Comment on Google Disabling Phone 2 Factor?

• Chozo@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Deprecating SMS is a good thing, in all honesty. SMS is not a secure form of data transfer, and is trivially intercepted. You can buy and setup an illegal Stingray device relatively easily, and capture basically all wireless data from a phone within range.

  That said, if the device was truly never used for 2FA, then there wouldn't be any push-based 2FA on the account to begin with. Unless there's another device that's been authenticated with your account somewhere, like an old phone. In which case, that's where your login requests are being pushed to. That's a setting that can only be enabled by successfully authenticating with a device at least once in the past.

  If there was never any other authenticated device, then that setting on your account isn't there. Enabling that feature is a two-step process, and step 1 involves configuration on a local device before it can be enabled remotely on your account.

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  • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    SMS could potentially be a secure form of Data Transfer if companies weren’t allowed by limp dinosaur legislators to gut your phone for any useable data with a simple app, but yeah I can see how it’s current state is lackluster.

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    • Chozo@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You’re wrong, btw, the Google Prompts feature is Default and cannot be turned off.

      Only if there's a previously-authenticated device. That setting can't be enabled without a key, and one of the required keys is produced locally by a logged-in device (which is why your device is trusted to stay logged in indefinitely). If enabled without a key, it's nonfunctional and should error itself out and revert to a disabled state.

      If that somehow hasn't happened (which, in all honesty, would be very surprising to learn) and the setting is enabled on your account, then that'd be something you'd need to submit a request to Google to have fixed, otherwise you have zero recovery on that account.

      Are you a thousand percent sure you've never had any other device logged into that Google account? When you attempt to log in, it should show you the device name it's sending the request to. For instance, when I log into my Gmail from an Incognito window right now, it says to check my Pixel 6 Pro. What's it saying for you?

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      • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        No, I’m telling you, it’s on by default when you purchase a Google Device. It doesn’t need to be set up.

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    • brianorca@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The SMS vulnerability is not because of your apps. It’s because of the LTE protocol itself. It can be intercepted or redirected without touching your phone.

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