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Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

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Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#21

Post by catacombs »

smt88 wrote: post #3

Your fear is rational. It's happened to other people. I would suggest going to a paid provider like Fastmail and checking their terms of service. I don't know of any protections that exist by law at the moment. My horror story: I have a mentally ill relative who only logged in every 6 months. He got treatment and wanted to resume using his email account. Guess what? Google thought his activity was "suspicious" and pe…

That's infuriating. Something similar happened to my friend a few months ago. He couldn't log in to his Google account for weeks because the company took forever to verify his identity.

The fact Google doesn't have a way for people to talk to a human during a crisis is moronic. That's why I've moved off Google with as much stuff as possible.

I don't think I'd have the patience to deal with something like this and rely on automated systems to deal with my problems.

Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#22

Post by perl4ever »

The interesting thing about Gmail for me, is that I lost the ability to log in to my primary Gmail account quite some time ago (well over a year I think) and yet I still have a device that remains logged in and showing me new mail even though I don't have the password, can't send mail, and can't reset the password by any means.

I am beginning to think it is a notable security hole, as Gmail shouldn't, and surely does not in general, allow a session to last for years without timing out or requiring re-authentication.

Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#23

Post by perl4ever »

aquabeagle wrote: post #2

Do you not know there are other e-mail providers that will take your money in exchange for services?

I don't know if it's my imagination, but emails of mine sent via my domain and not gmail or outlook seem to often mysteriously vanish, and I was thinking it may be because they are flagged as spam.

There's also the issue that nothing other than gmail works very well on an android phone.

I started using email long before Google existed, but I'm not really familiar with a good alternative at this point. It's not that I wouldn't theoretically pay money for a good old fashioned email provider with human customer service, but I really don't think such a business exists anymore, due to the proliferation of free email. And a small-time automated business is going to be worse than a big-time automated business anyway. It's just not 1993 any more.

Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#24

Post by surewhynat »

catacombs wrote: post #21
smt88 wrote: post #3

Your fear is rational. It's happened to other people. I would suggest going to a paid provider like Fastmail and checking their terms of service. I don't know of any protections that exist by law at the moment. My horror story: I have a mentally ill relative who only logged in every 6 months. He got treatment and wanted to resume using his email account. Guess what? Google thought his activity was "suspicious" and pe…

That's infuriating. Something similar happened to my friend a few months ago. He couldn't log in to his Google account for weeks because the company took forever to verify his identity. The fact Google doesn't have a way for people to talk to a human during a crisis is moronic. That's why I've moved off Google with as much stuff as possible. I don't think I'd have the patience to deal with something like this and rel…

I logged into an old hotmail email to recover a related account, and it had deleted all my messages because I hadn't been active for 12 months.

The more I think about it, we really do need a more distributed architecture. The whole concept of "the cloud" really sucks

Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#25

Post by jobigoud »

perl4ever wrote: post #22

The interesting thing about Gmail for me, is that I lost the ability to log in to my primary Gmail account quite some time ago (well over a year I think) and yet I still have a device that remains logged in and showing me new mail even though I don't have the password, can't send mail, and can't reset the password by any means. I am beginning to think it is a notable security hole, as Gmail shouldn't, and surely does…

Are you sure the password isn't saved somewhere in the mail client on the device and sent up regularly?

Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#26

Post by jolmg »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #18

I am guessing you are scared because: (i) you won't be able to access importing accounts e.g. bank accounts where your email is your gmail account. (ii) you won't be able to see your old emails. Solutions (i) Buy a domain name and use that for your emails. Forward those to GMail initially but you can forward them to something else if you ever lose GMail access. Update all your accounts to this new email address. (ii)…

(ii) You can also download all your mail via IMAP(S). MRA (Mail Retrieval Agent) programs like isync/mbsync, offlineimap, and others do this. They sync, so you can run them regularly to download just the new mails and keep your backups updated. Whereas using Google Takeout would give you the whole thing everytime.

Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#28

Post by jolmg »

surewhynat wrote: post #24
catacombs wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's infuriating. Something similar happened to my friend a few months ago. He couldn't log in to his Google account for weeks because the company took forever to verify his identity. The fact Google doesn't have a way for people to talk to a human during a crisis is moronic. That's why I've moved off Google with as much stuff as possible. I don't think I'd have the patience to deal with something like this and rel…

I logged into an old hotmail email to recover a related account, and it had deleted all my messages because I hadn't been active for 12 months. The more I think about it, we really do need a more distributed architecture. The whole concept of "the cloud" really sucks

Email is about as distributed as it gets. How would you consider it can be more distributed? If it's about the ability to backup messages, you can do that with any MRA (Mail Retrieval Agent) program like mbsync/isync[1], or offlineimap[2].

[1] http://isync.sourceforge.net

[2] http://offlineimap.org/

Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#29

Post by [deleted] »

jolmg wrote: post #28
surewhynat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I logged into an old hotmail email to recover a related account, and it had deleted all my messages because I hadn't been active for 12 months. The more I think about it, we really do need a more distributed architecture. The whole concept of "the cloud" really sucks

Email is about as distributed as it gets. How would you consider it can be more distributed? If it's about the ability to backup messages, you can do that with any MRA (Mail Retrieval Agent) program like mbsync/isync[1], or offlineimap[2]. [1] http://isync.sourceforge.net [2] http://offlineimap.org/

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: I’m scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist?

#30

Post by perl4ever »

jobigoud wrote: post #25
perl4ever wrote: post #22

The interesting thing about Gmail for me, is that I lost the ability to log in to my primary Gmail account quite some time ago (well over a year I think) and yet I still have a device that remains logged in and showing me new mail even though I don't have the password, can't send mail, and can't reset the password by any means. I am beginning to think it is a notable security hole, as Gmail shouldn't, and surely does…

Are you sure the password isn't saved somewhere in the mail client on the device and sent up regularly?

Possibly, although it won't send. And, you know, Google is often pretty aggressive at locking devices out if it thinks they are insecure. This is a 1st gen Kindle Fire, and I'm pretty sure it is very obsolete and not getting updates for a while. So even if it is still trying to log in, that doesn't make it expected in my mind that it would continue to work.

If it were sending the password (out over WiFi to my tethered phone) is there a way for a bear of very little brain to MITM it?

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