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

68 points by lkurtz 5 hours ago on hackernews | 61 comments

April fools?

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

: FireInsight | 3 hours ago
They already have them, on Google Photos.

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

netsharc | 3 hours 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!"

ThePowerOfFuet | 2 hours ago

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

: netsharc | 2 hours 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)

ButlerianJihad | 3 hours ago

Guess what, there are browser settings for that!

ThePowerOfFuet | 2 hours ago

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

: sgc | an hour 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; } }

cadamsdotcom | an hour 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.

thisislife2 | 4 hours ago

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

moritzwarhier | 4 hours 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

: Cider9986 | 3 hours ago
Face ID is private on device. This is stored by Google and they will keep it longer if you "violate their policies".

arm32 | 4 hours ago

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

fhn | 4 hours ago

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

: cousinbryce | 3 hours ago
I’d be willing to provide a stool sample

andunie | 3 hours ago

The fact that most people will love this is depressing.

m463 | 2 hours 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.

PradeetPatel | an hour 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.

: swat535 | an hour 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.

Cider9986 | 3 hours ago

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

dang | 51 minutes ago

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

: throwuxiytayq | 20 minutes ago
It sure is.
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/16675622

superkuh | 3 hours 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.

: pessimizer | 2 hours 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.

ProfessorLayton | 3 hours ago

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

muppetman | 3 hours ago

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

canada_dry | 2 hours 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.

wegwerf17377382 | 2 hours 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.

: muppetman | an hour 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.

LorenDB | 3 hours ago

Certainly this will never go wrong in any possible way.

iosjunkie | 3 hours 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?

: EmbarrassedHelp | 2 hours ago
> Also, doesn't this give law enforcement an easier avenue to compel access to someone's accounts?
It does.
: free_bip | an hour 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.

trollbridge | 3 hours 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.

: tintor | 2 hours ago
Moved all of my cherished photos out of my Google Account.
: dingaling | 2 hours ago
"Be a shame if you couldn't access them any more...
Verify identity to continue"
: zzyzxd | 2 hours 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.

pzxc | 2 hours ago

https://nevergivethemyourface.com/

: notaigenerated | 2 hours ago
this should be the top comment
: pillmillipedes | an hour 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

xnx | 2 hours 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.

bombcar | 2 hours ago

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

: brightbeige | 2 hours ago
Scammer?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49028284

guessmyname | 2 hours ago

<p>[Empty / deleted comment]</p>

gitowiec | 2 hours ago

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

kotaKat | 2 hours 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."

charcircuit | 2 hours 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.

nicce | 2 hours ago

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

Qision | 2 hours ago

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

ikiris | 2 hours ago

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

schaefer | 2 hours ago

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

srameshc | 2 hours 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

tiffanyh | 2 hours ago

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

: subscribed | an hour ago
KYC for financial institutions is orthogonal and stems from different laws.

angoragoats | an hour 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.

newswangerd | an hour ago

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

leet-stick-7299 | an hour ago

Thats gona go well in history.

navs | an hour ago

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

iamnothere | an hour 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.