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  • Hacker News
  • Everything is going to get so much worse and AI really is to blame. So many websites now have these verification pauses and CAPTCHs because of AI agents. Part of it is agents. Part of it is everyone running their own awful versions of Googlebot.

    Years ago IIRC there was a "bug" where the Android emulator allowed you to create real Google accounts. This was found and I'm sure millions of these accounts were created. There's a whole black market for Google accounts. Whereas I lost a Google account I'd created for a relative because it hadn't been used in awhile and it was tied to a mobile number I no longer had.

    I don't see how this ends without registering for a service like Gmail being tied to your government ID.

    by jmyeet
  • I don't understand the anti-agent blocks. What exactly is the problem if an AI agent reads your website and summarizes it for me? If it is bandwidth, why not spend the effort making a screen-reader friendly version of the site, and somehow shunt agents to that (saving 99% of the cost of serving the page)?

    (I run an ad blocker, so the ads will not be displayed either way, but I see more agent blockers on ad free sites than ad supported ones anyway.)

    by hedora
  • I tried to create a new gmail address recently because my primary gmail address is my name, and it's quite common, so I get more email for other people than I get for me.

    My phone number - which I've had for about 15 years and have only ever used for personal purposes (minimal SMS, mainly just an iMessage/Whatsapp ID) - is apparently "not eligible" to create a new gmail account. Which is quite strange.

    by saaaaaam
  • If this is with a new android phone, return it and let the manufacturer know why you couldn't use the phone.
    by throwa356262
  • For something as central as a Google account, it feels pretty unreasonable that a long-held personal number can be silently rejected with no appeal path or explanation
    by TimByte
  • Wechat (Weixin; 微信) from Tencent has been doing this for years. Now Google is becoming the new Tencent and the US is becoming the new China
    by oldherl
  • Do we get cheap EVs and high-speed rail now?
    by warkdarrior
  • Is this the reCAPTCHA crap I just ran into minutes ago? It’s the Cloudflare “verify your humanity” thing, and the checkbox isn’t good enough, so now there is a “mobile verification, the support page for which (that I briefly skimmed) talks about scanning a QR code.

    (EDIT: TFA didn’t clear it up for me, but it sounds similar.)

    by mikestew
  • This feels like one of those "security" changes that also happens to conveniently eliminate a lot of privacy-preserving workflows
    by TimByte
  • There are services online dedicated to temporary account activation phone numbers to bypass Google's requirements, but most of them can only receive messages. Requiring the user to send an SMS seems like an excellent method to get rid of those services so that bots can no longer use them.

    I don't really see the point of a privacy-preserving workflow when it comes to a Google account. It's not like they need to know your phone number to track you.

    by jeroenhd
  • Because it is. Total surveillance only works if the people are forced to wear the tracking collar. The next steps are tying it to CBDC, that require a phone number to access your wallet, and tying it to realid/passport to restrict travel.

    2FA has become the wedge to break privacy into a million shards.

    by webdoodle
  • I got this a few weeks ago, it was a URL like "sms?:number" which tries to pre-fill text in app. Didn't work for me (Fossify) so I had to copy the number and verifier text from that URL and send it manually. It's for saving money spent on providers like Twilio.
    by opengrass
  • I went through it to register just now. No QR code required. Same flow as it has been for years:

    1. Personal/Child/Business

    2. First/Last

    3. Pick email

    4. Date of Birth

    5. Backup email / Skip

    6. Password

    7. Enter phone number

    8. Confirm with 2FA code

    9. Done.

    I just made the email testregistrationflow@gmail.com and have since forgotten the password. So that’s one burned. But feel free to try testregistrationflow1@gmail.com and see if it works without a QR code.

    The headline is clearly a misstatement of what is a specific flow for someone to make many Gmail accounts programmatically.

    by arjie
  • Yeah I set one up a few weeks ago for testing, same process.
    by sevenseacat
  • I hit both a google QR captcha and traditional captcha today. They're phasing it in.
    by prodigycorp
  • "A tester in A/B testing situation swears that B tester is not telling the truth"
    by Almondsetat
  • When you create an account through google services on a phone, you don't even need a phone number.
    by Gander5739
  • They should probably go back to the original invite only flow they used when Gmail launched.

    Every account having the ability to invite an only small finite number of new accounts is one way to thwart scammers.

    by guidedlight
  • I just checked and it asked me to scan QR code and after opening QR code it will attempt to send some random token..

    Google is probably doing A/B testing or they are using some sort of ML algorithm....

    by cute_boi
  • You can reach a point where the phone number you used for 2FA has been "used too many times" and then you're stuck in the middle of registration. There doesn't seem to be any documented limit anywhere and the only solution people have been able to use is find someone else to help you verify with their phone number. What makes this more difficult is when you get logged out of one of your accounts, they ask for a phone number for 2FA to login, you provide the same phone number you used originally (even though it is not officially associated with your account, just to verify registration), but that fails because your number has apparently been used too often. So now you can't even log in to your valid account that already exists. Sure, should have added some other form of 2FA or a passkey to the account, but why can't I verify with the same number I used originally? And just to top things off, you can't use your Google Voice number for 2FA account verification when signing up for another Google service.
    by chrsstrm
  • Probably depends on how "trust worthy" you seem to Google for them to trigger this requirement. Things like using Linux, using Firefox, using a VPN, etc.
    by flumes_whims_
  • The latest moves from google are the damning smoking gun evidence that anti monopoly court ever needs. "Do this or else". Recaptcha, gmail, google suite, android, chrome, colab and even google play must be viable businesses on their own, separate from google ads machine. Gmail must start competing for users with other email providers. And, yes, recaptcha must pay its infrastructure cost in full only from recaptcha revenue. This is the good way to level playing field, silence all the critics and let air into the room.
    by hamilyon2
  • Google is a such a monopoly in email you can just go online a get any other free or paid email service.
    by ymolodtsov
  • I like how they argued AI was a massive threat to their search empire and subsequently advertising empire ... and then a few weeks after the judge issued their astonishingly light measures to address Google's monopoly abuse, they partnered with Apple and achieved ~100% of default AI agents on smartphones being powered by Google!
    by benoau
  • Recently helped a small business set up a Google Workspace account and we hit a wall during registration.

    Told the owners that if Google is already being difficult during signup, imagine being locked out later with client work on the line. Pulled up a few horror stories about Google lockouts to drive the point home. They ended up with another workspace solution.

    by 8cvor6j844qw_d6
  • This is useful. What were the horror stories?

    Which workspace solution did the client settle on?

    by dotancohen
  • Yeah, I can't even register a new Gmail/workspace account at this point. "This phone number has been used too many times."
    by FireBeyond
  • I've been reasonably happy with it since 2013 now.

    This last year however, I've started to hear complaints from staff of annoying popups about AI stuff people don't want to use

    by benoliver999
  • What do they use instead? Grass tends to be greener on the other side. Though it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft offered better support despite having a worse product.
    by traderj0e
  • With which workspace solution did they end up with?
    by super256