Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 261 posts

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

#231

Post by hanklazard »

edmundsauto wrote: post #230
hanklazard wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I believe I have this set to create an export and notify me the backup every quarter or so. Not the perfect solution, but until I do the right thing and switch over to fastmail, this at least ensures I can only lose a few months ( gulp ) worth of email.

The part that keeps me up at night - the last few months are likely the majority of emails I care about. So I might recover 99% of past emails, but only get 25% of the value -- recency matters.

Yeah, I think this is a great point. My goal is to get my email on a domain I control in the next few months.

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

#232

Post by nephanth »

rwalle wrote: post #223
yumraj wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that happens, it’s not a problem. Why? You go to your register and point your domain to another email provider, and you’re back in business.

Not a problem? All your previous emails are lost, aren't they? Even you have local backup of them somehow, they are not equivalent to emails saved to your server?

If you're using an email client, chances are you have an offline copy of your emails (depending on how you configured it)

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

#233

Post by grvdrm »

krono wrote: post #31

Whilst it might not be of help to OP, I suggest everyone else to do a data export for all your important services every once in a while and save it with your other backups. https://takeout.google.com https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/download-data

Interesting idea - follow up question: where/how do you back it up? Looking forward to hearing about your whole system.

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

#234

Post by sho »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #92
morsch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does paying 50 bucks a year give you that peace of mind? What kind of recovery procedures do providers like fastmail have?

Real, intelligent people for customer support (well, the last time I needed any, which was years ago). You are paying for the service and it's not cheap although also not expensive compared to normal things you also need like Internet service (using US prices). GMail is normally "free," you are the product, and customer support and caring about customers is simply not in Google's DNA. Which we can see in too many of…

> I'd put the odds of Fastmail failing entirely as a business rather higher that those of any single user having an unresolvable 2FA glitch with a gmail account

Well that's funny, because I see a desperate post by a gmail user with an unresolvable 2FA glitch (except by screaming for help on tech-oriented forums hoping someone will notice) basically every week, and yet somehow Fastmail isn't out of business yet. And who knows how many "normies" without an HN/Twitter megaphone just silently lose access, weep a bit and give up?

I have no doubt that Google won't actually lose my email data, but if I can't access it and have no recourse then there's no difference in practise.

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

#236

Post by jacob019 »

ajross wrote: post #89
KyleJune wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use my own domain with fastmail, so if they were to fail, I could at least keep using the same address. Although I would need to find another provider that supports wildcard addresses going to the same inbox because I've found myself using the pattern companyname@ my domain for each business I give my email to. It makes it easy to block emails if a business doesn't let me unsubscribe or they share my email with spa…

You realize that "My Domain Got Stolen and the Registrar Won't Fix It" is another whole subgenre of this kind of anecdata, right? My point is just that there's no free lunch. Everything breaks, but on balance I'd trust Big Tech to get it right more than little companies like Fastmail or your domain registrar.

Whoa there, what reasoning leads you to believe that "Big Tech" is more trustwothy than "little companies"?

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

#237

Post by BMorearty »

rwalle wrote: post #224
BMorearty wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Gmail’s automated inbox categories. Looks like Fastmail doesn’t have that? (I know I can set up manual filters. I prefer it to be done for me automatically.)

This probably does not help, but... I used to love that automated categories and had 4 categories. One day I suddenly felt that that was too many and reduced it to two, "Primary" and "Updates" (similar to mail.live.com's "focused" and "other") and found it actually easier to manage my emails. Of course that is still two not one, but just want to say that you might also realize that you don't need so many categories.

Thanks for the tip. I’m currently at 3 but I get what you’re saying. I might try it.

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

#238

Post by jacob019 »

awinter-py wrote: post #111
cuteboy19 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Old password+new password" is not 2fa

yes exactly. if G were following best practices from the consumer banking industry, 2fa would be more like 'old password + random row from your equifax profile'

I would rather not have to live in a world where google uses my credit profile for authentication.

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

#239

Post by KyleJune »

ajross wrote: post #219
KyleJune wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP's post isn't about his email or domain getting stolen, it's about him getting locked out of his account with no way to get back in. There are many different providers for both email and domains that provide good support. Sure it's possible I could still get locked out of either. I feel like smaller companies that I'm actually paying are more likely to be responsive to my issues than a large company that I'm using…

> I feel like smaller companies that I'm actually paying are more likely to be responsive to my issues than a large company that I'm using for free. "I feel like" is, precisely, the anecdata fallacy at work! You feel that way because you see so many more reports of problems with the big providers. The truth, obviously, is that account management problems like this are present everywhere[1], but the email (or domain)…

Yea, but there is another difference besides them being smaller. Email is fastmail's primary business. A domain registrars primary business is selling domains. So it's more risky for them to provide sub-par support compared to google where gmail is just one of the many things they do.

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

#240

Post by [deleted] »

grvdrm wrote: post #233
krono wrote: post #31

Whilst it might not be of help to OP, I suggest everyone else to do a data export for all your important services every once in a while and save it with your other backups. https://takeout.google.com https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/download-data

Interesting idea - follow up question: where/how do you back it up? Looking forward to hearing about your whole system.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN