Gmail's "notifications"

So I want to contact someone whose website says “click on name to get email address” instead of just listing the fucking email address. First mistake

Then I get a popup telling me to choose an email. I hit “Gmail.” Second mistake.

Then it makes me type in my full gmail address and password, which is a mouthful. Third mistake.

Then I get another popup telling me that a message will be sent to my phone. Nothing comes. Fourth mistake.

after waiting five minutes, I hut “send another notification.” Fifth mistake.

I go through several iterations of this process. A half-hour of WAITING TO SEND AN EMAIL later, I give up and search for a phone number and I finally get the person’s number rather than his email address address.

You get choices? Bill Gates feels that every time I want to click the mailto: link that I need to use Outlook with my Microsquish account that I only have because I needed one to install Windows.

Are you absolutely certain you weren’t just phished?

You probably clicked on a “mailto” link. This is a hyperlink of the form mailto:name@website.com. If you right click it will let you copy the email address right then and there. If you hover over it the bottom of the screen should show you the email address. If you are on a touch screen device you can long press to copy the email address.

If you click the button it should open your email application.

(Mailto is standard. There is a mailto address at the bottom of this very page, where it says “Contact Us”.)

Assuming you are on a Windows device, this is probably the email application bundled with Windows, these days it is called “Mail”. The website had nothing to do with the popup, it is your computer doing that.

You probably use your internet browser to read your email and don’t use Windows Mail. So the popup you saw was Windows asking you to setup Windows “Mail”. I’m sure they asked if you wanted to use a Microsoft or “Live” email.

This is Google’s doing. They get a request to authenticate you but when they pull up your account, they noticed that in all your years you have never used Windows Mail. So they send you a text message to make sure it’s really you and not some hacker that got your password.

Can’t help you with that. Google may have the wrong phone number linked to your email.

~Max

Thanks. This whole fucking thing always seems way complicated beyond any usefulness.

Sounds more like these are issues with the website you are on, and not Gmail.

It really sounds like you got phished here…

I know two-factor authentication is supposed to be the bee’s knees, but I hate it. I had a similar experience to the original post just trying to get Google Maps to work on my wife’s phone.