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I got locked out of my Google account for a month

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Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month

#31

Post by bitL »

Shoothe wrote: post #2

> On December 5th, I sent a note to a PR contact who I work with on Google-related news and I told him about my problem. He said he had gotten my case escalated and I should hear within 24 hours. Sadly in all these stories that end successfully there is an inside help from someone that has contacts in Google. I don't even want to think about what would happen to people that don't know anyone inside Google.

> inside help from someone that has contacts in Google

The same is happening with Amazon right now; sellers getting kicked out by default and there is no way to get hold of a real person, just talking to some machine learning bot. Real people simple don't matter anymore.

Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month

#32

Post by alsetmusic »

ceejayoz wrote: post #25
badsectoracula wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Apple shut down their .me or whatever it was called services some time ago (and AFAIK that was even a paid service)? What happened to the websites, blogs, emails, etc that were hosted by them?

They discontinued the hosting, but the rest of the services (including email) are largely still around, just rebranded to iCloud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe

It’s important to note that the old email addresses still work. New ones are assigned to the icloud domain, but my @mac.com email still works and that was a (free) service when I signed up for it in 1999. Old @me.com addresses also remain functional.

Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month

#33

Post by oxplot »

> Imagine you have spent much of your digital life for the last 12 years on Google. You rely on their mail and calendar, Google Drive for storage and Google Photos for your photo archive.

Like I've said in the past here [1], if something is so important to you, you need to treat it as such. Continuing to use a service that offers no guarantees, availability or even continuing access to your account is a sign of ignorance, when you rely on that service so much.

Now ignorance is not the fault of the user. It's primarily the failure of education. There are multiple deficiencies at play here:

1. Lack of knowledge of general population about significance of terms of service, and literacy to read and understand them.

2. Lack of regulation to enforce service providers to provide concise and less technical terms of service.

3. Lack of clear options provided by the service provider for users, so that if a paid option with guarantees is available, it's easy to sign up for and use.

In case of Google, you can, for $60 a year, have an email account under your own domain (which by the way decouples you from Google if you wish to move to another provider in the future), a 24/7 phone support and other goodies. The issue is the number of hoops you need to jump through to set that up, making it inaccessible for the average user. This is Google's fault.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6839142

Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month

#34

Post by user5994461 »

MaysonL wrote: post #15
Shoothe wrote: post #2

> On December 5th, I sent a note to a PR contact who I work with on Google-related news and I told him about my problem. He said he had gotten my case escalated and I should hear within 24 hours. Sadly in all these stories that end successfully there is an inside help from someone that has contacts in Google. I don't even want to think about what would happen to people that don't know anyone inside Google.

My sister-in-law has a blog that sends out email notifications to subscribers (who requested them) when she posts a new article. After a few hundred subscribers had marked these notices as spam rather than unsubscribing, her blog, email account and entire site got blacklisted. She only managed to get this cleared up via a tech support friend who has contacts at Google.

You have an interesting sister in law. In all the blacklisted stories, there is something shady going on with the sender.

Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month

#35

Post by dingo_bat »

To avoid such things, I have a notebook in my drawer in which I have all the passwords to all my online accounts written down. If I change a password, I update the entry. If I create any sort of online account, it gets added to the diary. I figured if someone bothered enough to physically steal my diary from my drawer, I'd have bigger problems to worry about than my YouTube credentials.

Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month

#36

Post by WovenTales »

hartator wrote: post #29

I don't know. It might be a unpopular opinion, but I am okay to be locked out if I forgot my password to my email. I prefer that to weaken security, and complex processes to sign in.

If that were all that could do it, sure. That's not the end of it, though. I was trying out anonymization methods a while back, and created an account for use through Tor + a VPN (yes, I know it's Google). I recently tried to get back into it, but since I wasn't "where I usually sign in" (and can't actually say what city they thought that was), I'm locked out. I have the correct password in my manager, and I can even answer that "when did you create this account" question because of that, but Google still won't give me any way in. Since there's nothing important in there, I'm fine leaving that particular address behind rather than escalating things, especially after reading the article, but there's a few really dangerous implications there if you do want to habitually decouple your IP from your physical location.

Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month

#38

Post by hello_newman »

Shoothe wrote: post #2

> On December 5th, I sent a note to a PR contact who I work with on Google-related news and I told him about my problem. He said he had gotten my case escalated and I should hear within 24 hours. Sadly in all these stories that end successfully there is an inside help from someone that has contacts in Google. I don't even want to think about what would happen to people that don't know anyone inside Google.

In my experience, that is 100% true. I made an app and uploaded to the Play Store, but it was rejected for whatever reason, and I was told I'd hear back from them within 72 hours. 8 days later after not hearing anything from them despite multiple attempts, they got back to me only _after_ a friend of a friend connected me with someone who works at Google. The iOS store was a piece of cake compared to anything Google related.

Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month

#39

Post by lazyjones »

Sounds like either Google is a terrible company with useless customer service and dysfunctional standard procedures, or known journalists and bloggers immediately set off alarms when they use this recovery mechanism because there has been too much negative press about social engineering leading to account theft recently. I.e. perhaps they wanted to prove that his account is safe from cheap tricks.
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