Google and LinkedIn both objected to my doing the Apple security upgrade while travelling (cybersecurity policy problem, not a post for personal help!!)
A couple of weeks ago I did an Apple OS upgrade while away from home – that often happens, obviously I do upgrades as soon as I get notified, but I travel a lot. But this time Google won't let me login to my account. It said it doesn't have sufficient evidence that it's me, even though it has my login and password. I never let Google go to two factor because I use great passwords for my main accounts, and as I mentioned, I travel a lot so am afraid of getting robbed and having no way to login in an internet cafe or somewhere. I also think Google knows way too much about me so I've never "told it" where I live or anything, so it has no right to know I'm "abroad" right now (actually, just doing a sabbatical in Austria; I live in Germany. Both Austria and Germany are in the EU.) And of course it's the same computer and I think the same browser (chrome!) though chrome might have upgraded chrome on the reboot, but there's no evidence of that.
This seems absolutely insane to me – Apple, indeed, everyone should be advocating against penalising people for doing security upgrades! So I tried to post this here, but after many days it finally got moderated over to the emergency response reddit (er, thanks.) If anyone IS looking for the emergency response, I eventually conceded yet more data to Google and it let me in. I think I had to use some kind of ID app, I've already forgotten.
While I was still locked out, I also tried to post the above on LinkedIn, and they too don't like that I was on a "new" computer, again wouldn't take my strong password as evidence as they usually do, and then insisted on a non-consensual two-factor – to my gmail account! Their own tech support says that they will let you do account recovery through an email with your listed work email, but I can't find any way to trigger that. Again, I didn't even have a new computer, I'd just done a security upgrade! It wasn't even a new OS! Just Tahoe 26.4.1! But shouldn't good passwords work with new laptops?
I'm now reattempting to post here, because IMO we need to raise Caine. This is a major cybersecurity issue that both these companies harass users for doing an upgrade. The most insane thing is that I spent Christmas vacation trying to defend myself against US digital hegemony; I'm largely doing that, running most recovery emails through an alias that forks to two accounts, but I guess I expected to get cut off of linkedin and google at the same time, so didn't bother changing that default email (I have now.)
Again, I get having two factor for banks, work etc. but as a matter of personal security, I want there to be at least a couple of services I can communicate from that a strong password is enough for. Is that too much to ask? But that's still separate from why a security upgrade triggered all this.