Well, it appears the big G has finally done something to take some extra security measures against spammers or abusive users. At some point within the past few days, Google began requiring newly registered accounts to be verified by an SMS text message to your mobile phone. While in theory this should at least make it more difficult for users to register multiple Gmail accounts, (whatever their goal may be…) it is of course not the end of their problems. You may remember Facebook implementing a feature like this within the past 6 months. Orignally FB required all new accounts to be verified via a similar SMS texting system, where the user must input the PIN sent to their phone. This would allow you to post messages, comments, etc without facing the dreaded CAPTCHA. For unknown reasons, shortly after Facebook implemented this feature they changed the way it operated so that IF a user didn’t verify their account via the PIN, then the CAPTCHA protection would cease to show after the account reached a certain age. As far as we could tell, the time when the CAPTCHA disappeared was after about 2 weeks of actively using the account after it was intitially created.
So how could this effect you? Well if you’ve been using Gmail accounts to create multiple accounts on other sites, then it appears you’ll need to find an alternative mail system to use for now… Either that or “borrow” phones from Friends and Family, as Gmail even suggests as an alternative if you do not own mobile phone. The question is: is it worth the extra time and hassle? It may be. We’ve noticed that Gmail accounts seem to carry pretty strong weight where Facebook is concerned. For example, we’ve found that a Facebook account attached to a Gmail account, where the names on BOTH accounts match, and the name is also included IN the email address will have much more initial freedom on the site then, say, an account created from a random domain that Facebook is unfamiliar with. These accounts will also not face the CAPTCHA security with each early post. Of course, if you are posting on Facebook too quickly or too much, you will still receive the blocks and warnings, no matter where your account’s email address is from, or whether you’ve entered the CAPTCHA-removal PIN or not.
