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Gmail forces phone authentication (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.world
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Well, Gmail really wants me to use my phone it seems. Every single time that I try to log into Gmail with one of my specific accounts, it (doesn't happen for everything) no matter how carefully I type the password and no matter if I check the little box to see the password before I send it The password will be always wrong. The second time it won't be wrong, it will be right. But after typing it for the second time, it will ask me to go fetch my phone and check the security feature there. Has this happened to anybody else?

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[–] 14 points 4 days ago (7 children)

Do you have 2fa turned on? In my experience if it's off Google decides by itself to prompt you for a random second factor like your phone. If the account is not connected to anything else it may decide to not let you log in at all. If 2fa is turned on the behavior is a bit more consistent.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 days ago (6 children)

    To add to this, TOTP alone is not considered a 2FA that will keep google from locking your account. They want an email or cell phone number. I lost an account from this because google kept locking an account that was only protected by an authenticator and nothing else and kept requiring I add a cell phone number to unlock the account.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    only protected by an authenticator and nothing else and kept requiring I add a cell phone number to unlock the account

    The thing you're not supposed to use for 2FA?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago

    My authenticator proves I am me and I have not had any problems with my local offline solution until google, whereas email and SMS is vulnerable and I do not trust them to secure an account. I can use KPXC to generate codes or even yubikey if I was into that. I lost my gmail account I used only for an online game so while it is not a huge loss, it is annoying since the developer probably cannot help me with losing my game data. Google wants a cell phone number for no reason and has 0 support staff that I can talk to. You can't even make a google account with their new qr bullshit without a cell phone number. So, authenticators are better than email and SMS.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    This is why I first backup all my data before I make any significant changes to my usage of accounts. If it don't have a backup, the prospect of having the account closed can be enormous. This is also why you should use a custom domain for emails. Even if your provider suspends your account, you still own the email addresses.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    I partly agree. I disagree and won't get a custom domain because getting a custom domain means you expose your real identity to get it and using a third party to register it under their name instead can mean losing your domain if they feel like it.

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    • [–] 24 points 4 days ago

    There are multiple Gmail 2fa options that don’t require a phone.

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