I still had 1 percent power on my phone earlier and was previously able to get a code on it and I hoped I could get one last code before it outright died, so I said "Yeah, sure, send it to my phone" since they don't really want to do it another way.
So then I had to ask another way when I couldn't get to it because that is when the phone gave up the ghost for good. And then they said "We shall send you a link in 24 hours." So I moved the sim card and got text messages saying "Was this you?" and I said "Yeah, it was." and cancelled my "account recovery process" and tried to continue setting up my new phone because the old one is dead.
And this is when Google decided I must be a for serious criminal and told me "We shall send you an email in 72 hours."
So I'm quite upset at this point.
I work from home due to my medical situation. I have no friends locally who can drive me someplace.
Etc etc etc.
This is a non-starter for me. I need Google to fix this. I can't do anything about the busted phone at this point.
Despite this being a common problem, it's not well recognized, and it's easy to forget about it too. I went through several charging cables and almost replaced my phone half a year ago, before I remembered - and sure enough, all my charging issues were caused by a layer of lint at the back of the port, that got compacted by the charging cable so well that it formed a flat "false wall". I forgot all about it, even though I've performed the exact same fix on other people's devices in the past.
Hope it helps; if not, I apologize for wasting your time.
That’s probably mechanical stress causing the port to become loose. It can happen after a few years.
Does helping you look like potentially helping a hacker take over an account, recognizing that google deals with totally crazy state level attacks? Google faces some significant liability and risk here.
Would you pay google to make it worth their time to help you (I actually think this should be an option - if a physical in person visit + someones time is what it takes - then google should have some system for $500 + you get to their office somewhere to recover your account)
I've had relatives in this situation. If you do know someone at a large institution with an institutional relationship I think you can sometimes get help - I had a relative go this route, wasn't sure if the IT folks there just figured out how to fix / work within google, or could escalate somewhere to get it addressed.
Because google will worry about reps selling access to account resets - they may REALLY lock this stuff down, so even if a rep wanted to help, they may not be able to (insider attacks a big issue again especially state sponsored attacks).
But people here seem a bit less threatened by very poor individuals actually posting here than in most online places. I know from my own experience that mentioning you're homeless is usually a red rag to a bull. Add that you're an unemployed software developer, and the self-loathing middle class is often very quickly off on a hate-rampage. Less so here, for some reason. Perhaps just because people here are focused on topics of common interest, so if you're a loser (generally hated by the winners, worried that by the grace of providence they might have been you ..), at least you're one of our losers?
Many accounts that support 2FA let you download a few (commonly 10) static codes that don’t change. If you anticipate a situation where you may lose connectivity access like this, it may make sense to download the codes and store them in a physical notebook.
I honestly don't know what's going on behind the scenes to know if this is not as secure as it "should" be. But this was my reaction specifically to the non-SMS TOTP 2fa: Wait, if I lose my phone there's literally no way possible to get in? Oh there is, if I have the backup codes... yeah right, you think I can hold on to backup codes? Surely there's something I'm missing, what is everyone else doing here? Oh, everyone else is just hoping they never lose their phone? Really?
Google has, in some cases, started requiring auth codes sent to specific devices, even if you're already using your own configured TOTP 2FA.
This exact situation has been such a thorn in my side at my company lately. Does anyone know any way to disable this behavior, even just with Google Workspace accounts?
If I've agreed to use and keep track of a very small physical device to access my account, don't be going letting any ol' person who can access my phone number in there!
Had that happen to me, I was saved by still having the backup codes + having some unholy Tasker + Pebble automations that let me operate the phone without display - enough to launch AirDroid, use it as remote display/input to enable ADB over WiFi, and then finally use scrscpy over ADB as a remote display/input that doesn't blank out on security screens and in Google Authenticator. Only at this point I was able to transfer all the other TOTP entries in Authenticator to the new device.
Lesson learned: 2FA with TOTP is a responsibility to be taken seriously, despite what security professionals would make you believe.
All these claims and not a single screenshot of this scenario. Meanwhile I've been in 4 countries in 8 weeks and Google hasn't bothered me once beyond the normal "tap my yubikey on my keychain".
There’s a fire or gas explosion or earthquake or something, and you need to leave all those behind. What do you do?
> Oh, everyone else is just hoping they never lose their phone? Really?
I would be very, very surprised if that’s not what the vast majority of the population is doing. Many people have a phone as their _only_ computing device, and no printer, and don’t really understand why they should be carrying around scrawled codes in their wallet.
I get screwed!
I guess the right answer is that I have the backup codes carefully preserved.... off site! In case of natural disaster. Every time I sign up for a new account, I print out the backup codes, and take them to an off-site secure storage location, which of course i have... somewhere.
There's no way 90%+ of internet users are doing that.
I'm not even going to pretend I have any chance of doing that.
for the rest there are other options.
I really should be storing some codes for my password manager somewhere…
Yeah f no. Most people just screenshot their backup codes and put it in a Google doc somewhere in plain text, at best. And at worst, they go "what the hell are these codes" and close the window.
Which, security-minded folks would know, is effectively equivalent to just writing passwords down in plain text.
Nobody thought to put even a tiny speck of product management into this system.
If someone wants me enough to target Authy with an SMS reroute attack focused on me, they're gonna get me either way. I'm not Ed Snowden here, I'm just a guy trying not to lose his car keys.
But, what's the thing you use that provides the benefits of cloud syncing across devices and isn’t tied to a phone number? For anyone that might be interested, including me if it seems as easy and as idiot-proof. (and free or cheap).
When that happens, Google asks to confirm with a known mobile device even though I have specifically configured 2FA TOTP since 2012 to be device independent (and I currently use keepassxc or mobile equivalent to generate the totp value). Google subsequently doesn't allow login by any other method and if the required device is lost or broken you lose access.
That just makes it even more likely you'll lose access. If you have 2fA, Google will just ask for your 2fa. If you don't have 2fa, Google will pick some random device you signed in on once ten years ago, and tell you that you can only ever log into your account again if it's from that device.
If you set a strong, long, unique password for every account, your chances of getting the account compromised are just about zero.
2FA is a good thing in most cases, but I do hate how the industry has blindly adopted it as some sort of mantra that you can't exist without. The reality is that if you chose 128+ bit passwords generated out of /dev/random, they cannot be brute-forced within the lifetime of the universe. You might get phished, which is entirely different, but if you're careful about that you'll do fine without 2FA.
Yubikey 2FA (and equivalents) help to solve this.
2FA might be good for security, but it's also very ableist.
Just like with accessibility on the web, it's so easy to forget about that when you're not in the situation yourself. Thank you
I don't have a lot of sympathy for big tech when it so clearly fails to enfranchise those that need it most.
I didn't lose a single account yet. I have printed backup codes, I have password manager, I have passwords backup in a text file on thumb drive, two copies. I have my domain held by registrar in my country, so I can just visit their office with my ID and talk with them. So I take some reasonable measures to protect myself. But I have no fear of losing those digital assets.
I actually gave a thought about protecting myself by creating a single 100% reliable email and then bind other accounts to that mail. Believe it or not: I didn't find any provider which would satisfy me. My worst case scenario: I'm going to jail for 20 years. Every free provider will delete my account after few years of inactivity. Paid providers usually are small enough so I wouldn't trust them anyway. My current plan is using my own domain with autopayment and enough balance on account. But of course that's not reliable. Registrar might just go bankrupt. And I can't really reserve my domain for 50 years no matter how much money would I pay.
If you registered a gTLD, you're theoretically safe from registrar bankruptcy, or even from a registrar losing all their data for whatever reason. Per the ICANN agreement, the registrars have to send a copy of their database to a third party escrow agent regularly (where I worked before we sent a differential backup everyday and a full backup once a week). This way, if the registrar cannot assume its role anymore, another registrar takes over.
Note that this is not true for ccTLDs (ie. every 2 character TLD). That's a reason you should prefer gTLDs if you want to prevent a worst case scenario. I usually recommend a .com or .net because Verisign is, in my opinion, the most reliable registry in the world. If you stick with .com/.net, you're safe from any registrar failure, and there's not a single chance that anything happens to the registry.
ccTLDs might have an emergency plan but it will depend on the registry. So if you really want a ccTLD:
- get familiar with the registry and its rules
- do NOT get the ccTLD of a country other than your own. Eligibility rules can change, so you could lose your domain if the registry decides that they now want to only sell to residents. British people lose eligibility over .eu for example, not because a change in eligibility rules, but because of a change in their own status.
- do NOT get the ccTLD of a small country, unless the registry delegates the technical stuff to a reliable registry backend. Small countries have crappy infrastructures, so DNS resolution could get unreliable. This famously happened to Notion.so (so -> Somalia) a little while ago.
Also, check out mxroute.com for SMTP/IMAP needs.
Software 2FA just computes a number based on a secret string. You treat the latter the same way you take care of your passwords. That's why it's best to handle them with your password manager. 2FA over SMS is even less of an issue (except maybe with a broken eSIM chip). Physical methods are a problem, so you have to spend money for a backup.
Of course the threat model is kinda skewed because this case is more applicable when one's reusing passwords or using weak passwords, which shouldn't be happening if you're using a password manager.
Maybe a more relevant threat is password gets compromised from a MITM attack, in which case they still don't have access to your TOTP
But as you say, since I'm using a password manager, this doesn't feel like a legitimate concern. If the application's database leaks, my password is still safe, because no one will crack a randomly generated 20+ character password.
> Maybe a more relevant threat is password gets compromised from a MITM attack, in which case they still don't have access to your TOTP
But they'll have the code, so as long as they use it right away, they can still get into my account and download my data / spam my contacts / whatever.
That's why you maintain the knowledge-possession separation at the access to your password manager (file) with a combination of a password and either a key file or hardware key.
If you store your secrets in encrypted files rather than specialized server solutions, it's also easier to separate and store them in different locations.
If you do not understand the purpose 2FA, there are plenty of online resources available.
As I explicitly wrote, you can store secrets in separate places, and if you don't, you still protect yourself against password recovery attacks or interception and add redundancy.
All of these scenarios happened to me, and I'm a fairly normal person.
SMS 2FA leads to these problems.
But A FIDO2/WebAuthn token (yubikey or similar) would help you stay secure and independent from your phone. I agree that yubikey is a bit expensive, but there are alternatives. Token2 seems quite bit cheaper, but depends on shipping: https://www.token2.com/shop/product/token2-t2f2-fido2-and-u2...
I have broken my phone multiple times, but I always stick to SMS 2FA because as long as I keep paying I will get a new SIM card in 2-3 days, and not be locked out, because of a lost or broken device.
Just stick your 2FAs in your password manager, like I do with Bitwarden. I secure it with a Yubikey, but if I lost my house, I would just remove 2FA from it. My bigger concern would be to get cut out, than people somehow guessing my master password.
SMS 2FA is always a terrible idea, homeless or not. It's honestly better to just go 1FA in that case.
- 1st Backup Codes: Store a bunch of 2FA backup codes on a safe location, best not in YOUR home, in case it burns down.
- 2nd SMS verification: some services offer you a fallback to SMS in case you don't have your 2FA device with you. But keep in mind, that SMS is also one of the least secure 2FA methods.
- 3rd instead of having your auth codes only on one device, use a service for it like Authy, so you can install it on as much devices as you like, if one dies, it's easy to configure a new one.
Isn't this a common complaint that SMS fallback cannot even be turned off? People say SMS is not secure enough so they switch to something better, but all the services do SMS fallback anyway so what is the point of using the more secure one?
Get a 2FA using QR code or U2F key (not SMS or phone based).
Am I worried about getting hacked? Absolutely! But when I weigh the likelihood of (1) someone else getting into my account without 2FA and (2) locking myself out of my own account with 2FA, the latter seems much more likely!
I understand how backup codes work. I promise you I will loose them.