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Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

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Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#141

Post by harrisonpage »

joe__f wrote: post #126
blacklight wrote: post #96

This is probably the #500 post on HN that reads "help I've been locked out of my Google account for Kafkaesque/inexplicable reasons and I have nobody to reach out to". If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault. Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market…

I've been thinking to move away from Gmail for a while now, what alternatives do you suggest?

fastmail.com

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#142

Post by sgc »

moistofreason wrote: post #107
Kiro wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently converting so many disgruntled LastPass users to Chrome's built-in password manager. It's fantastic and I love Google. What is your opinion on that?

Onepassword beats both by a mile. Worth every penny.

I have been using KeePass and variants for a long time, and have never had any problems with it on a variety of devices.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#143

Post by ScottyAdams0 »

MPSimmons wrote: post #133
ScottyAdams0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In my opinion, the issue with Google's products is not and never really has been that they're "low quality", it's that, when you DO have problems with them, there is absolutely no recourse or support option. The reason that the parent mentioned that there have been 500 support threads for someone being locked out of their Gmail (or site de-listed, or literally any other change that Google has the ability to make) is…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#144

Post by harrisonpage »

ScottyAdams0 wrote: post #130
blacklight wrote: post #96

This is probably the #500 post on HN that reads "help I've been locked out of my Google account for Kafkaesque/inexplicable reasons and I have nobody to reach out to". If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault. Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market…

[flagged]

> It’s also laughably out of touch to say Google products are low quality.

Have you used their Nest products? Absolute garbage.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#145

Post by sph »

frereubu wrote: post #69
user3939382 wrote: post #17

I made the jump to Fastmail and I'm very happy with it. Web interface is at least as good as Gmail's. Thunderbird keeps a local copy of my emails, I control the email domain. I can create backups. The second you get back in you gotta get off this platform.

The only thing that I find isn't as good about Fastmail is the spam filtering. I see more spam in my inbox and my spam folder than I did in Gmail, but despite that the trade-offs (particularly less of my data going through and sitting in Google's systems) still feel worth it.

That might not be the case, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34118182

tl;dr: Fastmail custom spam filtering needs some time to actually do anything. Now no more 2 spam emails a year get through the filter.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#146

Post by pseudo0 »

blacklight wrote: post #96

This is probably the #500 post on HN that reads "help I've been locked out of my Google account for Kafkaesque/inexplicable reasons and I have nobody to reach out to". If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault. Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market…

Their requirements have gotten pretty insane. I have a couple of old Gmail accounts I used for low-priority stuff (signing up for forums, mailing lists where I might get spammed) and they are both now locked out for "security reasons". I have strong passwords, correctly provided the previous password, have the recovery email, but I jump through all the hoops just for them to tell me to F off. And these are 10+ year old accounts with no issues! Thank goodness I don't use Gmail for my primary email address, I moved that ages ago.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#147

Post by kaibee »

ScottyAdams0 wrote: post #143
MPSimmons wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the issue with Google's products is not and never really has been that they're "low quality", it's that, when you DO have problems with them, there is absolutely no recourse or support option. The reason that the parent mentioned that there have been 500 support threads for someone being locked out of their Gmail (or site de-listed, or literally any other change that Google has the ability to make) is…

[flagged]

> Ok you’re just gonna assert something demonstrably false. Ok, I just feel a need to respond and say, no. They do customer service at Google better than any company I’ve ever seen.

Did you accidentally cross over from some parallel universe or something? In your world, did Trump win in 2016 and lose in 2020? Just checking.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#148

Post by pcthrowaway »

Alex3917 wrote: post #10

The longer it's been since anyone has logged in, the more confidence Google will have that it's really you trying to log in. In all likelihood you'll be able to get back in within a couple weeks.

This is unfortunately not true (for me anyway).

I have an alt gmail account that I used less frequently. 3.5 years ago I was abroad right after the first wave of COVID, and logging in from a new laptop (no longer have the old one). When I tried logging in with the correct password, it told me I needed to verify an SMS to an old phone number I haven't used in 10 years (7 at the time I suppose).

Every now and then I'll try logging in hoping they realize that the account is mine, since I have the password, and no one else is logging in (hopefully).

Unfortunately, nothing changes, I still get the requirement to verify with a second device, and I never configured a recovery email for that account.

One day I'm hoping someone will register the old phone number, and I'll be able to smooth talk them into passing the confirmation code to me.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#149

Post by toomuchtodo »

blacklight wrote: post #117
gatonegro wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days ago I was going through an old Gmail account, and decided to get my data through Takeout. Told me it'd take a few hours, and the next day I had a link ready. Click the link, enter the password, it tells me I need a verification code that it wants to send to an address that stopped existing 15 years ago. As it turns out, Google is not sufficiently convinced that I am in fact the owner of the account, so it…

Takeout is a feature that Google was kind of forced to implement because of GDPR compliance. But they still try their best to make it so bad that people won't think of using it. First, getting to a point where you can actually schedule the creation of a zip takes a lot of clicking around - just to make sure that people won't bump into it unless they're explicitly searching for it. Second, the process is painfully slo…

If you use a cloud storage provider Takeout supports (Dropbox, OneDrive, Box), it can be configured to auto export on a cadence. I have Takeout scheduled to export every two months to my Dropbox /apps path (you have to renew this schedule every year unfortunately).

> Automatically create an archive of your selected data every 2 months for one year. The first archive will be created immediately.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#150

Post by anonymousiam »

harshalizee wrote: post #123
blacklight wrote: post #96

This is probably the #500 post on HN that reads "help I've been locked out of my Google account for Kafkaesque/inexplicable reasons and I have nobody to reach out to". If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault. Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market…

But realistically how do you do it? I've stopped signing up for any new Google products for well over half a decade now. Even moved my email to protonmail. I have a little over 500 accounts tied to my Gmail over the last two decades. Moving them is a pain but still possible. The problem arises when it comes to existing accounts with byzantine financial institutions. Trying to change email addresses that are linked to…

Your point about the inability to change your email address with certain institutions resonates with me. Some companies have no consideration for the possibility that one of their customers might need to change their primary email address.

Last year I was notified by Audi that my email address had been compromised in a data breach. As the spam volume to that mailbox increased, I decided to change it. I discovered that I cannot change the email address associated with my Audi account. When I contacted their Technical Support group, they advised me to delete the whole account (which failed), and create a new one.

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