201–210 of 261 posts
I had a similar problem a while back where Google demanded a second authentication factor for an account that didn't have 2FA set. It asked for a previous password that the account must have had >10 years ago and I think the answer to a security question that I couldn't answer, because I always use cryptic responses to those and apparently didn't save this one way back when. My rationale was that I wouldn't need any…
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Also, iCloud+ allows the use of a custom domain. It may be an easier option for some.
I believe the major problem is having your email attached to a big tech general account. If your son decides to download a pirated game to your iphone, out whatever other unrelated minor offense, and Apple determine it's worth nuking your entire account, your email is gone. Granted, Google is worse at this matters, and when you own the domain at least you can point it to somewhere else, but it's still a hassle.
Why?
You go to your register and point your domain to another email provider, and you’re back in business.
Whenever I think about migrating my "primary" email to be at a domain I own, I come up with the following risk calculus: What's more likely: A) That i get locked out of Gmail for some byzantine reason I can't get out of B) That for whatever reason (new card, I'm in the hospital, whatever) I forget/am unable to renew my domain and it gets sniped.
The real issue is that whatever registrar you choose can also arbitrarily lock you out of your account. But one would think being a bit smaller company, having less surveillance tentacles into things like phones, and having a less homogeneous userbase would keep them in line.
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To make the transition easier you can configure Gmail to automatically forward mails you your FastMail address. They all then appear in the fastmail acc and you don't have to touch Gmail ever again.
Thats exactly what I do - get a bit tiring to manage emails on both side during the intermediate phase (which I'm still in) but I have already migrated most of my financial and government contacts to fastmail.
It's so nice to have my Gmail only for Android and other Google services. It was a big relief.
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Anything! Please let them know my recovery account (another gmail, FirstnameLastname) is also locked. Edit: I'm back in to my recovery account!! Just enabled 2FA to avoid getting locked out again. My main account is still locked, but it let me verify via my old password, new password, and recovery email code. The message says that they still need to verify more, but I should look for an email to login within 48 hours…
Thanks for everyone's help. Backup email works now. Looks like (fingers still crossed) I'll be getting back into my main account in 48 hours. Obviously I'm re-working my email solution as we speak... starting with backing up my Google data! Lots of good recommendations in this thread. Learn from my mistakes . It can happen to you!!
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.
I make this point in most of these threads, but this is falling to an anecdata fallacy. Gmail is thousands or tens of thousands of times bigger than Fastmail[1]. When you have have a scale difference that large, you're going to have a huge, huge imbalance of problem reports like this that has nothing to do with actual reliability. All providers mess stuff up occasionally. Everyone has a customer support crisis at som…
I think this misses the point. With Fastmail, if they mess up, I can still talk to a human. With Gmail there is no customer support to begin with so you're screwed whenever something goes wrong.
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 saved me during my big scare about a year ago when I suddenly found myself locked out of an important account with no way to get back in (phone number was old and inaccessible). The password was fine, they just didn't believe it was me for some reason. A few months later it suddenly worked again, and I seized that opportunity to move permanently away from gmail. I was lucky. I do not want my access to my online…
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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…
> Quite a few institutions won't let you use an email that comes from protonmail or a custom domain. So, many times I'm forced back into using a Gmail address to prevent a whole host off other issues As in, they check "if domain != 'gmail.com' { fuckyou(); }"? Or as in "they MTAs are not very good and just don't deliver email"?
I have accounts in the US, EU and Asia due to family, etc. and this kind of restriction is fairly common in EU/Asia
This prompted me to download Thunderbird - was very easy to get started (it basically provided a wizard with some basic inputs and started fetching messages immediately using POP).
I use pobox.com to forward my primary domain. Right now I have mail forwarded to their "mailstore," which is essentially a lite version of Fastmail.com (Fastmail owns POBox, or the other way around, don't remember), but I can forward to multiple mailboxes. It costs $50 a year, just like Fastmail, but I think it's a little more flexible, at least for my needs.