'An Example of a Very Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects' (vortex.com) 185
Time magazine once described Lauren Weinstein as an internet-policy expert and privacy advocate. Also a long-time Slashdot reader, he now brings this cautionary blog post "to share with you an example of what Google account recovery failure means to the people involved..."
In this case it's a 90-year-old woman who "For at least the last decade... was just using the stored password to login and check her email," according to an email Weinstein received: When her ancient iPad finally died, she tried to add the gmail account to her new replacement iPad. However, she couldn't remember the password in order to login.... I don't know if you've ever attempted to contact a human being at google tech support, but it's pretty much impossible. They also don't seem to have an exception mechanism for cases like this.
So she had to abandon hopes of viewing the google photos of her (now deceased) beloved pet, her contacts, her email subscriptions, reminders, calendar entries, etc... [I]t's difficult to know what to say to someone like this when she asks "what can we do now" and there are no options... It's tough to explain that your treasured photos can't be retrieved because you're not the sort of user that Google had in mind.
Weinstein adds "this is by no means the worst such case I've seen — not even close, unfortunately." I've been discussing these issues with Google for many years. I've suggested "ombudspeople", account escalation and appeal procedures that ordinary people could understand, and many other concepts. They've all basically hit the brick wall of Google suggesting that at their scale, nothing can be done about such "edge" cases.
Here's Google's page for providing an alternate recovery email address and phone number. Unfortunately, the 90-year-old woman's account "was created so long ago that she didn't need to provide any 'recovery' contacts at that time," according to the email, "or she may have used a landline phone number that's long been cancelled now..."
In this case it's a 90-year-old woman who "For at least the last decade... was just using the stored password to login and check her email," according to an email Weinstein received: When her ancient iPad finally died, she tried to add the gmail account to her new replacement iPad. However, she couldn't remember the password in order to login.... I don't know if you've ever attempted to contact a human being at google tech support, but it's pretty much impossible. They also don't seem to have an exception mechanism for cases like this.
So she had to abandon hopes of viewing the google photos of her (now deceased) beloved pet, her contacts, her email subscriptions, reminders, calendar entries, etc... [I]t's difficult to know what to say to someone like this when she asks "what can we do now" and there are no options... It's tough to explain that your treasured photos can't be retrieved because you're not the sort of user that Google had in mind.
Weinstein adds "this is by no means the worst such case I've seen — not even close, unfortunately." I've been discussing these issues with Google for many years. I've suggested "ombudspeople", account escalation and appeal procedures that ordinary people could understand, and many other concepts. They've all basically hit the brick wall of Google suggesting that at their scale, nothing can be done about such "edge" cases.
Here's Google's page for providing an alternate recovery email address and phone number. Unfortunately, the 90-year-old woman's account "was created so long ago that she didn't need to provide any 'recovery' contacts at that time," according to the email, "or she may have used a landline phone number that's long been cancelled now..."
Write it down (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not blaming this woman for her problems. This falls squarely on Google. That said, everyone needs to write down their passwords for every account they have and store them in multiple places. And by writing them down I mean both on paper and digitally.
Forget password managers or relying on your browser to store your information. Write them down.
Re:Write it down (Score:4, Insightful)
And preferably lock the list in a fireproof box.
In other words, the opposite of what the security experts have screamed for the last 30 years. I find it hard to blame users who didn't take that important precaution.
Re:Write it down (Score:5, Informative)
Not really:
"And when people say don't write your password down. Nonsense. Write it down on a little piece of paper and keep it with all the other small bits of paper you value - in your wallet."
Bruce Schneier - 2010 [schneier.com]
Microsoft's Jesper Johansson urged [cnet.com] people to write down their passwords.
This is good advice, and I've been saying it for years.
Bruce Schneier - 2005 [schneier.com]
Re:Write it down (Score:5, Insightful)
So when someone steals my wallet they get my passwords, too?
No. Write them down and store them in a safe or bank box or with a trusted family member or whatever.
But definitely not your wallet.
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Work passwords in wallet unless you have a gold key to the kingdom. Personal passwords in lockbox.
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I put my work passwords on post it notes in my colleagues' office.
Re:Write it down (Score:5, Funny)
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What's the last step? You trailed off...
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Re: Write it down (Score:2)
Feds can open safety deposit boxes without a warrant. Keep it in your own safe
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Which should be buried in the back yard.
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Yes, in the mid aughties 10 or more years after the bad advice came out. And many in IT missed that memo for a long time. Some still haven't seen it apparently.
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I genuinely respect Bruce Schneider, but there's not a person in the world who has gone through their life without saying something supremely stupid. Keeping your passwords *IN YOU WALLET* which is easily lost or stolen along with the literal keys to your online persona is supremely stupid.
Re:Write it down (Score:4, Insightful)
"Don't write your password down" is good advice for an accountant working in a busy office, being tempted to put a sticky note on their monitor. In 1993 that was the only scenario where someone would even have a password. Except maybe a PIN number for a bank card, and it's not a good idea to write that on the back of the card either.
I never really saw anyone advising against keeping passwords locked in a safe inside their own home.
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The sticky note thing is right enough (that's how someone I knew in the early '80s got access to the school systems grade databases), but I can tell you I got a LOT of funny sideways looks when I advised people in the late '90s to write their work passwords down and keep it in their wallet (not in their desk drawer or 'cleverly' taped under the keyboard).
Naturally the PIN for a bank card should not be kept with the card. That stays home in a locked box.
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I tattooed mine on a very sensitive part of my body. The only problem is having to explain myself when I walk up to an ATM and drop my pants.
Oh, and it's a 14 digit PIN.
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Oh, and it's a 14 digit PIN.
Good news! It's only 6 digits if it's cold.
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Bruce Schneier, the archetypal [schneierfacts.com] security expert and author of one of the earliest open source password managers has been recommending writing down passwords since at least 2005 [schneier.com]. The people who are telling you to rotate your password every two months whilst having it contain one number,symbol,capital and lower case letter, but no space, quote or backslash whilst being at least six characters but no more than 8 and not having any letters in common with your email address* are not security "experts". They are c
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Sadly, I believe it, I have seen way too much real world proof not to.
Perhaps I should have put expert in quotes.
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I work for a multinational company, actually a group of companies operating separately in different countries, under the same general global vision. The OG country is now implementing absolutely stupid security rules. The most important one being that EVERYTHING NEEDS 2FA, NO EXCEPTIONS.
No more "service passwords", no "tokens", no nothing. Everything has to be manually performed by an user authorizing everything with a 2FA. Also all logins expire in 4 hours, so you have to log back in in the middle of the d
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Bruce Schneier, the archetypal [schneierfacts.com] security expert and author of one of the earliest open source password managers has been recommending writing down passwords since at least 2005 [schneier.com].
That was nearly 20 years ago. The world has changed since then, and Bruce has changed his opinion on this. In a more recent blog post he advocates using a password manager and says: "Putting them into a file on your computer, e-mailing them to others, or writing them on a piece of paper in your desk is tantamount to giving them away."
Be prepared (Score:5, Insightful)
Your digital life is *your* responsibility, not Google's.
All hardware devices eventually fail. Online services fail too. Nothing can be individually trusted in the long term.
Make redundant backups of all data you care about, including passwords.
And also, don't trust Google for anything at all. Since their offerings are free, their priority is not you. Paid email will give you much better customer service and won't be trying to make an extra buck off of your data.
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If it was some small hosting company, not Google, you could contact them (or go to their office), provide your ID and your password would be reset.
Trying to get Google support to do anything, well, in the past I joked that the easiest way would be to call Putin and ask him to threaten Google with a nuke, but now it seems that even this would not work.
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The only thing that might be relevant is the bank account that pays the hosting company's bills. And all that proves is that you have the keys to the bank account ; it doesn't prove anything about "identity".
If you store it in "the cloud" and don't also store it at home, preferably on powered-down not-currently-spinning rust, you don't have it
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Why on earth would Joe Random Hosting Company know what your identity is [...] The only thing that might be relevant is the bank account that pays the hosting company's bills. And all that proves is that you have the keys to the bank account ; it doesn't prove anything about "identity".
If you're the person paying, you're the customer. It does not matter is you registered as Mickey Mouse and you don't have the matching ID with picture. If you are the one who pays, they unlock your account password at will. I know because I happen to pay Joe Random Hosting Company for hosting a domain and email and I actually called them on the landline phone some time ago and they actually solved my problem (though the problem was not password related).
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I would say it is actually an Apple problem more than a user or Google problem. Give an easy password recovery system if you are caching the passwords. The password store system on an iPad is needlessly obtuse; why not have a way to print all passwords. Sure, checks and balances, but people cannot memorize secure, unique passwords.
Re:Be prepared (Score:4, Funny)
90 years old means she was in her early 60s when the Web was popularized. But that's not going to be the case forever.
When you have your first major tech failure, you learn to make backups. For me it was a dead 360K floppy circa 1987.
When you have your first backup failure, you learn to make redundant backups. For me that would have been about 1996.
I just don't see Gen X making it to 90 without learning that the cloud will screw you over.
Re:Be prepared (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very easy to forget there are people in this world who don't have our IT knowledge, nor do they need it. They are used to being able to talk to someone face-to-face, or at most via a phone, if something is wrong with one of the services they use.
Could be this person is at their first tech failure, ever. Could be that there have been tech failures in the past, but she had a tech savvy relative who passed away.
We don't know.
We are, however, focusing on the wrong thing. For quite a few years, giant corporations have made it easy to use accounts without ever entering a password, while making it exceedingly hard (or damned right impossible) to talk to a human being when needing help. Enter "the forgotten ones", people who get screwed by technology which they had no idea could fail that way. And our knee-jerk reaction is to blame them, disregarding the fact that they were led this path by silent false promises, such as "you never ever need a password to log in to this account, because it does it automagically, huzzah!"
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The problem is that there are a lot of bad actors out there. If Google aren't very careful, people will be able to use the recovery procedure to steal accounts.
For someone like this woman, what would the procedure be? Maybe involve a lawyer or someone else with professional consequences for lying. Even that is risky, fake lawyers and lawyers willing to lie are things that exist.
A phone line isn't going to work, that's just an invitation for social engineering, and nothing can be verified on the phone.
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Most likely something including a sworn affidavit witnessed by a notary.
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Getting old is brutal. Mother nature is not kind. This, however, changes none of the facts. The world we live in today requires some technical street-smarts in order to thrive. Those who do not have such smarts will suffer.
I am not any more happy about this than you are. But that still doesn't change the facts. Google is a free service, they don't care about the end-users because they have no reason to, they are notorious for terminating accounts for terms-of-service violations which were in fact comp
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The world we live in today requires some technical street-smarts in order to thrive
Um, yeah.
1. Nobody mentioned "thriving". Rather, it's about being able to use technology which, for years, has become easier and easier to use.
2. Sure, but corps have made it so their services are easily and effortlessly available to non-techies. This should be accompanied by easily and effortlessly having access to human-backed support when needed. Even paid support would be okay. But nothing at all? Well, that's the core issue here.
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Google services are free, therefore you get no human backed support.
Paid email services give human backed support.
My recommendation was and still is to use paid services instead of google.
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Google services are free, therefore you get no human backed support.
Talk about missing the point.
Regardless whether a service is truly free, indirectly free or paid for, it doesn't prevent the possibility of paid SUPPORT. Google choose not to offer that.
It goes beyond simply "write it down/remember it" (Score:3)
I am not blaming this woman for her problems. This falls squarely on Google. That said, everyone needs to write down their passwords
I also agree with you, but I think it goes far beyond simply "remember/record your passwords". The main problem here is that Google has built a product for which they cannot (or will not) scale support for, which I find unacceptable - people using the service will likely need some level of human support at some point, and should be able to get it without so much difficulty.
Imagine if there was a popular insurance company that provided really, really cheap rates, but made it super difficult/nearly impossible
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Mod up. Like nearly all big companies, Google never takes customer support seriously until it affects enough people to make the front page of the New York Times.
Above a certain size, in the absence of strong leadership demanding it, large companies inherently behave in an anti-consumer fashion even if the company is trying to do the right thing, because there is no one who is both responsible for seeing these sorts of critical problems that affect specific individual users and simultaneously has the author
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The thing is even very large companies and important people basically resort to former employees who went to work for google and current employees with a buddy on the inside.
Google will do anything they can to not give a fuck and the buddy system is good enough that people who matter won’t ever get burned bad enough for anything to end up on the front page.
That won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
We're in a token world [wikipedia.org] now, whether we like it, hate it or it kills us.
In short - lose your phone, kiss your life goodbye. Social life, business life, educational... you might experience a mental health crisis. [mayoclinic.org] Or several.
Or at least, say goodbye to all your data associated to your Google account - from phone numbers, emails (contacts as well as messages), logins to websites and apps, your data on said sites and apps, "backups" you've made, apps you've bought, real life services you registered to contact you through that email and phone number... plus everything you had on that particular phone.
BTW, do you use your phone for banking? You will spend some time standing in various lines and filling out forms.
Cause now your phone, or more precisely that particular piece of hardware with THE particular OS installation AND whatever else Google is using to cook up your "account ID" - that is your single and only identifier.
Password? Google will simply decide to not recognize it as a valid form of identification and will try to send you a token. To your phone.
Recovery email? Same thing. You will be led back to the page listed in the summary above, which will keep you circling around through menus until it tries to send you a token. To your phone.
Google Authenticator codes? Did you print them out? Do you remember where they are? Are they still in sync? Do you have your phone with you?
Google has replaced "what I know-have-am" scheme with what is essentially a highly fragile piece of technology that can be stolen, broken or lost VERY easily.
Also, you are supposed to replace that piece of tech every so often with a brand new one. Or face the consequences.
Fucking ransomware is more humane.
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Well, it's why I don't put sensitive data on my phone. You can do what you want to set yourself up for the horrors you describe. Or you can choose to not do that. Your choice. You don't have to participate in these data-mining operations.
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And I might add, always always ALWAYS have your data (including passwords!) backed up somewhere else, either locally or on removable media, or both.
Moral of the story: Never trust Google to help you in a time of need, because they won't. Google services are great, right up until the moment they're not.
Re:Write it down (Score:5, Insightful)
Any well designed system should not be able to give access to someone without the appropriate password. If they *were* able to recover such an account, that would indicate a major security hole.
That's nonsense. If you forgot the password to your bank account, would you just wave goodbye to your money? No, you'd go to your bank and prove your identity through another means, and they would reset your password.
Your Google identity is very important. A person might be using it to log into dozens of sites. There are reasons your password could be lost which have nothing to do with your memory, like your account getting hacked and your password changed. There should be a mechanism for regaining access that doesn't require you to own an Android device which is signed in (and the attackers to forget to sign it out.)
Re:Write it down (Score:4, Interesting)
There are such mechanisms, even when using Google's free services. Backup email accounts that Google can use for verification, or a phone number that google can use for verification, or USB keys, to name a few.
She just didn't use any, which left Google without any options. Google had no way of knowing whether or not she was an identity thief.
Well, actually, Google could ask her to come down to an office with a state ID, some utility bills, etc., the same way a Bank would. But of course Google won't, because the services are free so Google won't give that level of service. This is party of why I recommend that nobody ever rely on Google's free services for anything important. Go with paid services instead. And actually do set up multiple means of identity verification with them.
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Google never even talked with her because they don't have people to do that, so no, their mistake was not that they couldn't help her, it was they made no effort to let her try.
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That's because bank accounts exist in the name of a legal person with a SSN or EIN. Meanwhile the google account for poopmaster90006969@gmail.com (first name: "poopin", last name: "yourface", birthday: 4/20)) was surely created by a single human being (at least assume AI isn't that juvenile) bu
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If only there was some technology by which a person could provide information to a company during account creation!
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If only there was some technology by which a person could provide information to a company during account creation!
Didn't she create the account before they implemented such recovery information?
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Any well designed system should have an account recovery mechanism that works.
Countless other companies manage that but Google won't bother.
FREE service (Score:2)
maintaining a mechanism for exceptions like this (and not compromising security) is expensive.
Sure, it's sad, but people this old often experience even sadder consequences of their decline...
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The opposite of one wrong extreme does not make the other extreme right. Giving access to anyone who asks is wrong. Giving access to no one even when there's a legitimate reason and method for it to be done is also wrong. Google's complete lack of any customer service of any kind is a third kind of wrong not related to the other wrongs.
For fuck sake (yes I wrote it out just so we're clear on how stupid Google is) even Facebook is better than this with actual government issued identity checks for password re
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Facebook is barely better than Google. Facebook, which purports that user accounts are legitimate, and not at all spam bots, won't even take down duplicate profiles in which someone's identity is blatantly copied en masse.
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Yes it is google's fault. I can go into a bank with photo ID and get stupid shit passwords reset.
What's the Google street address for in person picture ID verification?
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so you expect Google to run a network of branches to support their services.
How dense should the network be? You know, people in their 90s typically can't drive...
Globally, it'd be in thousands.
I'm wondering, would you expect those services to be still free?
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Charge for the service since it should only rarely be needed, and yes, they have to come in. Also, 90 year olds also can sign a limited POA.
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Setting up a bank account requires you prove who you are, there is no such thing for most email accounts. 'privacy.'
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Just che
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Is it also the banks problem when you forget the passcode you set up for in person account changes?
Yes. I can go into any bank branch, show my identification, and get the password reset.
Is it your states licensure boards fault if you forget to renew your drivers license before it expires?
No, but even after forgetting to do so, I can walk into a DMV office and get it renewed. I don't permanently lose the ability to drive. Heck, most states even provide a grace period for renewal during which you'll just pay a small penalty, but won't have to take the driving test again.
If anything blame Apple for not including saved passwords in their encrypted backups.
They are, of course, still backed up in iCloud as part of the cloud keychain. So this means that the person either also lost access to
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Is it also the banks problem when you forget the passcode you set up for in person account changes? Nope!
Lmao yes.
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She's 90. She can't remember a whole lot anymore.
If you make it to 90, it is quite likely you won't remember your complex pass phrase, either.
What then?
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Uh no! Somebody might read and post with their username on some random podunk news site they navigated to from reddit 8 years ago.
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$ bzgrep passwords.bz snowshovelboy
$
I’ll get u one day u shoveler.
A friend at Google? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been told that, if you have a friend at Google, there's a "secret way" for a Google employee to help recover an account.
That being said, I have no access to my Google accounts due to changes in Google policies. Not sure when/why/how my password stopped working. But that's OK, since frankly I'll be happy for Google to garbage collect that account, particularly if they also garbage collect all the information associated with that identity. (But I know they won't do that.)
This is a great time to talk about backups (Score:2)
Before I work on anyone's computer, I make them buy a backup service and ( if possible ) let it do a complete run before I start work.
Why? I'm not using any referral links, I've just seen the after effects of desperately trying to recover data ( dead kid's pictures, legal documents, ect... ) from a failed drive too often. Naturally I'm only ever brought in after the shit hits the fan. So now I make a huge deal of it, with everyone I work with.
The only problem I have with google in this case is they are pr
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Than they care to support, want to pay people to support.
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Sure, either/or. That's kinda been google's jam since forever though, so it's hard to be upset about it.
Ditch Google (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a free g-suite account with my own domain. When Google threatened to kill off these, I moved the family over to Zoho. Yea, it’s a few bucks per month and the spam filters aren’t quite as good as Google. But you you what I get? A human at the other end of the support line that actually looks at my problem and responds, something that never happens with Google. Paying a few bucks a month to be the customer rather than the product is worth it.
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So you should have data backed up locally. You should have credentials written down. With an iPad all credentials can be backed up on iCloud. But having undue expectations for a free service is not reasonable.
Re: Ditch Google (Score:2)
An account easy to "recover" without a password (Score:3)
Learning could be done only via the own pain. Forgotten password and lost data means the well learned lesson of password significance. Unfortunately, there is no other way.
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An instant account recovery without adequate authentication be a problem. A combination of a delay, in-channel notification, and alternative authentication would not be a security problem.
The risk, of course, is that if recovery is possible, that means a bad actor with internal access can surreptitiously hijack an account or add another authorized device.
One solution, of course, is for accounts to have different levels of security depending on your level of paranoia, and for weak two-factor to be the default (weak as in "present your photo ID in person and we can get around the lack of a second factor"). But the problem with that approach is that anybody who enables encryption is then seen
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Google is not the only company with this dilemma. I know someone who had a yahoo email, which was hacked and used for fraud. They got a live person at Yahoo customer service, but were told there is no way to recover the account. The
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There's pros and cons.
Apple thinks they can mitigate the risk enough for account recovery through identity verification to be a pro. I think from a marketing point of view, Apple is right as usual.
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No one is asking for it to be easy. They are asking for it to be possible. There are many ways of proving your identity and ownership. We have literal centuries of legal precedent showing how it works in business.
Doing something perfectly normal (something that important institutions like your bank are legally required to do) is not "security problem for everyone".
Port the landline over (Score:2)
Port the landline over to any number of companies that will
- provide an SMS termination point and forward that inbound SMS to her (non google or new google) email
- ring an ATA or softphone at home
- do it until the code is recovered, then reconnect the landline like it's 1985.
- I've done the first one many a time. Cost is under $25 for setup + one month.
OR the non-techy approach:
- file a lawsuit. Pro se (representing yourself) should cost under $100 filing fee
- once the lawyers get involved there's your om
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Maybe repair the original iPad? (Score:2)
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You can't repair an iPad for pretty much any hardware breakage. I've been down this path a few times, they -always- take the iPad and send you a new one if you're under warranty or can pay.
If it was a software issue then maaaaaaaaaybe there's a slim chance it can be fixed.
I have a dead friend that used G-Suite. (Score:2)
All of their shit is gone now. Even though I own the domain they used, and know the email too, I couldn't do anything about it because I didn't know that particular password.
I got the email reminders, I just looked one up, an excerpt:
Weâ(TM)ll automatically close your account and delete your data on or after Dec 25, 2018.
Merry Christmas. There went pictures and who knows what all else. Thanks Google!
People have lost keys to safes ... (Score:2)
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Safes can be easily opened by professionals and a metal detector costs anywhere from 50 to 200 for a good one to find your buried backyard treasure. There is no similar option for a lost Google account.
Requirement for help, even if you have to pay (Score:3)
Either offer people a paid option that comes with some sort of support system. Google kinda sorta does this with business customers and those that say, pay for a Google Drive plan but even then it never feels "real".
And while I understand this lady could have taken more precautions and has some ways to maybe push back here at the end of the day Google has her stuff and she wants access. If Google really refuses to offer because it's the right thing for your customers then at least offer a service for a few. This woman would probably gladly play $10-50 for 30 minutes of actual human time in which they could easily figure out her ID and restore access.
Sad (Score:2)
happened to me last month (Score:2)
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Set up Googles Inactive Account Manager (Score:2)
You put your eggs into someone else's basket (Score:2)
Even if you do remember that password and do everything right, that server where that information resides on is not yours. You're relying on a service that can cease to exist at any moment.
And we're talking about Google. It's not like there has never been a precedent of just that happening.
Lauren doesn't think very far ahead. (Score:2)
They also don't seem to have an exception mechanism for cases like this.
How does Google know the difference between the 90 year old woman and the phisherman trying to convince Google that he's the 90 year old woman?
Write down your passwords!!
She probably can't afford it but... (Score:3)
If she or anyone else in similar situation were to have a lawyer contact google's attorneys either they would get a useful response or they'd have to file a suit in which case they would get the right to subpoena google's records on them, such as everything in the account or a reset password if it had to go further, etc.
I don't care how expensive their attorneys are, at the end of the day they have no excuse in front of a judge as to why they can't retrieve and rest an account.
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With the infinite amount of tracking, de-anonymizing and other privacy invading shit Google does plus the fact that her IP will match their records and they can look at her email and pictures and such, this would be trivial to demonstrate in court that it is her account.
In cases where privacy is an issue, the judge can look at the evidence in question and make a decision without turning over the pictures to anyone with a lawyer (as you correctly note that is a problem).
But I think google's legal team would
Humans? (Score:2)
There are humans at Google? I don't believe it. A company run like this has no humanity, never has. I've always assumed it was bots replicating bots all along.
No Backup... (Score:2)
Usually, I would say, "no pity". But this is not a service aimed at professionals. Hence Google would do well to make sure everybody has the full recovery options and there actually is an exception path. But this is Google. All they care about is profits. Their users are not of any interest to them and are actually their product.
The only solution I see is a legal requirement to make account recovery possible in all cases (including when somebody dies by the heirs) and access to actual human support that is
My Aunt Is Stuck In This Hell (Score:4, Insightful)
We have the username and password. The family chromebook crashed, recovered, and when signing in forced us to use our account recovery methods. Knowing the password is not enough to get into the account. You have to be able to use one recovery method or it fails.
Username and password that don't let you in your account. Only Google security can dream that one up.
PSA (Score:2)
PSA: If you are using a Google account for *anything*, try to go through the account recovery process *before* you lose access to your account. Google will ask you all sorts of asinine questions for you to prove that you own the account, and you won't remember the answers to any of them (e.g. What was the *exact* date you created your account?) Go through and figure out the answer to each and every question until you're able to recover your account. Until you do, try to handle Google's "try again, harder
Telemetry, info slurping, and 'security' (Score:2)
All this, and yet once in a while someone falls through the cracks and are unable to access something very important no matter what.
"The king knows all about you, has shiny knights all around with big swords, majestic stone walls around the villiage, and he is one of the best army men around who could never be taken by surprise. But he left you forgotten in the castle dungeon by mistake after your drunken night at the tavern and you starved to death. Sorry about that."
Use a password manager (Score:2)
Specifically one that you can export or print out all records. Personally I use KeePass.
The Windows version is regularly updated, has an installable executable as well as a portable version. It is also in the Debian Stable (Main) branch and has several unofficial contributions packaged for other distros.
I have a relative that was recently diagnosed with dementia. They had done all their investing, banking, etc. online for several years. By the time I finally found out and took them to the hospital, they
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately they don't make much money off such people so their answer will be a simple fuck you.
Same thing about OS vendors making a stable supportable desktop that doesn't radically change every time they hire a new marketing VP or product manager.
Re: (Score:2)
And none of her family or friends will want any of her pictures, recipes or anything else in there. She will just vanish and that's cool, bro.