[gldnspud]

There are also assumptions that everyone with a mobile phone will have the same phone number for a long time, never have their phone stolen or destroyed, could easily replace it and restore from a backup if it were, and pay their phone bill in a way that never results in cancellation (and thus forfeiting a phone number).

I know someone who works at a public library and regularly interacts with folks who've found hard times. From the stories I've heard, it's a fairly common situation for someone to want to reset their password, then be told by the site that they will receive a text message on a phone number "ending in ####". This is a challenge for those who had to get a new phone number since they signed up.

[justinclift]

On this note, I have an old google account that wasn't used for a while.

Tried to access it recently, signing in with the correct password, and it whinged at me.

Offered to confirm that I'm "me" via SMS message to an old phone number (probably from the UK). No idea what that number would have been, as I'm not in the UK any more.

Alternatively, it offered to email a verification token to my email address. Did that, received token fine.

Still couldn't access the account. So now... no access to that account, and there's no avenue to follow up.

So, even with the correct password, and verified email, that account is now forever dead. :(

No wonder I fully agree with the "these tech giants are irresponsible morons" crowd. They've very much proven the case through their actions.

[Wowfunhappy]

I really, really hate forced two-step authentication. It may be (somewhat) more secure but it doesn't work for everyone!