this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Gmail prompt to provide phone number sounds like a threat

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

No it doesn't. It means that your email is encrypted and they don't have a way to unlock it. If you don't add recovery info or print out your unlock codes, you will lose access. Just like it says.

2FA is more secure.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are you talking about? Google is not encrypting their emails, where did you get that info from?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, this has nothing to do with encryption, it’s because they refuse to have a support division that would be able to get people back into their accounts.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What? No, that's the whole point of 2FA. There is literally no other way to verify authorization otherwise because it's by-default incapable of verifying identity.

Knowing the previous password doesn't help because those are often found in password dumps.

This is true of any email service.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

2FA is just a second password and has nothing to do with encryption. Can simply be removed.

They could bypass this authentication without problems, if they want. I lost my phone and my google business account got restored regardless of 2FA. It's just a button for the support. The problem is the identification, especially of private customers (dunno if they would even do that).

Encryption passwords aren't time-based either, they must be static.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes but that has nothing to do with the data being encrypted and Google not having access to it. Their whole business runs around them having too much access to user data.

And yeah before you say anything, yeah the data is probably encrypted at rest which means nothing in this case.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is it really encrypted?

I'm guessing it's only for the account recovery to reset your password which should be hashed.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Is it really encrypted?

Of course not, Google has full access to your e-mails and uses it the whole time.