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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

#81

Post by macinjosh »

siddharthgoel88 wrote: post #77
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.

I feel signing up for a new paid/self-hosted email becomes tricky when a person has used an email for most of his life. All the online-services, grad school, office-alum, etc. use the old email. And now when you switch to a new one then it becomes hard I feel. Any suggestions?

I forward my gmail and iCloud accounts to my Fastmail account where my own domain is setup. I also only use my new email address and replace the gmail and iCloud whenever I see it in use. It’s a long process but worth it.

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

#82

Post by probably_wrong »

dahfizz wrote: post #56
probably_wrong wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I wrote about my experience for that exact same situation here:

https://7c0h.com/blog/new/lost_gmail_ii.html

In short, you can send their Data Protection Office a letter demanding access to your data. In my case it took almost three months but they eventually relented and reset my password. I guess a lawyer could have gotten it done faster, but who knows.

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

#83

Post by corporealfunk »

This has happened to me too, but in my case the Google account that I lost access to is the admin account of a Google Adsense publisher account. For some reason I don't receive the 2FA code to my phone, though I do know the recovery email address and the password. I don't log into the Adsense account a lot, it's a small amount of revenue, enough to cover some DO droplets every month. Given that I don't log in a lot, between my last login and first getting locked out, I had switched ISPs and switched my main browser to FF from Chrome, and even erased all my old Chrome data. So, new IP, and no cookies/fingerprint, not getting the 2FA codes... lock out! No recourse. No person to ask.

What's more funny is that I figured, well, I'll just create a new Google account and sign up for Adsense again for my domain with the new account. Turns out you can't do that because the domain for the Adsense account "is already in use by another Adsense account".

There is simply no customer service.

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

#84

Post by teh_klev »

I had a bit of a squeaky bum moment the other night. I needed to sign up for Stadia and was asked for my gmail address and password which for the life of me I couldn't remember (and it wasn't in my password manager).

I then requested a password reset and tried a couple of the account rescue codes. Turns out I'd used these specific ones before but hadn't marked them as used (doh!) and at that point stopped in case of a hard lockout due to "suspicious activity".

So at this point I capitulated and just went for the "I'm dumb and forgot my password and have no other codes or keys" option. I was then told it'd take SIX HOURS for google to verify my account before they'd send me a password reset link.

Luckily it all worked out and all I lost was an evening of Stadia, but I couldn't help feeling I was teetering on the edge of loosing my account.

Footnote: yes I have considered switching to a paid service such as Proton Mail, but at the time covid happened, I lost my income and couldn't afford it. I think this experience will spur me on now that I'm gainfully employed.

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

#85

Post by eddieroger »

daitangio wrote: post #65
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.

I switched to my hosted email, it is not so difficult to manage, and I feel very free. Also I have created accounts for my children, my wife with very little costs. The magic? This very well supported project: https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver

I have been doing this for a few months for similar reasons - particularly spinning up family accounts with little additional overhead - but decided to pass in favor of hosted. Getting everything set up was fine enough and my mail was eventually being received in places I expected (I had to add my domain in Google's panel somewhere), but I noticed lag on receiving stuff, and was still occasionally ending up in spam folders. How are you overcoming that? Forwarding stuff off? Do you host in a VPS somewhere?

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

#86

Post by ttybird »

I hate this. If I know the password I should be able to log in to my account no matter what (unless if I have 2fa enabled). Sadly companies like Google and MS do not like this idea, they also often use the excuse that they can't verify you in order to mine your phone number.

"Edit: Account recovered. I used chromium to login (which I never do) and then back to Firefox"

How can google keep getting away with this? MS got into trouble with IE with much less.

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

#87

Post by eliben »

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.

You can pay for gmail too, and get phone/chat/email support via https://one.google.com/about/plans (basic plan is less than $2/month)

Doesn't this work for folks?

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

#88

Post by cachvico »

donmcronald wrote: post #61
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.

Using a public VPN is almost guaranteed to flag your logins as suspicious at all of the big tech companies. If anyone wants to see how intent big tech is on tying your profiles back to personally identifiable information, connect to a VPN and try to create new accounts on various services. It's basically impossible without a non-VOIP phone number. If you manage to get an email address, big sites like Facebook and Twi…

Isn't that just a necessary measure to stop bots?

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

#89

Post by sharklazer »

ttybird wrote: post #86

I hate this. If I know the password I should be able to log in to my account no matter what (unless if I have 2fa enabled). Sadly companies like Google and MS do not like this idea, they also often use the excuse that they can't verify you in order to mine your phone number. "Edit: Account recovered. I used chromium to login (which I never do) and then back to Firefox" How can google keep getting away with this? MS g…

Keyhole, Jigsaw. Deep ties to defense.

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

#90

Post by DoingIsLearning »

aj3 wrote: post #74
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I have also had this happen to me in the past which was one of the reasons I abandoned gmail completely. Am I understanding this right that you had the correct password but no 2FA authentication and somehow a Firefox user agent on Linux triggered google mail servers to shut you out? I never really tried with chromium perhaps I can still retrieve old data (Google Support was obviously non existing on this issue).

It's not user agent, it's session (cookies, localStorage) that they didn't have in Firefox, but still had in Chromium. And this isn't Google specific at all.

But they just said they cleared cookies.

Also I travel a fair share (used to) and never faced any issues with any other services except gmail.

It's too stringent to assume the same machine/storage/ip are always used.

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