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Comment by Cider9986 | Hacker News Reader

This is the same Google that doesn't have e2ee on their password manager by default. Like WTF, it's a password manager.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's test of top-tier intelligence -

> Holding two opposing views in the mind means accepting two contradictory ideas at the same time without needing to pick one side or rush to a simple answer

I continue to use Apple products because they are top class even though everytime I think of Tim Cook in the Oval Office presenting the gold plaque to the current president, it makes me wanna puke. World isnt black or white.

The reason I mentioned it is because Google seems to have a strange aversion to E2EE. Apple has added the option to iCloud but Google only has one consumer facing E2EE product, Google messages. A password manager is the most obviously important place to use it. I can't name another password manager that isn't.

How many customers are using Google Password Manager? How much revenue does it generate? What would it cost to add E2EE? How would it affect the UX? How much revenue would it generate? What projects would have to be de-prioritized to fund this work?

I agree, a password manager without E2EE is unusable in my eyes. However, I can also understand the institutional reasons this might be the case. I don't think it reflects an organizational aversion to E2EE.

Google Password Manager does in fact have E2EE. It's quite straightforward to enable. Your interlocutor is complaining that it's not the default, which I'm quite sure is a deliberate decision made on the grounds that the typical user, the one for whom the default matters because they won't tweak their settings, needs workable account recovery more than they need defense against the specific kinds of security threats that make E2EE relevant.

LastPass, designed for regular users and one of the most popular password managers, had a breach of user vaults. If they hadn't implemented E2EE then it would have been more devastating than it was (crypto wallets were found from vaults with weak master passwords).

Google's security record at avoiding that kind of breach is just about the best in the industry, and their system that handles custody of password manager secrets is designed to withstand even a compromise of their production infrastructure (https://security.googleblog.com/2022/10/SecurityofPasskeysin...). I would advise almost all users to worry more about getting locked out of their password database than about that. Of course, I would also advise almost all users not to self-custody cryptocurrency.

Your link is about them using E2EE not that they can be as secure as E2EE for users without it. Users would lose their passkeys if they lost all secrets and devices. Google couldn't recover them.

They can still and should still continue using great security practices while protecting E2EE data.

>Of course, I would also advise almost all users not to self-custody cryptocurrency.

There's no point in crypto if you're not holding your own keys. It's the antithesis of cryptocurrency. People can have highly secure self custody wallets on a modern iPhone or Pixel. And their seeds would have been safe if LastPass didn't have terrible security or they used long passphrases.

I'm pretty sure I've seen it sometimes in video calls. But it might only be two-way conversations?

That was my bad on the complete statement. If I could still edit I would say "that I know of".

Ah, Google must be very intelligent indeed, then.

Why are we citing novelists for appeals to authority on something like intelligence. I thought this might be a figure on developmental psychology to give value to your comment, but it's not even that. Should I be citing George Orwell's doublethink to counter you?

That must be the most convenient excuse I have seen to avoid taking responsibility.

"I know the raw materials for these clothes come from slavery, but hey, what can I do ? They're the softest."

I think that, if you are under the impression that having an administrative back door is an unpopular feature, then you should speak to more of your non-technical friends about their experience of technology. I think you'll find that the people who could most benefit from a password manager often don't have good credential management and would be worse off if they lost all their passwords when they forgot or lost their master password.

You can have recovery in Bitwarden with the email feature.

If you think about it for a moment you will realize the average user does not want that.

I suspect that your one moment of thought follows many years of contemplation. Maybe you can fill us in on some of that background.

How do you make e2e password management work on multiple devices as convenient as not? You cannot.

Most people who use Google trust them. And if you do not trust them then why are you using their password manager? You see? Hence why they do not bother.

Of course one might read this and say, multi device e2ee is possible! Sure, but can you allow for recovery when people inevitably lose their recovery codes at scale? If you really care about this it is not necessary to go with Google.

I stand by my original comment:

The average user does not want it.

Literally all major password managers are E2EE except Google's. The UX is fine.

E2E encryption means that if the user loses the keys, there is no way to recover that even if they contact support and prove the data belongs to them.

> there is no way to recover that even if they contact support and prove the data belongs to them.

Eh, since Google's support doesn't exist in the first place, none of this really matters, and nothing is lost.

yes, lastpass get $ tens millions because its weak and gets hacked not because its realiable, secure and great.

Former Googler here. E2EE is easy. Nobody gets promoted at Google for solving easy problems. In fact if you set out to solve an easy problem, it looks bad at performance review time.

How is E2EE easy?

Adding AI slop to everything is hard, though, I guess.

That doesn't protect their ad targeting in the eyes of regulators, so no point in turning that on by default

what would e2ee for a password manager even be? This reads like "Whoa, this encryption key isn't encrypted, we should encrypt it for added security"

Same as any E2EE product. You don't have to trust the server and only the users hold the keys.

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