Hacker News Reader

Comment by poglet | Hacker News Reader

Enforcing MFA or registering with phone numbers wasn't required on email accounts back in the day.

Irrelevant. Gengar obviously registered a phone number at some point. It's one thing to ask for help, but another for him to be outraged over something that was and in his control.

No, you don't understand. Associating a phone number with google didn't used to be a MFA/verification decision, back when the web was more sane. Now, google considers it the most vital form of authentication. So it's completely possible to have added a phone number back when it wasn't used as a security tool, and then google arbitrarily decides to make it a security tool without their consent. That is not the user's fault or in their control.

> That is not the user's fault or in their control.

What about the part about forgetting which number it is? Maybe I'm just biased, having had the same number for the last 15 years? I know I had a few numbers when I was living in other countries and those are still written somewhere but of course no longer accessible or under my control.

Still though.... well I'm on both sides of this lol

I used to have the same number for 10 years, but then I moved to a different country, so now some of my 2FA is tied to that old number and changing it requires physical travel to regulated institution.

>So it's completely possible to have added a phone number back when it wasn't used as a security tool, and then google arbitrarily decides to make it a security tool without their consent.

I had not considered that; thank you.

I made this account 14 years ago when I was a teenager. I didn't even know my YouTube was tied to this Hotmail Google Account until the past week or that it even existed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com