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Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

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Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#51

Post by aigo »

dangerface wrote: post #5
cunthorpe wrote: post #3

This kind of stuff ought to be regulated somehow, one can’t lose access to one’s life. I recently wasn’t able to recover an old account because I did not have access to my 2FA number and their help site suggested I “contact the phone company to recover the number, then try again.” I had to do the same exact thing for another service but they did allow me to change the number by providing some information like last tr…

Yup lost my phone for a few months until my provider deleted my number and moved it on to some one else, now I am locked out of my paypal. I tried to find a pay as you go sim where the number doesn't expire and I would use that exclusively for 2FA but such a sim does not exist in the UK, most expire after 3 months the longest is 6 months. Now I know this is an issue but it doesn't seem like there is anything I can do…

I have a Giffgaff SIM for this reason. The expiry is 6 months and I have remembered to use it within that period so far. Not ideal but I would imagine you need a 2FA code more regularly than that.

I wonder if used with a smartphone (mine is in a dumb Nokia) whether you can automated a SMS send or outgoing call once every month or something?

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#52

Post by JamesAdir »

About a week ago there was a trending article about backup strategies in HN and everyone shared their insight. But it seems that know one takes thought about backing up your personal cloud services, especially from Google. There have been countless stories of people locking out from their Google account and still people don't do some basic backing up.

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#53

Post by JamesAdir »

mathieubordere wrote: post #22

I perform a periodical backup of all my Google data with https://takeout.google.com/ if the sh*t would ever hit the fan.

I hope you checked your data and tried to restore everything. I pulled out my Google Music data about 6 months ago and it was almost unusable with Google mixing all the data in one folder.

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#54

Post by dorianmariefr »

dt3ft wrote: post #50

This story keeps coming up. When you pay for email, you get a customer status. This entails a SLA and a bunch of other rights, which you most likely never get from a free service provider. I hope if those reading these comments still use free email service instead of hosting their own (or paying for it), strongly consider making the switch.

There is Google Workplace where you pay $5/month/user for a google account including email and there is support

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#55

Post by karteum »

mathieubordere wrote: post #22

I perform a periodical backup of all my Google data with https://takeout.google.com/ if the sh*t would ever hit the fan.

N.B. note that Google performs some encoding conversions within the GMail backup from Takeout that permanently break all non-ascii characters when an encoding other than UTF-8 is used in the original mail (those characters are replaced by the 0xEFBFBD sequence, and since information in lost it guess it cannot be properly recovered).

Obviously I am not the only one who have been experiencing the issue, e.g. https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/71153/takeout-br...

The issue does not happen when doing backup with another tool e.g. mbsync.

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#56

Post by dahfizz »

probably_wrong wrote: post #29
cunthorpe wrote: post #3

This kind of stuff ought to be regulated somehow, one can’t lose access to one’s life. I recently wasn’t able to recover an old account because I did not have access to my 2FA number and their help site suggested I “contact the phone company to recover the number, then try again.” I had to do the same exact thing for another service but they did allow me to change the number by providing some information like last tr…

If you are in Europe, and at least for email, it is regulated. The GDPR's Right to Data Portability means that a company is obligated to give you access to your personal data - they are within their right not to have you as a customer anymore, but they must give you at least a copy of whatever data they already have. Of course, you'll probably have to jump some hoops to prove that you are you, but IMHO that's a reaso…

> Of course, you'll probably have to jump some hoops to prove that you are you, but IMHO that's a reasonable compromise.

But how can I prove I own my email if I don't have the credentials / Google won't let me log in?

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#57

Post by LinuxBender »

fluential wrote: post #48
dangerface wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup lost my phone for a few months until my provider deleted my number and moved it on to some one else, now I am locked out of my paypal. I tried to find a pay as you go sim where the number doesn't expire and I would use that exclusively for 2FA but such a sim does not exist in the UK, most expire after 3 months the longest is 6 months. Now I know this is an issue but it doesn't seem like there is anything I can do…

I’ve moved my mobile number to voip using https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/number-porting/mobile... and receive all text messages via mail. Use it for call forwarding when I’m abroad to avoid roaming charges, also sim swap attack seems less possible?

I did that a few years ago but have been finding that every year more and more websites are recognizing the number as VoIP and refuse to send SMS to it.

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#58

Post by gingerlime »

decrypt wrote: post #6
dangerface wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup lost my phone for a few months until my provider deleted my number and moved it on to some one else, now I am locked out of my paypal. I tried to find a pay as you go sim where the number doesn't expire and I would use that exclusively for 2FA but such a sim does not exist in the UK, most expire after 3 months the longest is 6 months. Now I know this is an issue but it doesn't seem like there is anything I can do…

You could avoid using SMS for 2FA. Most websites offer TOTP as first choice for 2FA. For the ones that insist on SMS 2FA being first choice, I don't bother using anymore. I delete the account and find another provider.

Funnily Google suite does not offer TOTP with Google authenticator… Unless you use SMS/Voice 2FA first… and then you can activate TOTP, I asked if I can then remove the phone number later, and was told that it is possible, and that they won’t use this number for anything in the future. But who knows…

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#59

Post by 300bps »

mihamaker wrote: post #23

I lost a lot of accounts because of this misunderstanding. I always use a VPN for work. I keep all logins and passwords in the password manager. But Google is very worried about my safety, even to my detriment.

Kind of like 90% of the problems on our production servers at work over the last ten years have been related to security software installed on them.

Re: Tell HN: Lost then regained access to Google account, with correct credentials

#60

Post by sschueller »

karpour wrote: post #31
mathieubordere wrote: post #22

I perform a periodical backup of all my Google data with https://takeout.google.com/ if the sh*t would ever hit the fan.

Is there a good way to automate this?

I have been looking into this. There is mbsync (isync)[1] which will let you download a imap account. There is also a premade docker image[2] which you could trigger via cron and sync your mails. For gmail it is recommended to get a login token but I have not looked into how to do that.

[1] https://isync.sourceforge.io/mbsync.html

[2] https://github.com/JakeWharton/docker-mbsync

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