alt Hacker NewsI 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 [email protected] and have since forgotten the password. So that’s one burned. But feel free to try [email protected] 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.
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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.
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.
When you create an account through google services on a phone, you don't even need a phone number.
I hit both a google QR captcha and traditional captcha today. They're phasing it in.
"A tester in A/B testing situation swears that B tester is not telling the truth"
Yeah I set one up a few weeks ago for testing, same process.
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....
Maybe it depends on the country?
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.