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Ask HN: Google has locked me out of the account

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Re: Ask HN: Google has locked me out of the account

#31

Post by nitn »

nolok wrote: post #14

You use that account for adsense revenue, but you did not add a secondary recovery email, nor a recovery phone number ? When you do not have any other recovery, google tries a recovery method based on questions ("when did you register the account", "what's an email address you often contact", ...) where the answer do not need to be strictly exact, have you tried that ? And you failed it ? If yes to both of those, how…

>I can verify the phone number but then it keeps asking me to verify a code that's sent on the same email.

I have a recovery phone number in there. I'm verifying it everytime Google asks me to, but then it takes me to verify the code from the same email that I don't have access to.

It makes no sense but that's what's happening.

Here's the flow of how it's going.

Forgot Password → Enter the phone number ending with XX → Enter the code sent to your phone → Enter the code sent to your email (the same email).

I've tried the recovery methods, there's no other way that Google is offering me to recover the account. I'll happily answer all the security questions if Google asks me to.

Re: Ask HN: Google has locked me out of the account

#32

Post by nitn »

Note: I have a recovery phone number set on the account. A code is being sent to my phone, after I enter the code, that's when I'm being asked to verify the code from the same email.

I wouldn't be bothering about the account if I had not set a recovery phone number.

Re: Ask HN: Google has locked me out of the account

#34

Post by nitn »

nitwit005 wrote: post #33

It sounds like your real issue is a money problem, rather than an email problem. That is, Google owes you money, and you can't access it. You should probably chat with a lawyer about the legal side of things.

No. My issue is that to reset the password, Google is asking me to get something from an email which I don't know the password for. And that too when I have a recovery phone number setup on the account.

Asking to verify a code from the email for which I'm trying to reset the password is stupid and defeats the purpose of having a "recovery" phone number.

Re: Ask HN: Google has locked me out of the account

#35

Post by Ruthalas »

anaccountexists wrote: post #6
fsflover wrote: post #2

There have been a lot of such threads on HN already. People should stop trusting Google. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22705122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17428707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9768593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30677471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24709282 (Some of tho…

There’s a lot of reasons to get mad at Google. Not setting a recovery email is not one of them. I feel bad for this person because it’s a horrible place to be stuck in, but even if Google had great customer support allowing people to reset passwords over chat / phone would be ripe for abuse

Just to chime in, Google will happily ignore your recovery email if your fingerprint has changed significantly. This happened the last time I moved, and it's very irritating.

Re: Ask HN: Google has locked me out of the account

#36

Post by nitwit005 »

nitn wrote: post #34
nitwit005 wrote: post #33

It sounds like your real issue is a money problem, rather than an email problem. That is, Google owes you money, and you can't access it. You should probably chat with a lawyer about the legal side of things.

No. My issue is that to reset the password, Google is asking me to get something from an email which I don't know the password for. And that too when I have a recovery phone number setup on the account. Asking to verify a code from the email for which I'm trying to reset the password is stupid and defeats the purpose of having a "recovery" phone number.

> It's an account I use for AdSense and I have unpaid revenue in there.

You made a point of callout out that you have money tied to the account.

Re: Ask HN: Google has locked me out of the account

#37

Post by gnufx »

vertis wrote: post #27
fsflover wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can consider a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone) to escape Google. It's not for everyone yet, but the HN audience probably could use one.

I would definitely consider these phones, but I'm a digital nomad, so having multiple sims (e-sims) is a must, it doesn't look like either support it yet. It's hard to break free of Android/iOS as well. I can almost guarantee that one or more apps, for example 2FA auth apps like Duo or Okta, wouldn't be usable on the GNU/Linux (I don't really know enough about them to be certain about this statement).

At least for Duo, you can extract the HOTP secret [1] and use it in any OATH tool, e.g. with the otp extension of pass(1) on GNU/Linux (which uses uses oathtool(1) underneath). You can also do it a more difficult way, e.g. using the Duo app under anbox.

1. https://github.com/simonseo/nyuad-spammer/tree/master/spamme...

Re: Ask HN: Google has locked me out of the account

#39

Post by croutonwagon »

Ruthalas wrote: post #35
anaccountexists wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of reasons to get mad at Google. Not setting a recovery email is not one of them. I feel bad for this person because it’s a horrible place to be stuck in, but even if Google had great customer support allowing people to reset passwords over chat / phone would be ripe for abuse

Just to chime in, Google will happily ignore your recovery email if your fingerprint has changed significantly. This happened the last time I moved, and it's very irritating.

As an aside. I have made it a point to simply login to my google sock puppet accounts annually from my desired location simply to avoid these such lockouts.

Their primary denominator seems to be ISP. I also use a linode instance for many as wel. Gives me two locations.

Disclaimer: I don’t think anyone can really speak to the google ai, decision making process. But I do know at least one appeal has silently been allowed in my case.

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