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Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

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Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#101

Post by schiffern »

schiffern wrote: post #12
meindnoch wrote: post #2

I’ll forward this to my friends at Google if you promise that you stop using Google products.

Anything! Please let them know my recovery account (another gmail, FirstnameLastname) is also locked. Edit: I'm back in to my recovery account!! Just enabled 2FA to avoid getting locked out again. My main account is still locked, but it let me verify via my old password, new password, and recovery email code. The message says that they still need to verify more, but I should look for an email to login within 48 hours…

Thanks for everyone's help. Backup email works now. Looks like (fingers still crossed) I'll be getting back into my main account in 48 hours.

Obviously I'm re-working my email solution as we speak... starting with backing up my Google data!

Lots of good recommendations in this thread. Learn from my mistakes. It can happen to you!!

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#102

Post by KyleJune »

ajross wrote: post #89
KyleJune wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use my own domain with fastmail, so if they were to fail, I could at least keep using the same address. Although I would need to find another provider that supports wildcard addresses going to the same inbox because I've found myself using the pattern companyname@ my domain for each business I give my email to. It makes it easy to block emails if a business doesn't let me unsubscribe or they share my email with spa…

You realize that "My Domain Got Stolen and the Registrar Won't Fix It" is another whole subgenre of this kind of anecdata, right? My point is just that there's no free lunch. Everything breaks, but on balance I'd trust Big Tech to get it right more than little companies like Fastmail or your domain registrar.

OP's post isn't about his email or domain getting stolen, it's about him getting locked out of his account with no way to get back in. There are many different providers for both email and domains that provide good support. Sure it's possible I could still get locked out of either. I feel like smaller companies that I'm actually paying are more likely to be responsive to my issues than a large company that I'm using for free.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#103

Post by stanleydrew »

joxel wrote: post #66
stanleydrew wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an unfortunate situation, but calling it a "dumpster fire of rotting clinical waste" is frankly absurd. Google in particular has done more than anyone to acclimate consumers to the usage-patterns of better auth (two-factor in particular). Is everything perfect? Of course not, but things are a lot better than they could be.

Nah, this is a complete farce. You’d think by this point google could offer a simple checkbox in the settings of your gmail account: “Do you want this account to be extra secure and for us to lock someone out of it with any activity deemed suspicious?” And then when you don’t click that box they don’t arbitrarily lock your account. But they don’t. Because they’re a dumpster fire company.

I'm not going to try to convince anyone that has their mind made up about "dumpster fire" companies or whatever.

For anyone else reading, I'll just say that we all know there are tradeoffs between security and usability and we can actually have a good-faith discussion about that if we want to.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#104

Post by cuteboy19 »

evouga wrote: post #97
martincmartin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2FA exists because sometimes ne'er do wells get your password. Phishing, guessing weak passwords, password reuse from sites that are hacked, the list goes on.

Of course I understand enforcing 2FA when the user has signed up for/opted in to 2FA. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here: Google unilaterally decided to enforce 2FA on a 1FA account.

"Old password+new password" is not 2fa

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#105

Post by Kiro »

blacklight wrote: post #96

This is probably the #500 post on HN that reads "help I've been locked out of my Google account for Kafkaesque/inexplicable reasons and I have nobody to reach out to". If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault. Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market…

I'm currently converting so many disgruntled LastPass users to Chrome's built-in password manager. It's fantastic and I love Google. What is your opinion on that?

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#106

Post by cuteboy19 »

mindslight wrote: post #98
kmbfjr wrote: post #84

Google gave away the Google Voice number I had since the GrandCentral days, a number obviously used daily with purchased credits in the account and religiously confirmed linked number. Zero customer support, no way to get the number returned and no refund on existing credits for toll services. And to add to the pain, they won’t give me a new GV number because it sees my linked number as a spam source and never sends…

Are there any good VOIP alternatives to Google Voice that don't get tripped up as invalid phone numbers by other companies' snake oil authentication? From what I've found, GVoice is uniquely large and has enough "normie" Google Fi customers that companies can't discriminate the way they do against say Voip.ms and Flowroute [0]. My tentative plan is to get (another) cheap paygo SIM, stick it in a cell modem attached t…

Everywhere I tried, they discriminated against google voice too

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#107

Post by moistofreason »

Kiro wrote: post #105
blacklight wrote: post #96

This is probably the #500 post on HN that reads "help I've been locked out of my Google account for Kafkaesque/inexplicable reasons and I have nobody to reach out to". If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault. Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market…

I'm currently converting so many disgruntled LastPass users to Chrome's built-in password manager. It's fantastic and I love Google. What is your opinion on that?

Onepassword beats both by a mile. Worth every penny.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#108

Post by joenot443 »

schiffern wrote: post #101
schiffern wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything! Please let them know my recovery account (another gmail, FirstnameLastname) is also locked. Edit: I'm back in to my recovery account!! Just enabled 2FA to avoid getting locked out again. My main account is still locked, but it let me verify via my old password, new password, and recovery email code. The message says that they still need to verify more, but I should look for an email to login within 48 hours…

Thanks for everyone's help. Backup email works now. Looks like (fingers still crossed) I'll be getting back into my main account in 48 hours. Obviously I'm re-working my email solution as we speak... starting with backing up my Google data! Lots of good recommendations in this thread. Learn from my mistakes . It can happen to you!!

I was about to take out my work (G) laptop and send this down the appropriate channels. Very glad to see someone else stepped in already.

This is definitely I (personally) wish we could do better, I feel embarrassed and very slightly partially responsible whenever I see our support failures making the front page of HN.

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#109

Post by throw0101c »

blacklight wrote: post #96

This is probably the #500 post on HN that reads "help I've been locked out of my Google account for Kafkaesque/inexplicable reasons and I have nobody to reach out to". If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault. Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market…

> If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault.

This is mostly true for any of the free offerings.

If you're paying for the '…for Business' stuff (perhaps with your own domain), then there's probably more availability for recourse and contacts (especially since they're charging your credit card, so they have some form of link to a real human being).

Re: Ask HN: Help – Locked out of 10 years Gmail account

#110

Post by hulitu »

Kiro wrote: post #105
blacklight wrote: post #96

This is probably the #500 post on HN that reads "help I've been locked out of my Google account for Kafkaesque/inexplicable reasons and I have nobody to reach out to". If you're still using Google products as your primary drivers, then it's entirely your fault. Do yourself a favour in 2023: drop Google and all the filthy excrement that they produce. There's plenty of much better alternatives, and from a purely market…

I'm currently converting so many disgruntled LastPass users to Chrome's built-in password manager. It's fantastic and I love Google. What is your opinion on that?

> I'm currently converting so many disgruntled LastPass users to Chrome's built-in password manager. It's fantastic

Some people never learn.

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