alt Hacker News> Basing your security decisions on "it'll never happen to me" because there are billions of other users who will get burnt first
That's not my argument. My argument is that your evidence that Google is uniquely bad at locking people out of their accounts is not good evidence. A few stories in the news represents a beyond negligible fraction of billions of user accounts.
> A few stories in the news represents a beyond negligible fraction of billions of user accounts.
https://support.google.com/accounts/threads?thread_filter=(c...
How many times do you have to click "View more" to reach a post from last week? It's a problem.
The repeated advice from the "diamond product experts" says it all:
If you can't recover your account using Google's automated recovery process, the account is lost. [1]
Personally I thought I was OK because I had a recovery email set but what Google doesn't tell you is they outright refuse to even send a recovery email if you don't use a device, browser and same wifi they've seen before. [2]. At the time I was all in on Gmail so it was an especially sobering experience.
I accept it's a hard problem to protect that many accounts, but to dismiss it as a "few stories" is understating the problem and diminishes the terrifying experience all these users are having.
[1]: https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/453660883/locked-...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleSupport/comments/1ps28fn/coul...