[sosodev]

Support requests have always been the weakest link in the security chain for big corps. I've had accounts of mine turned over with 2FA disabled by humans before. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the LLMs are doing the same thing.

The simple fact that 2FA can be removed by low level support staff drives me mad. It defeats the whole purpose of the process.

[pocksuppet]

A flow can either fail safe or fail secure.

Fail secure: if you lose your email, your account is forever locked.

Fail safe: if you lose your email, your account is not forever locked. But, someone else might be able to get your account by pretending you lost your email.

There are no other choices.

When the electronic door controller loses power, either the door stays locked, or the door stays unlocked. In case of a fire you want it unlocked so people can get out. But then a burglar can cut the power to get in. Doors that stay permanently locked in a power outage are only permitted in extreme cases where security is of the utmost importance. Obviously Instagram accounts aren't as important as doors in a fire.

[cortesoft]

There are a lot of other ways they could do it.

You could provide a delay feature… if you request this sort of reset, it takes 3 days, and emails are sent to the primary address every day with the count down. If your email isn’t lost, you would see these warnings.

You could let an account holder designate emergency contacts (other accounts) that are allowed to request a reset if you lose your primary email (again with a time delay to allow you to block malicious takeover attempts).

Recovery keys, security questions, real life identity proof, etc, are all other possible options, too.

[aargh_aargh]

I've seen this delay in action when logging in into an old dormant Google account. After I provided correct password (and some other details I remember vaguely - probably no phone number set and some problem with using the TOTP I set up long ago), it sent an email to the linked primary email and waited for a day to give it a chance to abort before logging me in.

The delay is quite a bother but it's surely better than account takeover. What I mind about the process is probably the lack of transparency - what combination of factors (MFA pieces, location, inactive time, ...) launches which process? I get that transparency might help attackers here but they're the ones to have the persistence to figure out the rules anyway. Smells like security through obscurity to me.

[ian_holt]

I quite like that idea also. And I would not have thought it would be that difficult to implement in most systems these days

Having 1 or 2 backup email accounts and/or an SMS sent to a registered mobile phone number seems to me to be relatively simple to implement

Along with a built-in delay, the inconvenience of having to wait is way better than losing access to critical accounts

[theknarf]

Some doors can be designed with a large push handle to unlatch from the inside while still being closed from the outside. Allowing people on the inside to escape out but not the other way around.

[pocksuppet]

May I introduce you to Deviant Ollam's talks? You can fish a wire under the door and use it to push the inner push handle.

[aryan14]

This is actually what microsoft does for microsoft accounts

If you recover a microsoft account / submit a ticket to recover it and provide correct information, the active email gets an email letting them know about the request

You can deny it, or if you ignore it for 30 days the request goes through

Seems to be the best system IMO

[faidit]

Someone has been trying to hack into my MSFT account for years. I constantly get the notifications. I can not see where they are trying from (unlike some other services that give you info about failed login attempts) nor add more security measures. I worry one day I will accidentally hit "Approve" or they will guess the 6 digit code they have tried thousands of times.

The fun part is that you can't disable OneDrive. No matter how many times I turn it off it always keeps turning OneDrive back on to put my private data in the cloud for the attackers. Of course I can't block the methods that are obviously under attack either.

And the lack of a login history view means I have no way to know if they were successful yet. Support has never been good (for legitimate users) and is basically non-existent with AI now.

[azthecx]

You can disable the email you use publicly as a login email.

I would recommend you look at some other guides before you do this but the gist is My Account > Your Account > Manage Account Information. Then you can add a new email that you do not share as your primary login email, and disable login from the email you use to send emails.

[Spare_account]

I have about a dozen email aliases associated with my Microsoft account. On the "Your info" page, under "Account info", one of them is described as "The email address you use to sign in to your Microsoft Account".

However, I can use any of them to initiate a login attempt. I have my account set to passwordless, I don't know if that is relevant (every login attempt triggers an MFA prompt).

If I click on "Edit account info" I am taken to a page where I can choose which address in the "Primary", but given that ANY of the aliases can be used to intiate a sign-in, I don't see any benefit in changing that.

EDIT: I wasn't being adventurous enough. The option to change which aliases can be used to sign in is under (surprisingly) "Sign-in preferences".

In my defence, that page wasn't loading properly in Firefox with all my privacy add-ons enabled. I was able to access it in Edge.

EDIT2: I've changed my primary alias to a newly created one. If I am still able to sign in OK in a couple of days, I will disable the old primary for sign-in. I hope I don't live to regret this!

[hyperman1]

Re Onedrive, as someone who left windows ages ago: Why not just create folders outside your user home? Create some junctions from the inside. Then onedrive gets to sync only your desktop wallpaper and any random stuf apps drop in there, and your real data is safe outside its reach.

[sheiyei]

I think the best defense against this is to delete the Microsoft account and enjoy a better life. (Unless, of course, you need it for Minecraft.)

[codebolt]

The correct thing to do in this scenario is to create a new random login alias on your Microsoft account, make it the primary login alias, and disable login for the all other e-mails tied to the account.

[aryan14]

You can view the recent activity on your Microsoft account @ account(dot)live(dot)com/Activity

Would show any logins or security info updates etc

[Ueland]

Those login attempts which trigger 2fa app does not generate a log entry if unsuccessful. Only attempts with username/password does. For some strange reason.

So there is no way to flag them as malicious and if you accidentally accept, then it’s already too late.

Pretty annoying setup.

[jazzyjackson]

I know they’re always changing things but I’m 99% sure one drive can be disabled with a checkbox either in “turn windows features on or off” or via group policy editor.

[the_af]

> You can deny it, or if you ignore it for 30 days the request goes through

That's a good measure, but it would fail for the attack scenario in TFA: the attacker claims their account was hacked, so presumably (if the support AI "believes" them) the notification email is compromised. If the account was hacked, you cannot let the one receiving the notification cancel your recovery attempt, which they will of course try to do. Of course in this exploit it's all a lie, but what if your account truly was hacked and your were genuinely trying to recover it?

[markdown]

1. Provide a delay of a week. 2. Notify via all addresses on file. 3. Make an admin post (by the account in question) explaining that a 2FA override has been requested. Something you and all your followers can see.

[rpigab]

I think I set up my Apple account about 14 years ago. I have no clue what I put as security answers when I was young, even though I think I have the answers, it won't accept them. I still know my password, I still have access to the email, but because I switched from iPhone to Android, I didn't use the account for years.

Now I want to log in with the correct password, because it's been such a long time, it locks me out unless I give it 2 security answers. I've tried to reset it by email, it still locks me out on next login and asks for 1 security answer, I can't find any answer, I have no clue if it's case-sensitive and details like that. I went to an Apple store, they told me to contact the support, I have contacted the support, they can't do anything. Maybe my last hope is GDPR since I'm in the EU, have the account deleted.

[closeparen]

Apple does this.

[hijodelsol]

There are definitely more shades of grey. On my iPhone I can select a close contact to be able to overturn my protection but this contact needs to have security features turned on, too. So Apple staff cannot do it, only a non publicly known person that has 2FA and encryption themselves. Add time delays, notifications, identity checks and more to it and you can make this process reasonably secure while still ensuring recovery.

[Lonestar1440]

There are no other online choices. If my Bank login goes totally Kaput, though, I can take my ID down to the Branch to get it sorted. Same with my telecom provider.

I try to only depend on services which have this property. I don't succeed.

[foxglacier]

Tech people forget how the real world has solved these problems long ago. I got access to my bank account in another country by writing them a letter on paper and having it signed by a policeman in my country then sending it in the mail. A pain and expensive but if it's important, you do it. All these old fashioned techniques are backed by the criminal justice system which can actually work when the fraudsters have to go to the police station to commit their crime.

[ipaddr]

Sounds great until you have an aging parent with a problem who can't get there. Get a power of attorney you say.. great but they won't accept unless parent comes to the branch.

This comes back to haunt you in the future.

[ajsnigrutin]

On the other hand, the best anti-scam feature for older relatives is to tell them to "go there in person". Get a call from the bank, they simply tell them "ok, I'm coming to the bank tomorrow, in person", and they're done. Scam call? Legit call? Doesn't matter, they'll sort it out at the bank.

There's a whole wide age and knowledge/competence where older people can still fall for scams (or can't know if it's legit or a scam) but on the other hand are still capable to go to whatever office/bank they need to go.

[Terr_]

Probably not news to anyone here, but partial step in this direction is to put down vetted official contact details for the institutions.

Every time someone calls to say there's a problem with your account, you ask for their name and/or extension number, because recontacting through the institution is your only good way of verifying their identity.

[donalhunt]

That works when the system is setup to allow that.

I've encountered banks that don't have that setup — hilariously one bank felt the need to cold call me about my complaint about cold calling from unverifiable numbers. When I asked how I could call them on a verifiable number, they claimed I couldn't. :/

[kijin]

Malware on your phone can reroute your calls to the attacker. So you think you're calling the official number at the correct institution, but you're actually talking to the attacker.

[Lonestar1440]

I've done this. I'm very surprised that, in your case, the POA was not sufficient to get your business done.

I'm not sure what alternative you are proposing. This only gets much, much worse when the aging person is trying to use a password...

[zimpenfish]

> until you have an aging parent with a problem who can't get there

Or you get elected to high office and consequently getting to the branch is a bit ... faffy[0]

[0] https://chicago.suntimes.com/pope-leo-xiv/2026/05/06/pope-le...

[komali2]

> McCarthy, an Augustinian friar from the South Side who has known Pope Leo for 43 years, told the story as a reminder to parishioners that the pope “is like us,” and “a very humble guy.”

So humble that he was able to change his information over the phone by threatening directly to the president of the bank that he'd use a different bank if they didn't let him, and the president bent over backwards to meet this demand. He's just like us!

[Gigachad]

This is still less problematic than an attacker getting in and draining the funds.

[RevEng]

That's a strange one. I had to use POA for my mother in law last summer and it was straight forward.

[alexfoo]

Some companies are purposely obtuse about it.

My wife is trying to sort something with a famous Irish airline who are well known for messing people around. She has LPA/POA for her mother but rather than the airline accepting the VCode (this is the UK) the airline are requesting to see the original POA certificate which is just ridiculous. They seem to be moving a little quicker now there is solicitor involved.

Given how much back and forth there has been it's probably cost the airline more than just refunding the amount at the first request. We'll keep going to prove a point.

[foxglacier]

Try another branch. I had that exact problem and just shopped around. I think some staff err on the side of caution when they don't know what to do.

[gamerDude]

Seems like a business opportunity. Face to face authentication in every major city that can authenticate people when needed.

[bandrami]

This is actually one of the more useful services those horrible check-cashing storefronts provide.

[dzhiurgis]

Take it to the branch? Like in the 90s? What?

[CPLX]

Of course it's not binary, any more than there are two choices between "cheap" and "expensive"

The question is how much effort and authority is required to gain access through alternative means, not whether it's possible.

It's always a question of how much, insofar as kidnapping Mark Zuckerberg or winning an order from a Federal Judge are two of the possible scenarios.

[HDBaseT]

I don't think its that binary.

Using the door and fire scenario, you can have manual opening method available, just make it only available on the inside.

[dgacmu]

I'm probably out of date, but Google's advanced protection at one point did account recovery via postcard to your home address. High latency but pretty good as a fallback.

[HWR_14]

Postcards are the least secure form of mail. I would hope it uses a security envelope at least.

[itintheory]

There are many good options. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321089

[eddd-ddde]

What about "go see an agent in person and use your fingerprint to prove it is you"?

[subscribed]

There's also Google fail. You have everything (including recovery emails) except the phone you had 15 years ago, and you lose your account.

[throwaway173738]

This is too simplistic. A lot of automatic door locks are just door strikes with a solenoid that is remotely actuated inside the door casing. In that model you can let people out of the building because the inner part of the door has a bar you can press that moves the door pin, which is how all door handles work normally, so there’s no “fail open” needed. You can get out, but you might not be able to get back in.

[vkou]

A compromise solution would be to fail safe with a cook-off period and a notification for any active users.

It would mean that someone can't gank an account from under you while you're using it, but you could recover it after a week if you lose access to your email.

[wwn_se]

There is a third option. Most banks here in Sweden solve this by forcing you to show up in person (with a ID card) if you loose your password.

I get that this also is technically a 2FA bypass but the cost is extreme and its really hard to impersonate someone in real life.

[sigmoid10]

How would that even work for internet companies without physical stores? Go to Menlo Park, CA to recover your account?

[stoltzmann]

Facebook already requires verifying your ID in some cases, it's absolutely feasible for them to do it online.

If it's not feasible, I can see an argument that large enough companies should be required to provide in person support options.

Facebook defintely has enough money to facilitate this.

[wasmitnetzen]

There's a lot of online-only banks who have figured this out. Do video auth, outsource it to the postal service, ...

[anilakar]

> There are no other choices.

Fail safe noisily and implement a cooldown period.

[ValentineC]

> The simple fact that 2FA can be removed by low level support staff drives me mad. It defeats the whole purpose of the process.

Crazy Domains (one of the few registrars for my ccTLD) removed 2FA from my account (that was in the process of getting hijacked) despite me being on the phone with them specifically telling them not to do so [1][2].

What's worse was that my account got targeted by the same hijacker again when they seemingly changed their support system, and was hijacked for a few hours, leading to my Twitter account getting compromised (this happened around the same time fElon laid off a bunch of people and removed phone-based 2FA from accounts).

Fuck Crazy Domains and Newfold Digital (formerly known as EIG).

I eventually lost my OG username because fElon wanted it for his Grok nonsense anyway [3]. Fuck Elon too.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47913341

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47859496

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47856983

[MichaelZuo]

Wait… why did you continue trusting them for there to be a second time?

If they didn’t care at all about your instructions the first time?

[ipaddr]

I remember losing subdomain search: search.batcave.net 20+ years ago when they suddenly took it over. Batcave offered free hosting and a subdomain at the time.

[phil21]

The strangest/scariest and honestly in the end all that surprising one of these I had was with a major storage appliance provider that most in the space on HN would know by name.

We needed to delete a storage volume to urgently free up space, and apparently this was locked in a way the storage vendor was required to act as a "second key" to ours to make the destructive action. We had never properly set this up, and I never had even logged into my "support" account with them before. They required two authorized contacts on our end for them to confirm the action.

The process was effectively my colleague handling the sev1 incident asking me to join their Zoom call. They asked for my 2FA and I said I never had one configured and obviously did not receive it since my e-mail was not setup with them. The (obviously outsourced) support rep decided just pasting the code into Zoom chat and then having me read it back to them was Good Enough(tm) and the process continued.

I was a little too surprised at this at the time to think about it too much. But the fact they could see the expected generated code, and type it in themselves into their system was at least interesting to me. Not quite sure how I feel about it, since this did indeed save us from a sev1 going sev0 - but overall it's obviously quite vulnerable to both social engineering and insider attack.

It's certainly a difficult tradeoff. Not sure I would hand that sort of "override" capability to someone who was was clearly a Tier 1 or 2 support rep - I'd probably bury it (but in a different manner) somewhere that required escalation to a higher authority but still could be done in timely (minutes, not hours) manner. Who knows though, as organizations scale this gets harder and harder.

[ShinyLeftPad]

Ubiquiti or Synology?

[phil21]

Neither, large Enterprise storage name where the prices start in the six figures for the smallest boxes.

[moritzwarhier]

100%

Urgency.

Emotions.

It's all there, and high-stakes environments with no proper protocol are most vulnerable.

Source: used to work part-time in IT support at a hospital, by now 10+ years ago, so it was routinely requested to circumvent regulations and security protocols, even medical ones (cough Windows in ICU monitors and other medical "kiosk" PCs that should absolutely not run Windows)

[Krasnol]

I love those admin passwords which a tech will give you at some point because he doesn't want to do the work himself. If they even have passwords...

Unfortunately Siemens woke up.

[moritzwarhier]

You mean

  admin

or

  Administrator

?

Horrific, people should be jailed for cyberattacks when they carelessly just give out this word.

The experiences I meant were mostly

- password reset requests (admittedly, we had a protocol even then to strictly require a "physical signature", normally meaning Fax or internal snail mail)

- medical protocols: don't wanna go into too much detail here, but:

1) Windows requires a lot of maintenance, often even hard restores, to function normally, even when sold as the UI for physical ICU monitors

2) Medical personell often is severely overworked, especially people in important, but not formally highly-qualified roles. And things like Surgery rooms and ICUs often have very slim time slots.

With the former, you should not enter into them without wearing appropriate clothing.

It doesn't prevent people working there from requesting you to finally come over and make that UEFI-Windows-Crapware-Kiosk-PC which was sold as a medical device boot... of course especially not when there is an ongoing surgery nearby. And of course, your higher-ups will be there to help you sort out these issues without violating protocols...

thankfully I didn't do careless things there and haven't witnessed IT-related disasters there. But still, I gave these examples for a reason :D

there was a healthy culture but some of the situations encountered in medical IT support should really require specialized, short-term training.

Keeping up rigorous hygiene protocols requires dedicated work by professionals, especially in a large hospital.

And the same argument can be made for account protection and user support for large software providers.

[Krasnol]

I support radiologies...I have seen things, patients wouldn't believe. MRI in helium off the shoulder of the CS student. I watched DICOMs corrupt in the dark near the PACS gateway. All those moments will be lost in time...like unsaved reports in rain. Time to reboot

[sfink]

Well done.

Maybe this is spoiling the effect, but for people who don't recognize it instantly:

> I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue

[71bw]

We seem to work in very similar fields. I tend to work on the back-end line. To put it lightly: it is all a big shitshow. Vendor lock-in, non-standard communication, network admins who have no idea what they are doing, radiology imaging clinics with no IT staff at all (even on-call external people) or places that had their network set up 15 years ago by a guy who is now long dead or otherwise MIA. And then, inevitably, you have to guide the innocent girl sitting at the front desk to somewhere in the local backrooms just to reset a server remotely.

[Krasnol]

Yes, seen it all. I love how the girl is still talk weeks later.

It is a great field though. The wide range of tech you're confronted with is astonishing and all of it live 24/7.

I wish I'd have discovered the field earlier in my life, there is so much room for improvement.

[giancarlostoro]

The fact that if your account has had the SAME EMAIL AND NUMBER FOR 14 YEARS OR MORE and support still thinks you got hacked is more embarrassing to me.

[SoftTalker]

I used my work email for everything for 14 years, now I'm retired/fired/laid off and I can't access it anymore and I forgot to change the email linked in my Facebook account.

[mike_hock]

> I used my work email for everything

Then you had it coming.

[giancarlostoro]

I would expect your IP to not change as drastically as some VPN IP being your only evidence that you're you.

[3form]

Unless you changed both job and country.

[DSMan195276]

That doesn't sound that unlikely to me personally, not everybody has the best tech habits and some life events can result in losing access to both very quickly. It doesn't have to happen often for it to still be a common event in support cases.

[spullara]

recovery is always the weakest link in any authentication system

[acdha]

This is not wrong but what’s really missing is cost: Meta did this so they can avoid paying people to do it. Lots of companies follow that decay spiral: your bank could shut phishers down cold by requiring wire transfers to be authorized in person but they don’t want to pay staff or risk you being upset by a transaction taking an extra hour so they don’t.

Imagine an alternate universe where big tech companies worked with various trustworthy third-parties where something like this would generate a challenge you could take to your local notary, post office, library, police station, etc. where someone would check ID before approving it. How many phishing attacks would be prevented annually by a physical presence check?

[dylan604]

> your bank could shut phishers down cold by requiring wire transfers to be authorized in person but they don’t want to pay staff or risk you being upset by a transaction taking an extra hour so they don’t.

Isn't this essentially what just recently happened to the Pope? Then there were people here doing the rest of your comment for him saying how egregious it was for them to ask for an in person authorization. It sounded like all he was trying to do was update his address, but changing your address from one in Chicago to one in a European country absolutely sounds like something a phisher would be trying to do.

[throwaway85825]

Its perfectly acceptable for a security model to make things difficult for extreme edge cases like the pope. After all if the situation warrants it such rare events can always be escalated.

[Terr_]

To frame it another way: Better to inconvenience the pope once every few years than have tens of thousands of "little person" account compromises every year.

I expect his Holiness might agree.

[acdha]

Yes, there were people here criticizing that but also plenty of people saying it was a reasonable trade off. Making exceptional things harder to make everyday security better is not a bad decision even if it upsets techies who’d like everything to be automated.

[spullara]

for a while facebook had the ability to recover your account by having them ask several of your friends if the recovery was legitimate but it was turned off. my guess is that not enough people added trusted contacts to bother running it.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/2/4292744/facebook-trusted-c...

[parable]

I actually quite like this solution. Beats asking users to add a "recovery selfie" (something Meta actually does now) - I'd rather choose 3 of my friends and have them approve some notification in-app. Seems like better UX and preserves privacy a slight bit more, but we all know Meta's not in the privacy business.

[spullara]

honestly I can't think of a better solution that would require a far more coordinated attack to pull off. it should work on any system where trusted folks are likely to have accounts.

[ronsor]

The amount of hassle involved with regular physical checks is why it's not implemented, regardless of attack prevention.

The cost of hiring a person is part of it but not really the core reason. People were sold on the Internet with "you can do things online conveniently" and reintroducing the need to physically go somewhere negates that angle entirely.

[acdha]

To be clear, I was thinking cost as more than just payroll - e.g. my bank can do this because they have paid for a branch near my house, Facebook does not - but another way to look at it is that many of the costs due to errors have been shifted to the user.

I do think friction causes a reflexive resistance to the idea but I think that might be an overreaction. This is a rare thing people should be doing no more than a few times in their life.

[anonymars]

> People were sold on the Internet with "you can do things online conveniently" and reintroducing the need to physically go somewhere negates that angle entirely

But how often does one need to do recovery procedures like this?

How much less convenient is it for everyone else to be at risk of their account being taken over?

[econ]

Then you get trusted parties selling account access. Even if you remove them for a single false positive they will do it. A bit like a % packages "vanishing".

The least terrible seem digital id.

[acdha]

> Then you get trusted parties selling account access

How many bank tellers or USPS employees do that, though? It’s possible but quite rare because people know they’ll be running a big risk of being caught and no individual transaction is worth that much.

[sparqlittlestar]

Interstingly, since 2008 Dutch bankers need to take an oath and whilst I don't think that in itself deters fraud, being fired for fraud would preclude going back to work for another bank (tuchtrecht / disciplinairy law)

[SoftTalker]

It's a tough problem, because people forget passwords, change phones, lose access to 2FA devices, but still need to use their accounts.

[toomuchtodo]

I manage customer identity and access management ("CIAM") for a financial services firm. Passkeys are primary, recovery can be performed by providing a government credential remotely (which costs us ~$2-3 per recovery). I do not think it is hard, based on what we have built and spent to enable these capabilities. NIST Special Publication NIST SP 800-63 Digital Identity Guidelines is a helpful resource on this topic.

https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/

I think Meta just does not care if they're enabling AI attack surface and vulnerabilities into these customer journeys. It's...certainly a choice, versus deterministic journeys with hard guardrails. They could make different choices.

[toast0]

> recovery can be performed by providing a government credential remotely

That only works because you presumably do KYC when you open accounts, so you have an identity to match to. Most internet accounts don't do real KYC, so a government credential doesn't really work for recovery --- they didn't know who you were, so proving who you are doesn't help anything.

That doesn't mean that letting anyone sweet talk support or an AI into taking over an account is acceptable, of course.

[toomuchtodo]

It's a fair point, and can be solved for as part of the "Verified" offerings Meta offers. This binds IRL identity to the digital identity at verification for future identity assurance step up (including if and when recovery is required). Failing that, TOTP, SMS, and even mailing an OTP to a mailing address remain low friction auth factors (with, of course, various levels of security).

My point is that while this is not easy, there are obvious very bad ways to implement this that should not be done (chatbot or other generative AI interface vulnerable to the usual suspects of AI inherent attack surface). Don't build the bad way, the right away is known and straightforward.

[macintux]

I’d wager your range of tech literacy/capabilities for your firm is much narrower than big tech.

[toomuchtodo]

Range != value, depending on use case. Doing more poorly does not make something better. Our customer identity capabilities are very close to login.gov (we don't have to support hundreds of agency customers and common access cards), and if its good enough for ~342M Americans, its good enough for our customer base.

Broadly speaking, work for the sake of work is not valuable work. Show me outcomes for resources and time invested, and compare accordingly. Value is, again broadly speaking (there is always nuance), what you deliver. If you bring me an AI solution for a high risk high value customer journey, data flow, or code path, that is an anti pattern. If you, as a colleague or a stakeholder, put forth that we must use AI in situations that require a high degree of determinism (due to potential high cost failure modes), you will need to prove this extraordinary claim with evidence.

Choose Boring Technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291215 - March 2015 (212 comments) ["Am I using this project as an excuse to learn some new technology, or am I trying to solve a problem?"]

I get paid to manage risk efficiently, including being measured on time and budget spent against the success criteria, ymmv; my comp and budget is not dependent on how much AI I shove into security systems. "What am I optimizing for?"

Amazon scraps AI leaderboard to stop workers chasing usage scores - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48315583 - May 2026 (19 comments)

[fn-mote]

> [login.gov] if its good enough for ~342M Americans

I am very curious about the actual number of users of login.gov.

I am a US citizen and my experience was … negative to the point of actively avoiding it.

[econ]

Someone gained access to a Instagram account (belonging to a business by the same name) connected to a fb account (by the same name) that they still had access to. The only thing fb could do was terminate the Instagram for impersonation.

It's an impressive level of incompetence.

[StilesCrisis]

It's worse than "forgetting." Having seen older folks just set up new accounts for a move, they make zero attempt to even try to keep them! Oh, the phone company needs a login/pass? Just type in anything, don't write it down. If something goes wrong, they're going to call in anyway, not use the website.

[throwaway173738]

A lot of utility companies including Comcast used to not have a flow for “moving” and so you’d get a brand new account with a comcast email every time you moved to a new address. In a lot of cases the techs would just set it up for you as part of the install and give you the password. It’s only in the last 10 years they added anything like that. I have 3 or 4 different obsolete accounts with them where my actual email is the contact email from that time and some of their online systems will reset the wrong password and stuff like that.

[kijin]

One-time logins actually sound useful for things like setting up utilities for a house. Sign up, log in, do whatever you need to do, log out and the account is immediately locked. Nobody expects you to log back in anytime soon, anyway.

If you ever need to interact with the service again, you initiate account recovery using a combination of your contact info and some codes printed on your monthly bill.

[dpark]

I had to go through the account recovery on my Facebook account once and the proof they demanded was that I match a bunch of pictures of friends to their names. I think it took 3 tries over multiple days to actually get it unlocked because it turns out I such really remember a lot of the people I met 20 years ago and friended on Facebook.

I don’t recall why I had to go through this song and dance. Very plausibly the account was still associated with an old school address that I could no longer access. So yeah, account recovery is hard. How do you prove someone owns an account when they’ve lost the things they are supposed to use to prove ownership?

[jgalt212]

fair enough, but what's the actual point of 2FA if it's so easy to override?

[spullara]

the alternative is people losing their accounts and people aren't willing to allow that. i do think that apple does this a little better where they try everything to contact you in every way they know and it takes a week to get access. at a minimum to change your email it should require a week of waiting to see if the user can access the original mail to the hand off.

[recursive]

In some cases, checkbox-compliance with customer requirements.

[ttctciyf]

Personally it seems mostly about prizing the phone number out of my cold clammy hands.

I recently tried to access my google account on a new browser install. Google did not believe my login/password was sufficient, and insisted on me surrendering my phone number:

> To help keep your account safe, Google wants to make sure it’s really you trying to sign in [...]

> Enter a phone number to get a text message with a verification code.

I have never given my phone number to Google for that account (I have a separate account on my Android phone).

So how on earth this will "make sure it's really you" I have no idea.

I am unable to access Google from my new browser install so am stuck with using my old one for anything which requires a Google login.

I guess at some point I'll try and resolve it by adding a recovery email or something, but.. my inclination is to throw Google and the account in the trash right now.

[jazzyjackson]

I deleted my Google account but I’m pretty sure you can configure a Passkey on the device that lets you log in, and have that passkey in a password manager you’ve logged into on the new device and that will be considered good enough.

Setting aside my opinion that it’s asinine to upload passkeys to the cloud :)

[mr_mitm]

It's a hard problem. How do you prove you own an account if you lost all proof of ownership? Especially so if an account was never tied to your real name, in which case you could at least rely on government ids.

[throwaway85825]

Simple, you don't. This is all going to seem quaint in a few years when old accounts started getting deleted for inactivity.

[MichaelZuo]

Well the obvious solution is to prevent accounts not using a real name or registered organization name from being recovered.

[UltraSane]

It depends. Some like AWS take it deadly seriously and it takes a long time to recover root access to an account.

[LandenLove]

Additionally, they fail to recover said account when it's taken over. My father's FaceBook account was hacked (likely through phishing) and it was impossible to contact anyone to get it back. The scum who stole his account also uploaded illegal context, so the account, along with ~10 years of personal memories, was deleted without any recourse. It was impossible to talk to a real human being at Meta. Nothing but an insanely unhelpful FAQ page.

I highly advise that you download and backup any of your personal data on all your social media accounts for yourself and your loved ones. These large companies do not care about you beyond showing you ads for dropped shipped garbage from China and AI slop tiktoks.

[dainank]

I had a similar experience with a Microsoft Outlook account. Supposedly this is done for legal reasons. Once an account violates certain laws, companies 'allegedly' have no choice but to permanently close that account even if you can somehow prove it was 100% the hacker who violated those rules and not you.

[basisword]

>> The simple fact that 2FA can be removed by low level support staff drives me mad. It defeats the whole purpose of the process.

The fact it can be removed by anyone is the problem. If you lose access to your 2FA (and recovery codes) then you should lose access to your account. Having it removable by anyone (other than a logged in account holder) defeats the entire point.

[ValentineC]

> The fact it can be removed by anyone is the problem. If you lose access to your 2FA (and recovery codes) then you should lose access to your account. Having it removable by anyone (other than a logged in account holder) defeats the entire point.

At least make it a major pain in the ass to recover like AWS, which requires some kind of notarised identity verification [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13122723

[pocksuppet]

What if I don't want to lose my account if I lose my 2FA? Then I don't enable 2FA, presumably. But some security guy at your company is forcing me to enable 2FA or you'll just lock my account until I do.

[MarleTangible]

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. Well, it gets complicated quickly when a wide range of users involved.

[robinpie]

I always thought the entire concept of even password resets was absurd. Email is a huge SPOF for basically everyone.

If you lose your password or 2FA, you should lose your account, too bad so sad.

[SoftTalker]

Completely unrealistic. Stuff happens. Email accounts get closed for no reason. People lose their phones, or have them stolen. Lots of reasons why someone might need an exceptional account recovery process.

Not saying it should be easy or routine, it should not be. But it must be possible.

[basisword]

That's what recovery codes are for. Unfortunately it seems a lot of 2FA is now implemented without recovery codes.

[Marsymars]

I suspect very few people have good management of recovery codes.

I just save them in my password manager.

As best as I can tell, everyone I work with simply doesn't save them at all and initiates a password reset if they lose their password/2FA.

[davedx]

I recently went through this process with Microsoft for Office365 and it was reasonably well executed: it needed escalation and three separate callbacks to first verify, then reset my password, then reset my MFA (I changed my phone and lost the lot).

[AtNightWeCode]

I don't think it is AI. Instagram had a similar issue before. Maybe it still exists. If you ever logged in on a phone you could then use that phone to reset the password.

[karel-3d]

well. I lost my 2FA dongle once (left it on a different continent). Which I used to secure my domain name on which I received mail.

suddenly I was happy that low level support staff could remove it. (I needed to scan my passport and photo. This was way before modern image generation.)

[Fnoord]

This is why you should have at least two MFA options enabled.

[cryptoegorophy]

low level support, means that they can be "bribed" to do things like this.

[jeffbee]

Yeah. I spent years working partly for the account abuse team at Google and that is why I always shake my head (silently, because the HN groupthink disagrees) at the endless parade of stories on this site about people who lost access to their accounts and can't contact support. Under no circumstances do you want any possibility that front-line support can hand your account over to anyone.

The lack of account support is a safety feature, not a flaw. If your accounts are valuable to you, act like an adult and write down the recovery codes on paper.