this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Gmail prompt to provide phone number sounds like a threat

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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why wouldn't they make sense for recovery? They're authentication factors just like passwords.

"Second" factor means you should have multiple, not that one of them is beneath the others. And they all work just as well for authentication and recovery.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because you're much more likely to lose or break a hardware fob than lose a password, let alone change (lose or whatever) recovery email or phone.

Like, it would be a neat option; ideally you could set up literally anything and say what combination of factors you want to use for recovery and which to use for authentication, but it'd be a pretty big change for a tiny minority of users.