Introducing selfie for sign-in: a new way to access your Google Account

Posted by lkurtz 1 day ago

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Comments

Comment by trollbridge 1 day ago

  Your Google Account holds a lot of valuable information, from cherished photos to important emails and documents.
Stuff like this is why I and many other people are going out of our way to make this no longer the case.

Comment by zzyzxd 1 day ago

It's funny because different people would interpret this sentence differently.

If you have high level understanding of the tech behind it, this feels like a threat. But if you don't, this sounds like an honest message from someone who genuinely wants to protect you.

A regular user log into Google account and see their photos today. Tomorrow they log in and see the photos again. And they would assume this system will always work like this.

Comment by dingaling 1 day ago

"Be a shame if you couldn't access them any more...

Verify identity to continue"

Comment by thisislife2 19 hours ago

This actually happened to me - a decade ago or so, Google suddenly did not allow me to access my Google Mail unless I provided them with my phone number for "additional verification and security". I had got a job offer and was desperate to access my mail and so caved-in with a lot of resentment. (Ofcourse, now it is nearly impossible to create a Google account without a phone number, but in those days people considered phone numbers to be private and were leery at services that demanded it for sign-up). And then, later on they suddenly stopped allowing you to reset your passwords using email and security questions unless you provided them even more data for "verification" (which nearly often wasn't enough to allow you to recover the account).

Comment by Rebelgecko 1 day ago

Drink verification can

Comment by onel 17 hours ago

Self-hosting will become the norm very soon. I think the usual bottlenecks of "hard to manage, no backup" are no longer there. There are very good managed self-hosting solutions so you don't need to worry about anything. You just run your immich instance and you're good

Comment by Haranrk 21 hours ago

I’m not sure I understand why this particular line bothers you. They seem to just be emphasising that your Google account has a lot of information and therefore they are providing another way to secure it?

Whether this is a good method or not is a different discussion and I probably will not use this method

Comment by samrus 20 hours ago

It sounds like extortion. Give us your face. It'd be a shame if something happens to all that data

Comment by mdp2021 18 hours ago

> will not use this method

It's probably mandated (see mine at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49033329)

Comment by tintor 1 day ago

Moved all of my cherished photos out of my Google Account.

Comment by Cider9986 1 day ago

>If you've violated a Google policy, we may save your selfie video for a longer period of time to enforce our policies.

Comment by dang 1 day ago

Is this a quote? I don't see it on the page.

Comment by throwuxiytayq 1 day ago

It sure is.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/16675622

Comment by dang 1 day ago

Thanks! and yikes

Comment by pylua 1 day ago

Yes— they spy on every pic and text upload. They literally are big brother.

Comment by sixothree 23 hours ago

I uploaded a picture to Google Maps once. They told me they needed to access my photos to be able to upload the picture.

A week later I get a notification “hey do you want to upload this photograph of a restaurant you took at location x?”. So Google Maps was busy rifling through my photos while I was going about my day-to-day business.

Creepy, gross and repulsive.

Comment by Cider9986 22 hours ago

GrapheneOS has storage scopes which make the app think it has full folder/file access but in reality you can choose the exact files or folders to give access. It helps keep invasive apps in line.

Comment by pzxc 1 day ago

https://nevergivethemyourface.com/

Comment by pillmillipedes 1 day ago

why are so many websites called title-of-the-article-dot-com ai-generated?

I suppose the kind of people making them just don't have a blog or something

Comment by hogwasher 1 day ago

why are so many people so comfortable making this assumption, based on writing style or a checklist of supposed tells or notoriously unreliable detectors, and making kneejerk accusations like they can do no harm and are already settled fact? It's one thing to feel suspicious or disregard the article yourself, but being so incautious about making public accusations without solid evidence is another.

At best, you've identified LLM use. At worst, you've insulted a human writer. Either way, you've derailed the conversation away from the topic at hand.

Comment by NotPractical 10 hours ago

There is no information about the author of this article, and it has the "AI smell". It's safer to operate under the assumption that it is AI generated unless and until the author reveals themself or at least anonymously confirms that it is not AI generated. This saves you from having made a fool of yourself by spreading it around, if it later becomes apparent that AI wrote it.

Comment by pillmillipedes 21 hours ago

worst case, it's not generated and they just used ai for editing without realizing it has such a distinct style. that might be the case here: in the couple of paragraphs around the "I am but one" heading the writing style seems (to me) different (more human-ish?) compared to the style at the beginning. unfortunately I also think they're quite bad, so I'm not sure what the moral here is for the author (who, true to their word, has elected to stay anonymous).

the question I asked in my comment isn't rhetorical, by the way: I genuinely think it's a pattern, and I want to look into it a bit deeper

oh and for the record, I don't suggest you disregard the article. it raises valid points and I agree with it. go read it!

Comment by notaigenerated 1 day ago

this should be the top comment

Comment by pudgywalsh 1 day ago

I'm waiting for the new killer feature where "Sign In With Google" popup overlay dialogs go away forever and never come back.

Comment by netsharc 1 day ago

Fucking hell, they modified Chrome/ium to pop up an application dialog (it's not just somr HTML inside the web page) to "log-in using Google".. fuck Google!

Maybe next they'll get Chrome to automatically turn on your webcam, capture your face and say "Thanks for logging in!"

Comment by ThePowerOfFuet 1 day ago

So don't use Chrome/Chromium. The web is so much better with uBlock Origin anyway!!

Comment by netsharc 1 day ago

I use Vivaldi, sadly it's based on Chromium and has quite a bit of the stinky parts...

(Currently on an old Vivaldi version that still allows manifest v2.. I guess I'm asking to be pwned)

Comment by 0rzech 17 hours ago

At this point it's probably better to switch to Firefox or Brave.

Comment by giantrobot 1 day ago

Drink your verification can.

Comment by cadamsdotcom 1 day ago

Ironically it was DuckDuckGo's AI that gave me the magic string for uBlock origin:

accounts.google.com/gsi/*

Put that in your config and enjoy.

Comment by soraminazuki 3 hours ago

uBlock Origin with the EasyList Annoyances filter is better than anything that Google can ever provide. I haven't seen Google popups in my desktop browser for a long time.

Comment by ButlerianJihad 1 day ago

Guess what, there are browser settings for that!

Comment by ThePowerOfFuet 1 day ago

Not in Firefox there isn't. It's part of the website.

Comment by sgc 1 day ago

I use a 30-seconds-of-work horribly-hacked Stylus setting to make it a blue dot that can expand on hover:

@-moz-document regexp(".") { / Insert code here... */ #credential_picker_container { width: fit-content !important; height: fit-content !important; } iframe[src^="https://accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/select"] { width: 10px !important; height: 10px !important; border-radius: 50% !important; background-color:blue !important; } iframe[src^="https://accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/select"]:hover { width: 300px !important; height: 300px !important; border-radius: 0 !important; } }

Comment by abrookewood 1 day ago

Sorry, what is stylus? I'd love to get that configured. Those pop-ups are damn annoying.

Comment by sgc 1 day ago

It's like Grease monkey for CSS instead of JS.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/

Comment by iosjunkie 1 day ago

I would love to know how they are going to handle deepfakes.

Also, doesn't this give law enforcement an easier avenue to compel access to someone's accounts?

Comment by free_bip 1 day ago

Yes it does. Biometric information (e.g a picture of your face) is famously not nearly as protected under the 4th amendment compared to things like passwords.

Anyone opting into this feature is effectively giving any US law enforcement (including ICE, local law enforcement, etc) free reign over their data.

Comment by fsuts 22 hours ago

Not just USA, same in many other countries too.

If a journalist or activist don’t use face or fingerprints to unlock devices.

Comment by EmbarrassedHelp 1 day ago

> Also, doesn't this give law enforcement an easier avenue to compel access to someone's accounts?

It does.

Comment by xnx 1 day ago

If there were a Doomsday Clock for how close we are to "please drink verification can" (https://files.catbox.moe/eqg0b2.png), scientists would now move it to 3 minutes to midnight.

Comment by bombcar 1 day ago

We're zero minutes away from "some scammer said they were google and I had to show them my butthole to login".

Comment by anticensor 8 hours ago

You mean my silly idea NakedEntry would become real?

Comment by mdp2021 18 hours ago

Let us get this straight and clear, because at first reading it seems like an "innocent" extra option:

the risk we assess is that under some conditions the provider could block the account, and the user would remain locked out unless he had the ability to do camera-based verification, so camera-based verification becomes from just optional to substantially mandatory?

--

Edit: elsewhere it seems it is mandated:

> To help keep you and others safe online, you may need to complete additional steps to access certain services. This extra confirmation helps us verify that the account owner is a real person and that the account wasn't created or used by computer programs or bots for the purpose of abuse, like spamming

Plus,

> To take a selfie [for "selfie video verification"], you'll need a mobile device with a Camera app

for many, it's a no.

Comment by andunie 1 day ago

The fact that most people will love this is depressing.

Comment by PradeetPatel 1 day ago

Can you please explain why it is depressing? This feature is widely celebrated in the accessibility user groups in India, since the traditional sign-in methods have been proven to be a major friction point for users with special needs.

Comment by swat535 1 day ago

The same reason age identity verification is getting a lot of push back..? This is dystopian on another level.

We are gong to reach a state of total digital surveillance without regulation at this point.

Comment by jryle70 23 hours ago

Then regulate. The feature itself is useful, not depressing.

Comment by mdp2021 20 hours ago

The current issue is in the category "action from bad regulators is worse than no action".

(The further issue is that bad regulators are posing the basis for future worse regulators.)

Comment by M95D 21 hours ago

At this point all govs would just regulate it to mandatory.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by m463 1 day ago

I wonder. I know a lot of people who hate this kind of thing, but because they don't want to be "tinfoil hat oddballs" they just keep quiet.

I think it would be nice to applaud or support people who think this way.

Instead of ridiculing these folks, or using semi-apologist "you're not the target market" type comments, it would be nice to say "good for you" or support them in some other way.

Comment by muppetman 1 day ago

Google already have 5,000 odd photos of me anyway in Google photos. I'm screwed either way.

Comment by wegwerf17377382 1 day ago

That attitude is exactly what got you into that mess.

There's no reason to believe the mess couldn't get any deeper, so backing out now doesn't have to be useless.

Comment by muppetman 1 day ago

Of course. I wish that Immich had existed when I started using Google Photos, but it didn't. And I'd just had my first child so I really wanted to ensure I didn't lose any memories. These days I run the two in parallel.

Comment by canada_dry 1 day ago

Plus friends and family inadvertently give Google/Facebook (etc) your personal info via tagged photos, contacts, DMs without your consent and they gather/link/sell this collateral info to the highest bidder without anyone being the wiser.

Comment by onel 17 hours ago

Sure, but that's not the same thing. How they use the data is the important part. The google photos are not to be used for security for example. Different ToS. We should try and not have a defeatist attitude and fight back as much as we can

Comment by neuralkoi 23 hours ago

Every time Google comes out with a new "feature" like this, it reminds me to resume my de-Googling journey with reinforced vigor. Drive and Photos are low-hanging fruit. GMail and YouTube will be more difficult.

Comment by rationalist 17 hours ago

I migrated away from Gmail after 15+ years to Fastmail, it wasn't that hard.

Whenever I got an email from a company to my Gmail, I logged into my account with that company and made the change. After about 2 or 3 years, I had 99.99% switched over.

Fastmail has a fast bulk import tool, and also allows you to automatically import future emails as the arrive (which is how I got that remaining 0.01% that only emailed me once every 5 years).

I gave each company a (unique identifier)@mydomain so that I could catch when my email address was sold, shared, hacked, etc, which has happened. That also allows me to easily move away from Fastmail to another service provider that has a catchall ability anytime I need to, but hopefully will never need to.

Comment by dawnerd 22 hours ago

I have a burner account just for YouTube. If they want to ban me I’ll just get the content without paying for premium.

Comment by thisislife2 1 day ago

That's Google in a nutshell - "the more personal data you give us, the more access you can have to Google services".

Comment by arm32 1 day ago

Respectfully, John and Claire, what do they have you guys doing? Please blink twice in your selfies if you're okay.

Comment by iamnothere 1 day ago

I guess next this will be required for new account setup, then to retain access to your existing account.

Time to move the last few things I have out of Google (mostly shared documents). I’m glad I started this move several years ago.

Comment by LorenDB 1 day ago

Certainly this will never go wrong in any possible way.

Comment by stevenalowe 1 day ago

Introducing...a feature no one actually wants, that opens a brand new security attack surface. Much wow.

Comment by gitowiec 1 day ago

I happily will provide my selfie with one brown eye and round pale face

Comment by mdp2021 19 hours ago

I think this was a widespread thought days ago after the news that Google would implement a ReCaptcha requiring access to a camera.

The start of Google's "genitals DB".

Comment by wafflemaker 23 hours ago

Look at the positive!

If they force people to smile to log in, the whole population will be statistically happier*.

Maybe even happier enough to offset being violated like that.

*: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01458-9

Comment by praet 1 day ago

April fools?

Comment by fhn 1 day ago

Not for google. They'll want your family member photos next

Comment by FireInsight 1 day ago

They already have them, on Google Photos.

Comment by fhn 1 day ago

Next on Google's list, blood draw for sign-in.

Comment by cousinbryce 1 day ago

I’d be willing to provide a stool sample

Comment by tiffanyh 1 day ago

Is this basically “Video KYC” as required in some countries to open a bank account?

Comment by altairprime 1 day ago

No government has yet regulated online services to require financial KYC compliance afaik, other than banking services which are already covered by ‘banking’. To the best of my understanding, the regulations about age verification don’t tend to mandate forever storage of the identity data, only storage of the verification outcome — even if business misrepresent that in order to harvest, train, aggregate, resell. (Whatever China is doing is not KYC: the government performs the Know verb in those cases, rather than the business.)

Comment by subscribed 1 day ago

KYC for financial institutions is orthogonal and stems from different laws.

Comment by 0rzech 17 hours ago

> Your Google Account holds a lot of valuable information, from cherished photos to important emails and documents.

No, it does not. I create an account only when I'm forced to, e.g. on Google-certified Android phones, where I keep all synchronization off.

I'm eagerly waiting for official GrapheneOS phones. Pixels are a no-go for me because of the price-to-perf/quality ratio.

PS. It takes about 50 minutes to hunt down and turn off hopefully all the data grabbing features on a Samsung Android phone. Madness!

Comment by superkuh 1 day ago

Meanwhile google has been locking out and closing the gmail accounts of people, myself included, that signed up before a phone number was required. If you don't log into your account for ~a year or so they will lock it and demand you log in. Which you can do, and you can even input the 2FA code, but it still won't let you log in because it says "there's not enough information to prove this is your account" despite having all the information ever associated with it. The only way to prevent deletion is to add a completely new, never before there phone number. I couldn't do that so they deleted mine saying I never logged in despite logging in literally dozens of times.

Comment by pessimizer 1 day ago

> The only way to prevent deletion is to add a completely new, never before there phone number.

Just happened to me. They "confirmed" it was me by getting a phone number they'd never seen before, that didn't belong to the false name on the account, and that I'd refused to give them for like 20 years. If anything, the fact that I eventually agreed to give them a phone number under duress was evidence that it wasn't me.

> despite logging in literally dozens of times.

Despite logging in literally thousands of times. I went in and deleted almost everything. Email now considered harmful. I'll feel better once they're locking me out of an empty account.

The problem is that everything in life requires a persistent email address, and hates email addresses that aren't on a whitelisted domain. The choice is between having some major provider, or not being able to pay your taxes online or log into your health insurance website. The fence is closing.

Comment by doomboiardee 15 hours ago

Is this a rebranded marketing/tech-spin of age verification?

Comment by srameshc 1 day ago

Sounds like a bad idea on so many layers. I don't want to give more selfies for training, feels like a disaster about to happen

Comment by schaefer 1 day ago

If only they wouldn't be evil... ugh.

Comment by floralhangnail 15 hours ago

Optional today, mandatory tomorrow.

Comment by angoragoats 1 day ago

I am surprised and encouraged by the fact that almost all of the comments here are negative!

I would absolutely delete/abandon my Google account before voluntarily giving them my facial data.

Comment by charcircuit 1 day ago

This already exists and is called FaceID and doesn't have the same privacy risks since the face check is done locally to allow the user to use the passkey to authenticate.

>Your selfie video is encrypted at rest

All data nowadays is encrypted at rest. That doesn't really matter since someone stealing a hard drive from Google with your information on it will never happen. The more likely risk is Google decrypts it and then sends it somewhere it shouldn't go and potentially trained into some AI system.

Comment by ProfessorLayton 1 day ago

This seems like a terrible idea because deepfakes are getting better and better, even with them mentioning them and handwaving concerns away.

Comment by nicce 1 day ago

I thought it is already April Fools for a while...

Comment by newswangerd 1 day ago

I had to double check that today isn’t April 1st

Comment by aeve890 22 hours ago

I know right? And the obnoxious music in the video like something so wonderful and worthy of celebration what the actual fuck

Comment by 16 hours ago

Comment by navs 1 day ago

If this means that Google will do eventually do age verification then I think I trust them more than I trust Persona.

Comment by mrsssnake 15 hours ago

What you are is one factor. What happened to MFA approach here? Also it is a factor we cannot change, so if someone obtain a video of our face like that or success in making a working fake, we cannot change our look like we can with a password.

Comment by moritzwarhier 1 day ago

This sounds... totally normal.

Emphasis on "totally".

But I guess Google coming out with a cloud-based FaceID clone was just a matter of time...

apart from using just a vastly larger amount of 2D photos and more precise PI techniques, instead of that stupid local-only, small-AI-based, 3D-scanning technique that falls back to passwords...

eh, I prefer Apple as my good cop ever since I can afford Apple devices

Comment by Cider9986 1 day ago

Face ID is private on device. This is stored by Google and they will keep it longer if you "violate their policies".

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by preg_match 23 hours ago

The main threat, and this covers Face ID, is that law enforcement and ICE have a much easier time compelling these auth methods. The legal bar is much, much lower than passwords. You should always turn Face ID off when traveling, and ideally power off the phone.

Comment by exabrial 14 hours ago

Yeah, how about absolutely fuck no.

Zero chance I will your train your AI.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by kotaKat 1 day ago

I'm surprised how fast this came from the whole "give us your hand" bullshit with reCaptcha not being that long ago.

https://docs.cloud.google.com/recaptcha/docs/hand-gesture-ve...

"Google analyzes one or more videos of a user's hand as they perform various actions or gestures. The video is processed to extract hand landmark data, which includes 21 hand-knuckle coordinates."

Comment by guessmyname 1 day ago

Comment by leet-stick-7299 1 day ago

Thats gona go well in history.

Comment by ikiris 1 day ago

Wow this is a terrible idea. I used to really respect the security and identity team what happened?

Comment by humanlity 10 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by Qision 1 day ago

Next step is to require the full transcript of your genome!

/s

Comment by fjlunky 1 day ago

Funnily enough they already have that since it was _emailed_ to me.

Comment by mdp2021 19 hours ago

Some Countries and legislations radically ban reading private communications. So, there is no linear, direct assumption that the email provider abuses the role.

But there is a juridical mess, already evident in matters like the eu's "ChatControl" laws (exemption to national rules about privacy for communication providers).

Comment by lardosaurusrex 22 hours ago

Just ban me at that point lmfao.

Like

If anything asked me for a selfie I'd close it and not go back. I just. No lmao absolutely not; go heck yourselves.

i just... god no. holy heck.