this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Gitlab now requires phone number/credit card verification (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by rrobin@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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Looks like gitlab now requires account verification for new accounts in addition to email. Either phone number or credit card.

This applies both to accounts created with a working email or by logging in using your github account. You can't even verify your email until you go through step 1.

I don't know when this started, but at least for the last month or two judging from these posts in the forums.

Fun fact: I don't even want to host on gitlab, I just wanted to report bugs in some projects. So I'm locked out.

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[–] adamnejm@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just tried this out using a typical temporary email address (temp-mail.org) and a VPN (AirVPN).
I was only asked to confirm my e-mail address within 3 days, never for a phone address or any banking details.

Judging by the first post you've linked to, it's only necessary for paid accounts or free trials.
The person in the second post is trying to register via GitHub / Google, well... sucks for them.

[–] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd assume this will be a non issue once they implement ActivityPub. They can enable whatever account restrictions on their gitlab instance, but if I don't want to provide this information to report a bug, then I can use another instance or self host my own, without the account restrictions.

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You really think they will add a full ActivityPub implementation? I highly doubt it.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For discussions probably. Not for repos.

[–] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

From the Summary in the link:

The end goal of this proposal is to build interoperability features into GitLab so that it’s possible on one instance of GitLab to open a merge request to a project hosted on an other instance, merging all willing instances in a global network

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

deleted

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What's the best way to circumvent phone number verification ? My burner YouTube account, which has nothing unsavory on it, has been marked for phone number verification or else I can't login at all.

Of course I'm not giving them my real phone number. What the best way to fake this?

[–] Nugget@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are paid services that offer phone number masking such as Firefox Relay

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I tried VoIP addresses and got the message "we can't use that number". Is Firefox relay immune to that?

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was asking like less then a month ago what's wrong with gitlab when Firefox switched to GitHub, now I know.

[–] vox@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  1. firefox were using self-hosted mercurial + git with sync
  2. they just dropped mercurial, they're still not on github
    only misc. libraries and the android frontend are on github, and firefox/mozilla has never used gitlab
[–] vox@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

isn't the official gitlab instance primarily a paid platform? cc verification makes sense then.

[–] Veraxus@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I really, really like Gitlab... but this is a MAJOR problem and spectacularly short-sighted.

[–] privacybro@lemmy.ninja 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For alternatives, I recommend to use a community-ran Gitea instance. Project Segfault runs one.

https://about.gitea.com/

https://git.projectsegfau.lt/

Also check out Forgejo, it's another git software. Disroot has an instance.

https://forgejo.org

https://git.disroot.org/

[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many instances will one have to register on? This isn't going to improve until forgefed is done.

[–] privacybro@lemmy.ninja 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

explain further please?

[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You won't be able to contribute to a project on any of those instances, unless you register on it. So if you are a prolific contributor, you might end up signing up on dozens of those instances.

Forgefed is a federation protocol for such instances. It's based on ActivityPub - the same that powers Lemmy and Mastodon. You can have just one account on a single instance and still be able to contribute to projects on multiple others. It's still in the works though. It's expected that at least gitlab, gitea and forgejo will support it.

[–] privacybro@lemmy.ninja 1 points 1 year ago

this is really cool, thanks for the info. federated or decentralized git is long overdue

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

sorry but deleting the account is absolutely ridiculous.

mark it inactive but just deleting someone's entire git history because they didn't put in a phone number or credit card is so dumb.

i don't even need a phone number or credit card for my github account.

[–] Slotos@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sourcehut. The answer is sourcehut.

You don’t even need an account to submit patches, just configure git send-email.

[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Some people seem to think that setting up send-email and mailing patches has too much of a learning curve and 'barrier to entry'.

[–] fluffery@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Forgejo?

[–] peyotecosmico@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Time to start using GitDirectory named V.01 shared over FTP.

It's a joke, don't use FTP, it's not secure.

[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there any reference for this? I can't find anything relevant. Just curious.

[–] peyotecosmico@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Of FTP not being secure? Check the links in the comments below

FTP it's not encrypted

[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No. I mean gitdirectory over FTP.

[–] peyotecosmico@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's no GitDirectory, it's the way we used to share files back then, a shared directory over FTP

[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I'm aware of FTP. It's still around in certain circles. But for a moment I thought that there was some sort of integration between ftp and git. I guess not.

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[–] kevincox@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This really sucks for bug reporting. I don't mind this at all for hosting as that cost notable resources (especially their free CI tier) and they can set their own terms, but I want people to be able to report bugs without any trouble. (Although if spam is an issue maybe projects could opt-in to requiring this verification to report bugs).

A work-around is maybe the service desk feature allowing reporting bugs via email but this has issues for proper collaboration:

  1. The reporter's email is shared.
  2. The issue is private by default.
  3. Can't collaborate on an existing issue.

Maybe I'll just go back to mailing lists... Or GitHub has gotten better recently. But GitLab's CI is so much better.

[–] TauZero@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

I want people to be able to report bugs without any trouble.

Thank you for being aware! I've experienced this on github.com. I've tried to submit issues several times to open source projects, complete with proposed code to solve a bug, but github shadowbans my account 6 hours after creating it (because I use a VPN? a third-party email provider? do not provide a phone number? who knows). I can see the issue and pull request when logged in, but they only see a 404 on their project page even if I give them a direct link. I ended up sending them a screenshot of the issue page just to convince them this was even possible. Sad to hear gitlab does it even worse now by making phone mandatory.

[–] Bipta@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kbin uses Gitlab so it's too bad.

[–] ernest@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Not really. The official repository (with issue management) is located on Codeberg. GitHub serves as a mirror in case of any issues with the primary service.

https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core

[–] wintermute@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Glad I switched to Forgejo some time ago, never looked back : )

[–] nakal@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It looks like Gitea. Is it a fork?

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Softfork. Basically the version that runs on Codeberg.org

[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And soon with ActivityPub integration? Pls?

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Work in progress, but it's taking longer than I expected.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 0 points 9 months ago

Has this already been introduced for existing accounts? Gitlab has been moving in an unsatisfying direction for a while now and these kinds of shenanigans really make me want to move.

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[–] authed@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

fuck them

[–] GrappleHat@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why GitLab!?

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