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.

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.

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.

As a user it doesn't matter how well you manage your own security when that can happen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You can't have google letting people back in their account unverified if they ask nicely not affect other people with accounts.

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.