were you so harsh on self-entrepreneurs that came here crying out loud because Google did shut down their developer account for some unrelated payement error on a linked account?

I hope so because otherwise you are just discriminating people based on their wealth. But praise lord dollar that if you ever fall from your status you won't find pedantic guys like you when seeking for help.

There's a recurrent thread of posters blaming everybody else for having issues with the big companies, because big companies cannot make mistakes otherwise they wouldn't be "big", right.

To be fair to the commenter, the company implementing the system is to blame. I can understand why Google (or other businesses) would prioritize customers concerned about security over the homeless. One is a more profitable customer.

Does that make it right? No. Does that mean people won’t get hurt? No. Plenty of ink on HN has been spilt about how companies act according to a profit motive, and often not in societies best interest. Recognizing this doesn’t make you complicit.

For a careless user, or one who does not bother to learn about the risks, having one's account stolen is more of a danger. On the other hand, for a reasonably cautious user with a basic understanding of the risks involved, and whose life varies at all from predictable (affluent) norms, losing account access due to Google's protective measures is a bigger danger – and more of a hassle to guard against – because these protections are so easily triggered

We're talking about hackers getting access to users accounts, that's not a Google problem, that's an everyone problem.

Back 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.

Yes, 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.

Perfectly 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.

https://doreenmichele.blogspot.com

Sorry 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.

I'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.

Although 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.

Huge 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.

I already assume all mail I receive is spam, Gmail or no.

I 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.

but 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.

Because 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.

> 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.

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