More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46665414

Does anyone have a better source of information than this one forum comment from someone who thinks scanning a QR code is enough to get your phone to send a text message?

EDIT: It’s just an SMS URI. It doesn’t automatically send anything, just opens a text message for you to send.

This is just the old phone number verification with a QR code convenience method.

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.

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.

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

I also want to share a comment that someone (Velocifyer) added on my comment:

"If you make a blog post, make sure to also comment on how the audio reCAPTCHAs are nearly impossible and are blocked on public VPNs. The visual reCAPTCHAS have vauge instructions (they say “Select all squares with busses.” when they mean “Select all squares that have a bus or part of a bus and do not select any other squares.”. For 2 years I could not figure that out so I had to use the audio captchas but then Google blocked them on public VPNs and also made them almost impossible. I could only figure that out when Google Gemini clarified it for me."

Also another fact that I had discovered but to upload youtube vidoes more than 15 minutes you have to do this verification with sms and I found that its system of sending sms was quite finnicky and (too much limits is actually just one try)

Google and other tech giants's recent changes/lobbying are really impacting the open internet and it feels to me like we as people who have knowledge about these topics must do something to reform things as I simply cannot ask people who are technically unaware about these topics to fight for these changes unless we advocate and educate them about it

Most people just have simply way too much of other issues to fight for these things that they have almost taken for granted, but this to me means that the responsibility is on us people who are technically sound to fight against the attacks on open internet if we wish to preserve it.

I think my point is that we all might be waiting for other people to protest against these tech giants but I think that the world is looking at us people for such protests, Let's hope that we are able to educate more people and the open internet is preserved.

Our small steps might mean a lot in the future and so to not be dis-illusioned to make small steps thinking that they might be too small but we have to fight tech giants if we wish to preserve open internet. Every step is meaningful no matter how small

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48042596

The fact that they're introducing QR/SMS/MMS/whatever they want is actually an interesting signal, because it will harm the customer experience, which might result in the growth of responsible paid email services.

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.