Google bans niche browsers from Gmail?

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/e7136e/google_bans_falkon_and_konqueror_browsers/

by dTal • 7 years ago

227 185 7 years ago

dTal5• 7 years ago

I have reproduced this on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, with stock Falkon browser (QT+Webkit) and javascript enabled. I have confirmed that this is accomplished through UA sniffing. I reproduce the message in plaintext below:

Sign in with a supported browser To help protect your account, Google doesn’t let you sign in from some browsers. Google might stop sign-ins from browsers that:

Don’t support JavaScript or have Javascript turned off. Have unsecure or unsupported extensions added. Use automation testing frameworks. Are embedded in a different application.

shantly5• 7 years ago

Just tried Links, doesn't work. They let you try, presumably because they like fucking with people, but then block you when you successfully log in.

Time to get off my ass and switch email providers, finally.

[EDIT] incidentally, is this what we can expect to see on more and more sites as Google's new version of Recaptcha rolls out?

ad404b8a372f2b9• 7 years ago

Which provider do you intend to switch to? It's something I've been meaning to do for a while but haven't had the time to research alternatives.

jhabdas• 7 years ago

Get off your ass indeed. It took me the better part of 3 months to close my Google account and get rid of Gmail.

Causality1• 7 years ago

unsupported extensions added

I find it a security threat that websites are able to tell what extensions I have installed, supported or otherwise.

RenRav• 7 years ago

Only a problem with Chrome.

gpm• 7 years ago

I sort of interpret "unsupported extensions" as "adblockers" - and with the current model of modifying the DOM I don't think it's preventable.

Maybe in the future we could run the website in one version of the DOM, hidden from the user, and then have the adblocker make a separate DOM that is displayed to the user. That loses almost all of the anti tracking and most of the security benefits though.

tpmx2• 7 years ago

Opera went through this fight between e.g. 2004-2013.

It wasn't really fully resolved until the browser engine was switched to Blink/Chromium.

Now, of course Opera is ~indirectly managed by the chinese government, so no-one should be using it. Please just trust me on this one. The desktop browser is now built in Poland (not Norway/Sweden). The remaining technical management is very weak when it comes to things like principles.

papito• 7 years ago

Son of a bitch. I love Opera. I use it for home and work.

linux2647• 7 years ago

Do you have a source on China (indirectly) managing Opera?

floatingatoll• 7 years ago

Was JavaScript enabled and allowed to run automatically in your browser on *.google.com when you reproduced this?

dTal5• 7 years ago

Yes, changing the user agent was all I needed to do in order to be permitted to log in. Not that javascript is required for GMail - it has a perfectly serviceable 'basic HTML' mode. Google's own support document[0] provides a link to it, although notably it's not canonical (the link will be different you than for me (why??)).

The same document is now obsolete - it claims "If you're using a browser that isn't supported, you'll see Gmail in HTML view." This is not true, as in fact what you'll see is "up yours, go away".

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en

buboard2• 7 years ago

is this why i'm getting "basic HTML view" in my iphone ? i can't even find a link to switch to normal HTML. And if i log out, "take me to the latest gmail" doesn't work

dvtrn2• 7 years ago

I wish this were the only problem I had with gmail on the iphone (because I'm not downloading the app) where switching accounts is essentially a roll of the dice whether or not gmail feels like actually taking me from one account to another.

Fixed it in the end by just bookmarking the two account pages separately.

buboard2• 7 years ago

that's the reason i also use the HTML version, to switch between multiple accounts. sometimes one of the accounts will stop refreshing but will not tell me that i need to log in again. and logging out logs out all accounts so you have to start over. i 'll try the bookmarking thing if they ever fix it because now i m stuck with basic HTML version for feature phones.

shantly5• 7 years ago

Google's the only of the big tech companies where my every interaction with their products leaves me thinking they must let the interns do everything while the presumably-brilliant FTEs eat free snacks and play Smash Brothers all day, or something. Been that way for years. Even their libraries and SDKs and such give that impression. It's so weird. I don't know what's wrong there but it must be some deep-rooted cultural problem, is all I can figure.

wtfrmyinitials• 7 years ago

Reason number n+1 why Google is bad for the open web

vernie• 7 years ago

Just use AMP it'll be fiiine...

brunoTbear2• 7 years ago

That's a pretty big stretch.

tomaszs• 7 years ago

Google decides what is good for you. You will will be safe!

mnm12• 7 years ago

How long before Firefox is considered a niche browser by Google and banned? I'll start holding my breath. It won't be long especially if we, as tech users, continue to promote Chrome to the rest of the world like it isn't the cancer it has grown into.

seabrookmx• 7 years ago

Google funds Mozilla by paying to be their default search engine.

I think we'd see that deal cancelled before Google dropped support for Firefox.

PretzelFisch3• 7 years ago

How would that matter to google though? Better to push the user directly into chrome and then the rest of Google offerings then share ad revenue.

reaperducer3• 7 years ago

Google funds Mozilla by paying to be their default search engine.

Until it is no longer in Google's interest to do so.

paulryanrogers4• 7 years ago

No always though. At times and in some markets it has been others like Yahoo

mnm12• 7 years ago

Yup and it'd be easy for them to do so. They could also just keep FF funded with a low market share to pretend like they don't want to get rid of it in the same way that large companies donate to different causes to pretend like they are not the ones causing the essential problems that they are donating to fix in the first place.

Endy2• 7 years ago

This makes me very glad that I don't use GMail regularly, and the only access I have to it is via IMAP in Interlink.

petjuh• 7 years ago

I access my GMail with Chrome and have no problems.

Endy2• 7 years ago

That makes you part of the problem of Google's takeover, not part of the solution of a free Web.

luxuryballs2• 7 years ago

Stop using gmail, it seems daunting but it really only took me a few solid hours to switch all my important accounts to a paid provider like fastmail.

Think about how many important accounts you link through email and then think about how, if you don’t pay for gmail, Google doesn’t owe you access to your email or any service at all.

It feels great being free and you can setup forwarding so you can pick up the stragglers.

You also get the added spam freedom and security benefit of changing both your email and password which is great since we have no idea what leaked email/password lists are floating around out there... it’s like the ultimate unsubscribe!

bredren• 7 years ago

Do you use google docs and other office tools? I've tried to switch to Dropbox Paper and Microsoft but they feel clumsy or incomplete or spammy or slow compared to Doc and Sheets. I'm looking for a relatively straightfoward set of changes to my major web activities away from google.

shantly5• 7 years ago

Apple's office suite is really nice, if you're in that world. I dunno if they do collaborative editing, but Notes does, so they might. If it's gotta be in a browser—IDK, it bugs me having a document editor or spreadsheet program eat so much memory and so many background cycles that I don't feel like I can leave it open and forget about it while doing other things even on a pretty powerful machine without slowing things down and killing my battery, plus they all feel really laggy, so I've mostly stopped using browser-based office tools, period, whenever I can avoid them.

s3r3nity• 7 years ago

I'd be curious how you're using MSFT Office, but I've been bouncing between a Surface Pro for work and Mac Mini at home, and love the Office 365 suite.

Virtually 100% of my clients can open Word / Excel / Powerpoint documents, and you'll have to pry Excel from my cold, dead hands =). I personally love the power features of Excel, and even do some VBA scripting to automate some workflows in Excel and Outlook.

I don't do much real-time collab on documents at the same time with other folks on my team, so I can't attest to that - though I hear that Msft has come a long way here and the Fluent roadmap looks really promising.

leokennis• 7 years ago

In the case of Gmail vs. Fastmail I’m not so sure it’s a downgrade, but if you switch away from Google Docs etc. you will indeed lose things you were used to (great collaboration, speed etc.)

However you also gain something. For me personally actually three things:

* I no longer feel like the service I’m using is like a rug that can be pulled from under my feet at any moment

* My data (mail, documents, etc.) are now actually under my control and not in some “arbitrary“ format on a server I can’t reach except from my browser

* As a bonus feature, my mail is only read by me and my behavior is tracked by no one

PretzelFisch3• 7 years ago

I am not sure how you use Word and Excel but google's offering are like tinker toys compared to what MS has put out for the desktop and web.

mal10c• 7 years ago

Completely agree with this. In my case, I have a domain at namecheap. I've been using their hosted email for a while now and love it! So glad I left Gmail.

frutiger2• 7 years ago

I did something easier than moving to Fastmail, I just paid for Gmail.

falcolas2• 7 years ago

How does that change Google from disallowing access to Gmail from your browser (if you use a non-mainstream browser)?

kgwxd• 7 years ago

I'm sure you get some other benefits for that, but I'm also sure you're still being tracked.

pepr• 7 years ago

I have tried switching to fastmail and it was incredibly painful. In a nutshell, Microsoft/Hotmail and possibly other providers started to throw my emails to people to spam. I've missed out on important things in the physical world because of this. I've invested a lot of time trying to debug the issue. To their credit, Fastmail's customer service was excellent and they really tried to resolve the issues but in the end could not.

Also, fastmail web UI was okay but not great. I do like the new GMail UI better.

normalnorm• 7 years ago

I had this problem in the beginning (specifically and only with hotmail), but it solved itself at some point. No idea if it was something that fastmail did or that hotmail did.

I have been using fastmail for one year and had zero other problems. If we don't move away from gmail, we will lose email, which is one of the only true decentralized and free protocols still left.

sgc• 7 years ago

I have used fastmail for all my business accounts for years. I have never had problems with deliverability. But I did warm the accounts using best practices recommended online to start.

tzs• 7 years ago

Microsoft is particularly annoying. If I send mail from my domain via my server in Rackspace's cloud to my @outlook.com address, Microsoft classifies it as spam. I tell it that the mail is not spam--and the next one still gets classified as spam. I've done this several times now, and it is still classifying them as spam. How many freaking times do you have to tell Microsoft that something is not spam before it learns?

Compare to Yahoo. The first one to my @yahoo.com address was classified as spam, but then after I told Yahoo that it was not spam, subsequent ones come through fine.

kilo_bravo_3• 7 years ago

I have a custom domain in Fastmail, and after I did all of the DKIM/SPF and other email validation stuff (took an afternoon via their helpfiles) and got a green light from a couple authentication verifier services, I haven't had a single problem with being labeled as spam.

jammygit3• 7 years ago

I found the transition to be painless, but I did discover Microsoft was spam-labeling some of my emails too. I was using a custom domain though

nephrite• 7 years ago

Better just use a mail client instead of browser. It uses standard protocols, has no ads and you decide what interface it has.

filmgirlcw• 7 years ago

This is what I do. I use a mail client and forgo web interfaces unless forced. Fastmail is a fine mail provider (I'm cheap and I'm not giving up my 4 grandfathered GSuite custom domain accounts, especially since 3 of them have support for 50 "users" b/c moving the same setup to Fastmail would cost hundreds of dollars a year), but even with them, I would still much rather use a mail client.

foobaw• 7 years ago

I use Superhuman and I enjoy it.

pjmlp• 7 years ago

Happy Thunderbird user here, and do occasionally send my donations to help keeping my favourite mail client alive.

Yajirobe2• 7 years ago

if you don’t pay for gmail, Google doesn’t owe you access to your email

Could you provide some examples where a user was denied access to his/her email?

eddieh4• 7 years ago

I'm locked out of two of Gmail my accounts. There's no way to recover the accounts as far as I can tell. I'm not going to pay them and just hope they can get me back in.

vortico4• 7 years ago

Just 5 minutes ago, when I tried to log into my Google account with a browser not "approved" by Google.

frou_dh• 7 years ago

It feels great being free and you can setup forwarding so you can pick up the stragglers.

Then if you create a rule at the new provider that files those messages into a dedicated folder, that folder essentially acts as a todo list for accounts that need updated.

eddieh4• 7 years ago

I'm literally locked out of two of my Gmail accounts and there's no recourse for me. I'm not going to pay them to regain access. I'm just never going to use any of their services, paid or not.

rozab2• 7 years ago

Google have been blocking lots of youtube accounts recently for no reason, which means getting locked out of gmail forever

stiray2• 7 years ago

Let me just go further with this, not only moving emails to another provider, get raspberry pi, get a domain, get a certificate, get static ip, take some time to read one of tutorials on internet and set up postfix/dovecot. It is really liberating to run your own mail server, defining aliases/mail accounts on the fly, let me give you just one example, I am using a different alias specifically crafted for each service. I have cought numerous of sites selling it for spam (or it was hacked). Getting rid of spam? Just /dev/null the account/alias. Annoying newsletters? /dev/null. Need another account on service? Generate new account/alias. Not to mention the amount of knowlidge you will gain from running your own server.

Get rid of dependancy on others, you dont need it. And with some basic knowlidge it is not even hard. You dont need google or anyone else for email communication.

willis9362• 7 years ago

It’s a neat idea, but mail server availability needs to be 100%. I’m not going to buy and maintain server hardware if I can help it.

I have a dual CPU workstation and the jump to a proper server is just insane, even to me.

zzzeek3• 7 years ago

I've switched to fastmail, and am staying with it. However, almost every aspect of it is objectively worse than Gmail; browser UX more awkward, Android email clients besides Google mail are awful and Google mail itself has very broken behaviors with it, spam filtering is poor, i had to give up things like nice calendar and address book integrations, etc.

However, as i pay Google for many other services, that means I am vulnerable to total and permanent account lock out if someone steals my credit card and gets it flagged by Google as fraudulent, as has been reported by more than one blog post. As long as Google does not address the issue of customer service being within their top 25 list of priorities, it is insane for anyone to use Gmail for important mail identities.

thsowers• 7 years ago

For me, after switching to fastmail my load time in browser went from around 30 seconds with the "new" gmail to under 5 with fastmail. Using HTML view on gmail the speed is more comparable

officeplant2• 7 years ago

Android email clients besides Google mail are awful

I still use K-9 Mail to handle my non-gmail accounts. I find it very usable with how it threads my work emails.

Although from what I understand its not actively developed anymore and the last post I see on the playstore says Sept 2018. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has them, especially if they are available via F-Droid.

roelschroeven• 7 years ago

Have you tried Fastmail's own app? Seems pretty decent to me (though I don't use it that much: I don't often read/write mail on my smartphone).

ProAm2• 7 years ago

Have you reached out to Fastmail about the things you don't like? I use them and like the UI, but anytime Ive had an issue and have contacted their support I got a quick response from a human.

They love their product and making it better so I think constructive criticism is welcomed there.

vinniejames• 7 years ago

How does fastmail compare to protonmail, regarding encryption and data privacy?

labawi• 7 years ago

Personally, I don't usually use the broswer UI, but I like it much more than Gmail - simple, easy to navigate, does what I need. Though I mostly go there only for settings and it's always been easy.

I use IMAP and SMTP, and it just works. I can move and delete mail. No weird All mail folder, semi-automatic weird Trash, resurrecting messages and duplicates that are annoying to get rid of.

Overall, I hope they don't add complicated gimmicks or weird behaviours like gmail.

OrgNet• 7 years ago

The main reason why I hate gmail nowadays is because it blocks me from login in from other device because they say someone hacked my account

justusthane• 7 years ago

Totally. And a lot of people don't realize you can remove Gmail from your Google account, and then use your new non-gmail address as the username for your existing Google Account. That way folks can still share Google docs with you, etc. Works seamlessly.

clSTophEjUdRanu• 7 years ago

If it works for me then why should I?

OldGuyInTheClub2• 7 years ago

Google can still affect you by not delivering your emails. I've had my own domain for personal, noncommercial use for 15+ years the past few with Rackspace as the email host. I accessed my email account with Thunderbird, webmail, BlueMail on the phone. As of a few days ago I cannot send email to friends with Gmail or businesses that subscribe to Gsuite. My messages are rejected at their servers. I think the domain name itself is triggering the block since Rackspace says their servers and IP addresses are clean.

I found out about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and set them up, followed all the other instructions on assorted Google sites, and still no go. Apparently the blocks can take weeks to clear or may even be permanent. The reject emails say to contact postmaster@google.com which, of course, is pointless since I can't email the domain. I don't even think there's anything behind it if I could. There's no way to contact any person or group regarding the block which I think must have happened due to spoofing.

From what I can see, domains these days are assumed to be commercial for mass mailings and having one's own for incidental use is an outlier.

vortico4• 7 years ago

This is why I fake my user agent. I use Qutebrowser (https://www.qutebrowser.org/) but pretend to use the most common user agent on this list. https://techblog.willshouse.com/2012/01/03/most-common-user-...

Pete_D• 7 years ago

The User-Agent header was a mistake. Servers shouldn't care what my client is, only that it speaks well-formed HTTP.

PretzelFisch3• 7 years ago

The servers care because for many years clients had no guarantee of handling well-formed html and javascript.

The-Compiler4• 7 years ago

From what I've heard, setting a Chrome UA doesn't help with the Google Mail sign-in.

vortico4• 7 years ago

Ouch, you're right. I can't log in anymore.

EDIT: Chrome's user agent doesn't work, but Firefox's does. I suppose it works because if Google's sign-in form sees a Chrome user agent, it expects a certain different browser fingerprint, so it rejects it. But maybe it's more lenient on the fingerprint match if it sees a Firefox user agent. This one worked for me, from https://techblog.willshouse.com/2012/01/03/most-common-user-...

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0

dTal5• 7 years ago

I set a Firefox UA (the default one available in Falkon's UA chooser) and it worked and I could log in.

pugio• 7 years ago

I just encountered this with an Election app (Polarized Bookshelf) trying to do an OAuth flow. I can no longer log in to my account on the app!

I'm not actually upset, though. Such is life when you rely on entirely free services provided by another company. It's almost like the role Google plays in my life is that of some natural phenomena, perhaps as seen by an ancient civilisation: omnipresent, inscrutable, unthinkingly capricious. Such is the way is the world, my son.

tedivm• 7 years ago

Google isn't a natural phenomena though- it's a group of people making decisions that have a huge ripple effect throughout our society. Google using it's monopoly powers to restrict how the internet can grow is something we should all take seriously.

foob4r2• 7 years ago

ProtonMail with Brave works really well.

eddieh4• 7 years ago

Not if you use ProtonMail for an anonymous Instagram account. Instagram will lock almost all features like following/unfollowing, comments, descriptions, etc.

foob4r2• 7 years ago

Don't use Instagram?

brenden2• 7 years ago

I've been super happy with Fastmail, I suggest you give it a shot if you've become as frustrated as I have with Google's products. When they killed Inbox it was the final straw for me.

dessant• 7 years ago

Google is also going forward with deprecating the blocking portion of the webRequest API, it is already in Chrome Canary. The change will break extensions, and will make several use cases impossible which are not related to ad blocking, but center around privacy and security, or just a need to modify requests for various reasons.

Their reasoning is so baffling, and technically incorrect about browser performance and security, that there is one conclusion to be made: Google and the Chrome team is dishonest about why they're partially deprecating the webRequest API.

Extensions are free to observe requests and page content, and exfiltrate data at will, but you no longer have full control over the requests Chrome is making. It is about control, not your privacy and security.

userbinator2• 7 years ago

It is about control, not your privacy and security.

The big organisations behind browsers have been spinning it this way for years, and unfortunately the majority still haven't realised the truth. It's the same strategy that makes "think of the children" and "war on terrorism" arguments so pernicious --- taking away freedom by reasoning that it's for a cause so "ostensibly good" that no one would be seen arguing against.

3xblah3• 7 years ago

"... that no one would be seen arguing against."

They know some would argue against.

What gives this away as "spin" is that they will not make these changes optional.

A Google user cannot opt out of signing in with Javascript enabled and permitting a device fingerprint to be taken. Even in the case where the user can accept the risks of allowing sign in without JS, e.g., automated sign-in -- which as we know is very convenient for many HN readers -- there is no way to opt out.

For example, the user may have email accounts that she does not use for anything sensitive, throwaway accounts. More savvy users, who truly are concerned about security of Google Mail, might purposely avoid using @gmail accounts for important matters.

It is of little benefit to such users if Google fingerprints their devices "in order to keep [those] accounts safe".

However, the benefits to Google of identifying users via device fingerprinting are numerous. Google is an online advertising sales company.

dTal5• 7 years ago

If you ask me, the same is true of the current culture of "a device must receive (automatic!) OTA updates from the manufacturer or it is insecure, and local administrative control is dangerous." And the the underlying logic is the same, a kind of nannying philosophy that holds that people are too witless and irresponsible to be trusted with freedom, and for their own good must be shepherded and coddled by a friendly Big Brother.

Between my laptop running Linux, on which I am root and no changes in software are made unless I specifically authorize it, and an Android tablet which is constantly downloading "updates" from Google (and uploading god-knows-what), I know which one makes me feel more private and secure.

chihuahua• 7 years ago

I'm hoping that the new Microsoft Edge based on Chromium is going to be a viable alternative (with uBlock Origin)

NotSammyHagar2• 7 years ago

But won't they just follow google's changes, just like this one? They are more of the same. I'd be really surprised if they do anything different and major like this.

jrockway• 7 years ago

In a world where half the population uses "password" as their password for their identity provider and bank, I am not sure why we're upset that fingerprinting is going on. It's that or a lot of hacked accounts.

Sure, you have a nine million character password with eight hardware factors to turn on your light bulb... but you have to realize that's rather uncommon.

plorkyeran• 7 years ago

I don't understand how this comment is related to the submission in any way.

Avamander2• 7 years ago

The ban is because those browsers are "hard to fingeprint as safe".

thu2111• 7 years ago

This change by Google is about blocking bots and automation, as their error message makes clear.

All the big service providers have a large problem with botnets logging in to accounts with stolen credentials, or with fake spam accounts they created themselves. They do this with automation and so detecting automation is a good way to detect and stop them without major inconvenience to users (who generally don't automate their own Google accounts).

The nature of this technique means their servers can't tell the difference between a niche browser and a dedicated abuse tool. If a tool claims to be Chrome and gets spotted because it's not, the obvious fallback is to just make up new user agents that are rare or unusual. Sure, the traffic is very visible to humans who may be watching post-hoc, but a UA is just a string so it can be constantly changed. Blocking bad traffic means adapting to changes in it automatically and quickly. So eventually this pushes companies towards just locking out browsers nobody uses because it's too hard to tell them apart from malicious automation software.

That's unfortunate: it makes it harder for someone to get traction with a genuinely new rendering engine. But those cost billions of dollars to develop these days and even Microsoft doesn't want to play that game anymore, so it's a rather theoretical loss compared to the gains, which are large and real.

Source: I used to work on this stuff.

userbinator2• 7 years ago

It's that or a lot of hacked accounts.

A world in which there are no hacked accounts is also one in which there is no freedom. Choose carefully...

koube• 7 years ago

Or, we can have a discussion about the reasonable balance of security vs usability, rather than immediately reaching for a false dichotomy.

a3n• 7 years ago

Fastmail. Happy customer for many years.

3xblah3• 7 years ago

Javascript is obviously not required for Google Mail to work. Browsers that do not support Javascript work just fine. If we adjust the user-agent string to match a "supported browser" there is no need to change any Google settings. See https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049

What is happening here is Google is only requiring Javascript to be turned on when the user signs in so Google (or its partners) can uniquely track users, even when users have indicated they do not want to be tracked, such as using session-only cookies, clearing stored cookies after signing out, enabling the DNT header, etc.

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

wayneftw• 7 years ago

You never needed Javascript to access your @gmail anyway. Just use a dedicated mail client. Thunderbird, Outlook, Mail.app or any number of others...

I don't sign into any Google services in my web browser. If I need to sign in with Google, I use incognito or a separate browser profile if it's constantly necessary for some set of tasks.

They're still probably tracking me, but I don't care as much about that as I do about not getting locked into any one platform. The only Google service I'm really hooked on is their search but I'll switch away from that the second that it becomes unbearable to use. I've done stints on DDG and I'll be perfectly happy using that whenever Google search really starts going south.

brunoTbear2• 7 years ago

This is not necessarily about uniquely tracking users. This is likely about telling automation from manual traffic to login.

Credential stuffing is a large enough problem for account takeover and the cost to a user of losing their gmail account so high that at some point a team has to make tradeoffs about what can and cannot be used to log in.

edit: am Googler, not working on this area. Have background in account takeover/browser fingerprinting.

parthdesai• 7 years ago

You say that, but my friend's google drive account is basically locked because of "spam/take over detection" and there's no response from google's customer support. Does google really care about end user here?

vortico4• 7 years ago

This sign-in issue isn't about Gmail. Browsers that are not "approved" by Google are blocked from signing into Google, period. That means you can't use a grassroots browser to access Gmail, Youtube, Google Docs, Google Drive, and anything using Google's sign-in after today.

3xblah3• 7 years ago

The new domain needed to log in is ssl.gstatic.com (not a new domain but a new requirement)

As if there were not already enough domains (and redirects) required... just to log in

mirimir3• 7 years ago

I don't get why this matters.

I mean, why would anyone who goes out of their way to use a "niche browser" even have a Gmail account?

Edit: My point here is that Google is so invasive and fundamentally hostile to privacy that using it with anything more secure than Firefox seems futile. And if you love some niche browser so much, go for it. But use Firefox for Gmail. Or even better, use Thunderbird.

AlchemistCamp• 7 years ago

I use DDG app as my primary browser on mobile and I have a Gmail account. I like both for their ability to limit the amount of interruptive advertising I have to deal with.

mirimir3• 7 years ago

I don't see any advertising anywhere.

Except using Tor browser, which doesn't block ads.

jcjordyn120• 7 years ago

I mainly use Qutebrowser and I have a gmail account, I can't really afford to pay a monthly fee for email.

mirimir3• 7 years ago

There are other free email providers that snoop far less than Google does. VFEmail has a $25 lifetime option, payable with cards or Bitcoin.

ha470• 7 years ago

Anyone have any idea how they're doing this? Switching user agents doesn't seem to help.

pcmaffey• 7 years ago

I only use gmail in chrome. And I only use chrome for google services (and development). It's like a quarantine. All my other browsing happens in firefox...

dhimes• 7 years ago

Exactly how I work also.

ginko• 7 years ago

It's really becoming a pet peeve of mine when people randomly add question marks at the end of titles on HN (the linked article doesn't). Especially when it doesn't make sense grammatically.

dTal5• 7 years ago

I did not add the question mark. Take it up with the site admins.

lonelappde• 7 years ago

It's better than putting false or dubious statements as titles.

arminiusreturns• 7 years ago

I really really liked squirrelmail when my host used it. It wasn't perfect but had lots of plugins and was light and fast, and was open source. It was ugly though, and had a few bugs.

Then my host pushed, despite objections from the community, atmail, a proprietary gmail-alike webmail interface. It is even more buggy, and slow as hell, but hey, at least it looks "cool".

konart• 7 years ago

Just use email client like you do (most likely) on your phone.

Const-me4• 7 years ago

I prefer my e-mails in a standalone IMAP client.

E-mail clients don’t serve ads.

For security reasons, they block linked content by default, meaning google can’t track what I do with my e-mails.

Google can terminate an account any time without any reason, if they do that, I won’t lose access the e-mails I’ve received or sent.

My screen refresh rate is 60Hz, ping from here to gmail.com 36ms, this means web interface has at least 3x latency compared to a locally running app.

I don’t care about their web interface re-designs, or browser compatibility issues like the one discussed.

Gmail can’t turn off IMAP as it would break e-mail on smartphones. Large share of these smartphones run old versions of Google Android which will never be updated, this also helps to ensure their IMAP access is here to stay.

r00fus• 7 years ago

So Google still harvests/analyzes all your email data. Is this just "step1" of migrating off Gmail for good?

HN-Censorship• 7 years ago

Just get a domain name and a cheap web hosting account and setup an email address and client through that

Const-me4• 7 years ago

I have both, but not using them for e-mails. This adds another huge attack surface — my domain name’s registration esp. the MX records. I’ve read horror stories about people having their online accounts stolen this way. I don’t think it’s possible to hijack gmail.com domain out of google’s control, they might be evil nowadays, but technically they’re still very professional, I believe.

eblanshey2• 7 years ago

Google can terminate an account any time without any reason, if they do that, I won’t lose access the e-mails I’ve received or sent.

A) Assuming you keep copies of all folders/emails locally B) Assuming Google isn't evil and won't delete all your mail first before shutting down your account, thus causing your IMAP client to sync their deletion

Const-me4• 7 years ago

A) Yes I do

B) I’m not sure Google ain’t evil. Even if they’re good, if I fail security on my side, some other evil person, unrelated to google, may be able to delete all my e-mails before shutting down my gmail account. That’s why e-mail client alone is good but not enough, also need backups of that local DB.

romwell• 7 years ago

A)Why wouldn't you?

B)That's why you do backups. (In the same vein as RAID is not a backup, IMAP by itself isn't one too).

An easy way to do that is to have an IMAP client on another machine that you sync manually.

saagarjha• 7 years ago

Google does restrict push in their IMAP interface, though.

virtuallyvivek• 7 years ago

I experienced something similar with Electron applications too. If you're an Electron dev, do NOT handle authentication within Electron. Handle it in their default browser.

mehrdadn• 7 years ago

I see lots of people mentioning email clients. What email client do people use? Is it fast and robust? Every one I know of seems to have severe lags and/or have a lot of mess to clean up when it inevitably crashes.

shmerl• 7 years ago

Kmail is not bad.

smittywerben• 7 years ago

Is this more robust than just User Agent sniffing? I'm pretty sure Google basically assigns browsers a credit rating. i.e. UA string CoolBrowser v1.8.8 is good but CoolBrowser v1.7.0 is downgraded or blocked.

This goes against Google's own web accessibility guidelines circa 2008 that they seemingly ignore now, but was the reason I left internet explorer to begin with.

rasz• 7 years ago

In related news Vivaldi (spiritual successor to old, pre Chrome Opera) just dropped its labelling/branding from User Agent string to counter this type of shenanigans https://vivaldi.com/blog/user-agent-changes/

Google bans niche browsers from Gmail?

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