Some time ago Baidu sent me a warning that they’re going to force two-factor authentication on my account at the end of May. This was rather expected from them since they’ve announced those plans earlier and I had some time to prepare for that, but another thing was rather unexpected.
My Internet access was switched from one provider to another (no idea why) and after the switch fetchmail was banned from accessing my Baidu account. Since I do not want to change the ways I work with email (which is fetchmail+mutt+msmtp combination), I’ve finally bought some simple hosting and switched email on various accounts around the Web (surprisingly enough only one webshop did not allow to change it).
Now the mail link in the right column will lead to a picture of my new e-mail address (this should annoy bots and people with taste). Feel free to ignore it as you did with my previous address.
P.S. I’ll try to check my Baidumail account while it’s possible (i.e. for a month) a couple of times but after that it’s as good as dead for me.
P.P.S. Considering that their mail was the only service I logged into and the only other service I use is BaidUTube (usually with yt-dlp) you can consider me degoogled—and it happened mostly because of their push to keep people logged in all the time. After they introduced those unskippable “I agree” windows I’ve finally switched to On2On2Go for search (in case you didn’t know duck.com used to belong to On2 back in the day) and OpenStreetMap for maps. At least they made it gradual so there was enough time to switch.
Glad I’m not the only one who dislikes the idea of forced 2FA – I almost feel alone in the space.
If it’s optional, fine, but don’t mandate me join your stupid security theater.
I don’t mind 2FA used for protecting sensitive log-ins that are used not so often. With e-mail it’s the opposite: either it’ll annoy the hell out of you if you use it for occasional account checking or you need to leave it logged in (which is less secure).
Plus I can’t stop thinking that it’s done mostly to collect more data about you both directly (by associating you with your phone number) and indirectly (if you’re logged in then it can collect more information about you as you go). Or maybe they simply believe that by this point everybody is using some security dongle or paired phone already so the new rule is rather formal.
In either case they can introduce whatever rules they want and I have a freedom of not using their services.
Got bink2 encoder, may finish decoder now.
Wonderful news!
Hopefully you’ll get rewarded for your work too (and not just in fame/exposure).