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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

#141

Post by datavirtue »

mc_woods wrote: post #109

You've just reminded me of how much I rely upon a free service provide something so critical to my everyday life. Time to move to a paid service where I can have someone to call when issues like this turn up.

I have had my domain/email hosted on office 365 for years now. Zero issues. Before that I hosted it through various other providers which was also fairly trouble-free. Many years ago I tried hosting my own email server. That excersize revealed how cheap $50 a month is to have email hosted for you.

Recently, I became a "Microsoft Partner" which gets you a monthly Azure allowance, software licenses, and five Enterprise accounts for Office365. This is only $550 a year which is cheaper than my previous office365 small business account.

The support is great when or if you need it. You probably will.

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

#142

Post by znpy »

varispeed wrote: post #44
znpy wrote: post #41

I wonder if you could sue google to get back your data. They have your data and they are effectively arbitrarily deciding you can't access them anymore.

They are too powerful. Nobody stands a chance against their infinite budget and top lawyers.

I don't buy that

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

#143

Post by junon »

C4K3 wrote: post #123
junon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google denying me access to YouTube videos asking me to verify my age by giving them either my passport or my credit card should be illegal as well. Then they expanded it to the app store - some apps, even ones that don't seem to need to be age restricted - now require I verify my age in the same way. I just give them the middle finger and manually install the APKs for those apps. Unfortunately, no way to get around…

You can get around the youtube restrictions using yt-dlp (fork of youtube-dl) There are video players such as mpv that integrate with youtube-dl/yt-dlp so you can watch videos without saving them.

Including the age restriction? I don't see how that's possible. I know some typical bypass methods work for some of the other checks but they've never worked for the age requirements.

I'll give it a try though, thanks. There are some High Boi videos I still haven't seen :|

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

#144

Post by authed »

decrypt wrote: post #7
authed wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea, but when I try to reset the password, it asks me for the last password I remember https://i.imgur.com/vedOeJG.png and then I am brought back to the same page https://i.imgur.com/JAXxcvl.png ... (I tried my current password and the last two before that).

Well, that's not good. It's frustrating that there isn't a customer support division that you can talk to either, at least for escalated issues like the ones we face.

yeah not good... and the only reason I started to save my previous passwords is because of Google. It is the only company that I know of that uses obsolete data to verify that you are the account holder.

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

#146

Post by tinus_hn »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #92
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.

A good idea is to never use a large corporation for important things like email, because these are built on maximum scalability and therefore practically always have lousy customer support (automated replies & chat, etc.). I'm paying for the same small email provider I used more than 20 years ago and it has always been worth every penny. If an issue comes up, I'll call their customer support or write an email and the…

If you own the domain yourself you can have it hosted wherever you want because you can trivially move away

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

#147

Post by toast0 »

dorianmariefr wrote: post #135
NikolaNovak wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you gain meaningful access to help/support without being able to sign-in to their help portal / ticket system? I've been exposed to that type of Kafkian catch-22 nightmare scenario all too many times :|

You call the phone number

When I was admining G Suite, if you wanted to call in, you needed to login to get the phone number and an access code. Which is hard to do when you can't log in.

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

#148

Post by cunthorpe »

probably_wrong wrote: post #82
dahfizz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Thanks for sharing this! I'm glad that there's a way

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

#149

Post by donmcronald »

kyrra wrote: post #101
donmcronald wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on these systems at all. My general understanding is that Google wants to prevent account takeovers, as it happens far too often. They flag accounts for various heuristics, even if you know the login (as it could be someone that stole your credentials). This normally should just trigger 2FA for that login. If that doesn't work, you likely need to go through the account recov…

Google won’t allow account creation from a low reputation IP without a phone number AFAIK, so a person that can’t afford a phone or Internet that’s trying to set up an email account in a library or Internet cafe will, for all intents and purposes, be denied service for being poor.

I hope they appoint the fruit ninja as head of the DoJ so he can slice Google into a thousand pieces :-)

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

#150

Post by dt3ft »

danaris wrote: post #113
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.

So unless you're rich enough to be able to pay for premium status, you don't deserve a reliable email address—something that is absolutely required to be able to operate in the modern world?

The universe does not owe us anything. Speaking of email - why would I work for free (as an email provider) so that you can have a reliable email address and not pay for it? We live in a capitalist world. If you want free services - ask your government to provide them. Someone would still pay for that "free" service in tax.
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