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Ask HN: Gmail account security

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Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#641

Post by pllbnk »

I have a very similar issue where I enter my (correct) password, Google recognizes it but says they need some additional verification where they require one of my previous passwords to be entered. I don't know my previous password, so I am locked out of my account.

What's funny is I have another account to which the Gmail of the said locked account is connected, so I can send and receive emails by the locked account, but I cannot use it for any other purpose. It has been the trigger due to which I had switched my primary email to my own personal domain and a better service provider for a few bucks a month. It's painful and I'm still in progress of transferring all communications to the new domain, however it's totally worth it because I have a sense of actual control.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#642

Post by stavros »

sofixa wrote: post #469
stavros wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's FUD, but it's true. It happened to a person I know, and in her case, the resolution was "ask around until a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend works at Google". She literally had to ask her friend, who asked me, I asked one of my friends to ask one of his friends who works at Google to put in an internal ticket. It was thankfully resolved quickly (she lost access to all her work materials…

Google now have support, including phone and chat, via Google One ( basically if you pay for extra storage for Gmail/GDrive/Photos/etc.).

Interesting, I wonder if you can somehow pay after you're locked out.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#644

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

michaelt wrote: post #638
julienfr112 wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've first hand experience with managing a google workspace (50 users) and an Azure AD (30 users). With google workspace, the chat is two click away and the guys now their stuff. With Azure AD, no support, no chat, except "here is a list of consultant in your area that provide support". And I pay twice as much to microsoft ...

I work at a company with >1000 google workspace users. That's enough that someone at Google will acknowledge what you're reporting is a bug on their end, and that they can reproduce it. But it's not enough to get the bug fixed. The support may be good if you're asking questions they've heard before - or if you need something like an account lock reset, which the support folks have a button for. But if the problem you…

I’m sure that in the mind of Google they are doing a favor by letting us give them money, wanting support is just ungrateful. Wanting a bug fix is just obscene. They have 150,000 PhDs, aren’t we bold to question them!

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#645

Post by vidarh »

fleddr wrote: post #174
zenexer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 2FA and a recovery email on my Gmail account, yet I have run into this issue. If Google thinks something is suspicious, it will decline your 2FA codes and recovery attempts—it will just tell you that you entered the wrong code. Only after you finally get back in do you find an email in your inbox explaining that the correct code was entered, but Google blocked it because it was suspicious. This happens to me f…

If we reason from good faith and consider that this is intentional and not a bug, have you considered that Google did not implement "blocking suspicious 2FA" just to mess with you? That perhaps this deals with a very real threat? Google has no incentive to make it difficult for you to log in, it's the exact opposite.

The problem is not really that they do it, but that they don't adequately inform users about this risk and that they fail to offer proper support and alternatives when it gets triggered. If they offered proper support a whole lot of the user despair and anger would disappear.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#647

Post by kikimora »

scrollaway wrote: post #625
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when you have paid Google products that come with support, it is really awful. They once asked me to submit a business case justifying how answering my support question benefited Google. Just a simple clarification of something in their documentation. I was already under pressure to migrate to Office360, I stopped fighting after that. My employer is a huge AWS user and Google is constantly chasing us with a trea…

> They once asked me to submit a business case justifying how answering my support question benefited Google. I find that extremely difficult to believe without more context. Google support isn’t that bad. I’ve had a mediocre-to-good experience with it over the years. With that said, while I agree that aws business and enterprise support is worth the hundreds to thousands of dollars a month, so is the five bucks a mo…

A few years back I wanted to call then but didn’t find a number. How do you contact Google’s support?

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#648

Post by bscphil »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #578
bscphil wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true for Apple?

You are the product Apple sells to app developers for 30% of their income. Notice that you are not allowed to do things that interfere with this.

That's not at all the same thing as the person I was replying to was claiming, though.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#649

Post by ngold »

Gigachad wrote: post #523
rzz3 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More laws aren’t always the answer. Really, we should just be using a company that gives a shit about its users.

Problem is it all works just fine until you get locked out and have no options. So the market won't ever gradually move over because its only a very small % who get hit with an awful experience while everyone else is perfectly fine.

And now I'm signed up to the system. It's terrifying.

At any point. You're done.

Hence the nothing clause.

I'm sure any game I submit to the play will be wrapped in googs analytics.

No matter what my privacy police says.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#650

Post by LightG »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #586
steelframe wrote: post #445

Once upon a time I worked at Google. I returned to Austin to visit old friends and took the opportunity to visit the Google office there. The Googlers sitting around me were primarily corporate sales. They weren't getting any corporate sales calls at all as far as I could tell, but there was one extremely irate user who was locked out of their GMail account and was repeatedly calling them because they were the only h…

Even when you have paid Google products that come with support, it is really awful. They once asked me to submit a business case justifying how answering my support question benefited Google. Just a simple clarification of something in their documentation. I was already under pressure to migrate to Office360, I stopped fighting after that. My employer is a huge AWS user and Google is constantly chasing us with a trea…

Can confirm. Despite strong reservations about moving from one behemoth to another, the support from Amazon has been light years better (both on the consumer side and AWS). Embarassingly better.
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