The two factor authentication will only be required for using the services I am for websites. They announced that here:
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/mandatory-mfa-is-coming-to-google-cloud-heres-what-you-need-to-know
I'll still keep my Gmail and YouTube. At least for now those don't require that. I just don't want to risk not having access to change my map load quotas. During hurricanes I have to be able to up it if needed, and then bring it back down. I kept it at a number so I can't ever get charged. The allowed free map loads divided by the number of days in a month. That is the daily quota I can set. For a storm, I would increase it so it didn't give a message on the map saying that it was for development purposes when I would go over. If I use too much earlier in the month I need to put it lower by the end of the month so I never get charged. But if I were unable to do that, because let's say I lost power, I wouldn't have access like I normally do to change that quota lower. If one person on social media posted a link to my maps for a later storm in the same month, it could drive a massive amount of traffic and cost me hundreds of dollars. When I didn't have power for three days after the hurricanes, I didn't have to worry too much as it wasn't going to be long. I called family to let them know we were okay on a neighbor's cell phone and then that family member relayed it to others. But with two factor authentication, it would make that complicated. Maybe they have one time use codes, I don't know. But I just don't like that I can't say, don't ever charge me. I'd rather them shut it all off than charge me who knows how much. It's a shady way to get money, no way around it.
All the companies are pretty bad at this point, but it's just a problem that won't go away. I don't use Facebook other than to login to get family photos. It's so much simpler than them having to email them.
I have my business names reserved at Facebook and Twitter only because accounts in the past that might link to mine would still have that and if someone registered the names I did have, someone could impersonate my site. I used to still link to the older accounts I no longer use at them, but I even took those links off my site. On my site update page I just give the account names in case anyone wanted to verify I did used to use them.
I got rid of the Twitter links on my blog page. For the places where I do link to Twitter, like the front of my recon page on my site, I actually now have it go to an intermediate page on my site before the person is linked to Twitter. I haven't done that with my radar database yet. That will take some extra effort to do. Because of how that works, and how my intermediate Twitter warning page works, I can't easily change the links there.
Google is better than Facebook, Facebook better than Twitter, and Twitter is, well, about as bad now as our new president's social media site. But none are good.
I'm sure the evil in the world will try to take down Bluesky eventually.
I also have a lot of family photos, thousands, on my Google Drive. I spent like a year scanning old family photos from my grandmother after she died and put them there, as well as gave a lot of family members USB drives of the pictures and videos. I had a local video production place convert all my VHS and Hi-8 tapes to digital. Those were mostly mine, but they had other family in it too and I put those videos on YouTube for them. I have over 80 unlisted videos on some unlisted playlists containing videos of family. It was the easiest thing to do. So, Google will always have me. I guess. Give it time though and who knows. |