Fewer Users?

Google has been warning me for months that they were going to make things "more secure" and make it more difficult (read impossible) for third party apps to access your Google accounts with just your user name and password.

The email program was simple, just clicked a different protocol box.

Trillian, though, was actually accessing the ancient Google Talk servers, not Hangouts or Chat which replaces them both.

Talk is finally dead.

Now I have to use the web based version to communicate with my dwindling number of friends.

But I have noticed something else since the big change.

I've gotten many fewer emails in my gmail inbox.

If this managed to purge bots from their base, it's good.

But what if they simply managed to run off actual users by making their services just irritating enough to not bother?

I know my thoughts, when I enter my user name and password, and get a "please enter the code we just email/texted" is NOT: "It's great how they're protecting me from hackers!" but "Where the fuck is my fucking phone! All I wanted to do was pay the fucking bills!"

The thing is, while I understand why they're doing this.  Users pick bad passwords and use the same bad password everywhere.  That makes it simple for their accounts to be hacked.

BUT!

What makes Google think those same people's email account isn't compromised and that second factor authentication isn't being sucked up by the same bad actors they're trying to lock out in the first place?

I predict that, someday, us old fuckers will talk to youngsters and say, "I remember when the internet was something useful and everyone had a phone that connected to it."

They will roll their eyes and say something like, "Next he's going to tell us about how useful computers were if they could connect to the internet too!"