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Comment by marcodiego | Hacker News Reader

This means I cannot login just using my password?

That's already the case. If their algorithms decide that your activity is "unusual", they can disable your ability to login with literally no option to bypass it.

https://i.imgur.com/4YrElkJ.png

Keep that in mind when you e.g. go traveling.

If you have OTP 2FA set up they let you login from anywhere.

I've been getting this for years. This announcement doesn't seem like a major change to their overall policy, just a ramping up of the roadblocks for CGNAT and the like.

Rather than giving users options, Big Tech has decided to paternalistically kill passwords in favor of less convenient and less secure methods (my email is much less secure than my password store). Even from residential IPs, it's become the norm for banking websites to harass you with snake oil "2FA" every time you login. The only solution is to split up your online activities so you can conform to their demands with one VM/browser config, account for the extra annoyances as the price of using their services, and move as much activity as possible to freedom-respecting technologies.

This is an old article. When it first was posted I strongly considered finally ditching Google forever. Of all the Google services, I only use gmail and then only for catching junk, spam, for Craigslist posts, and for bullshit account creations. I have two active junk gmail accounts.

I log in all the time, this morning included, and do it every time with a simple password. I have never been prompted for 2FA and there is no identifying info in my account or in the emails that it catches. The account names are even fake.

If I do end up prompted to set up 2FA I will simply delete the whole shitteroo and start over somewhere else with another fake name.

It seems you didn't read the article.

"The company plans to automatically enable two-step verification for accounts that have been configured correctly."

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