Re: Google mail and security to stupid levels!
This is definitely an incredibly useful feature, one that many companies now implement. You will get a similar situation with Microsoft and Facebook. So I definitely have to disagree with this being a waist of time.
As for your comment that you usually wouldn't have to deal with it on a phone, or with other services where you're often changing locations, you aren't ask to reverify a Gmail account if you travel, and this is due to the fact there are 2 authorisation methods in use today.
The first, more modern which is in-use by iOS, Android, the Gmail app or the modern Windows 10 "mail" application is by asking Google for authorisation tokens. You can recognise this method by the fact that after you tell your Email application you are signing into a Gmail account, it will open a Google log in page where after entering your Gmail address and password you will get a prompt saying "Application X wants to have access to the Email on this account" with an "allow" button. At that point, Google sends back what's called a token, a random string of characters, which will from then on be used every time by the application whenever it wants to do something. This is very secure, because the application never even sees what your password is, so if you get your phone or laptop stolen you can just go on the Google site and ask them to invalidate that token which will cut off access. And these tokens will remain valid until you delete them yourself either from the Google security settings or by logging out in the application. They are also not affected by your IP address changing. I have traveled quite a lot between different countries, and was never asked to sign in again on my phone, Mac or Windows 10 mail app which all use these tokens.
That long explanation out of the way we come to the second, older method of accessing Gmail, which is over the Imap protocol. That's what you're going to b e using if you use an app like Outlook express, Thunderbird, Windows Mail or older versions of Outlook (Office 2016 may support the new token system, though I have never used Office Outlook for Email so don't quote me on this). You can recognise this by the fact that you just get 2 edit boxes for your user name and Password and are never directed to the Google page to sign in. So, in this case, every time the Email program wants to do anything, it has to send the username and Password to Google. This in turn is treated as a new Log in every time which is why it considered it suspicious activity.
One last thing, Google accounts are not used just for Email access. You can store your calendar or contacts there. You could possibly have payment information on file, or store sensitive information in the Google keep notebook. And just like an Apple ID can be used to manage an iPhone, Android phones can be remotely locked with a security code or wiped from the google account they are signed into. So having such a system in place means that even if some Russian hackers can figure out your password, they wouldn't be able to do anything.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
