This is why I switched to proton mail. Never looked back.
I got locked out of my Google account for a month
161–170 of 210 posts
Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#162> 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 ignor…
The main problem is that people do not want to pay. Simple as that. For example, I met so many real estate agents which refuse to have G Suite and pay $60/year because it is "too expensive".
Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#163> They don’t have customer service, yet I’m paying for storage. It's pretty slack to be taking people's money and providing zero customer service.
I don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as both parties are aware that the deal is about storage and doesn't include additional phone counselling.
Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#164Few people seem to realize that if you loose access and they restore you access with limited information, then any attacker could do the same. If you care about your Google, GitHub, Dropbox, Amazon, PayPal accounts the you should sign up for 2FA. Ideally, you should have one-time recovery codes printed and U2F or TOTP when U2F isn't available. I keep all of my TOTP tokens on my yubikey which also does the U2F magic.…
I agree. It seems that the author of the article didn't know the password, had requested new passwords multiple times, and hadn't protected the account in any significant way. This, presumably, was the red flag for the automated system.
It would be interesting to know by how much each extra security step strengthens an account. I would also be interested to know if regular payment (for storage, for example) provides an additional 'trust' signal to Google.
Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#165I recommend using a password manager like LastPass or Keepass. Never lose a password again.
Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#166> 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.
I chased down a spam flag by one of our users a while ago (we only send transactional emails to actual accounts) and actually spoke to the user since he complained about not receiving any of our emails.
Turns out he uses the spam button in his email client as a temporary deletion / archive for emails he wants to read later...
TLDR; Many users create their own issues by just not giving af. It reminds me of antibacterial hand wash.
Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#167Imagine you used a password manager that required memorizing just one diceware phrase then using randomly generated passwords and never got locked out again, that's what happened to me.
If you start logging in over TOR or other sketchy locations, you might... I would suggest 2FA, if you really care.
1Password has 2FA available and I obviously use that when possible as well as OpenVPN server I control. Google is helpful enough to alert you when someone fails to log in to your account, and when that someone is in another country, it's obviously time to enable 2FA. Their piss poor inability to provide customer service also means no one is going to social engineer their way into my email, which is a pro imho.
Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#168I think this is the money quote: “That same day I opened a second GMail account so I could have access to services like an email account if need be, [...]” So, this journalist is in the middle of a horrible experience with Gmail and responds by ... opening another Gmail account, because basically realistically imagining email as something other than Gmail is far too much of a stretch in most people’s minds.
This happens all over the place -- for some reason, the majority of the people won't learn. They'll tell you horror stories about how they lost a lot of work (or even money!) because a provider never gave them support, yet, go back to that same provider. A group of acquaintances had a Facebook group where they shared research and documents. It got deleted and they lost everything. Thrice. I suggested they used someth…
It's "who moved my cheese". People will violently resist changing their routines.
Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#169Re: I got locked out of my Google account for a month
#170I recommend using a password manager like LastPass or Keepass. Never lose a password again.
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