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Updating our inactive account policies

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Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#41

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

Surely there was some buildup to it :)

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#42

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

How do u unexpectedly go to jail for 10 years?

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#43

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

Ideas:

(1) sign up for Google Workspace subscription and then log a support ticket saying you want to migrate your old account to Workspace

(2) hire a lawyer and get them to write a letter to Google asking nicely. If that doesn’t work, you could have the lawyer escalate to threatening a lawsuit, filing a lawsuit, subpoenaing the account contents, asking for a court order that Google give you access to the account, etc - even if it turns out the law is on Google’s side not yours, they may decide to fold just to make the issue go away

(3) contact a journalist. Since you are a former prisoner, you’d need to find one with appropriate sympathies (pro-criminal justice reform, etc). If they make enough bad PR for Google, they may give you back your account in response. Probably depends also on what your conviction was, since some offenders the public finds it easier to sympathise with than others

None of those methods is guaranteed to work, but they all have potential. It really depends on how much you want that account back, and how much time and money are you willing to spend on it

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#44
post #42

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

How do u unexpectedly go to jail for 10 years?

[deleted]

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#45
post #42

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

How do u unexpectedly go to jail for 10 years?

Well I doubt they expected to get caught ;)

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#46
post #42

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

How do u unexpectedly go to jail for 10 years?

For example you are in Russia and are accused of being a US spy as retaliation.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#47
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can give their password to a trusted friend/family member, and have them log in once every few months to keep the account active. Yes, it’s a pain, what if they forget, etc, but it means a 2+ year sentence does not necessarily entail losing one’s account. Could someone start a subscription paid service for the incarcerated - “we keep your accounts alive while you are inside”? More broadly, could provide other “m…

Yes, let's profit from their misery and invest some of the proceeds to lobby for policies that secure and further grow this customer segment. /s

You make it sound like the only possible motivation a person might have to start such a business would be to exploit the incarcerated.

What if the founder is a former inmate, and says “I wish there was something like that available when I was on the inside?”

Even if the business is officially classified as “for-profit”, there’s a big difference between a business seeking a living wage for its founders and employees versus one trying to make as much money as possible. In fact, it could even be owned by a charity - sometimes charities start 100% owned for-profit businesses, not because they want immense returns, but simply because sometimes the legal constraints on a charity can be too limiting, but a for-profit subsidiary isn’t subject to them

I have no interest in starting such a business myself, anyway.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#48
post #41

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

Surely there was some buildup to it :)

"Unexpectedly" in this context might be referring to the actual event in which they traveled from their home to their cell, in which case the unexpected nature could easily prevent them from securing the Google account.

I hardly think it matters anyway. Take out "unexpectedly" and their complaint is exactly the same. Suggesting that someone who went to jail shoulda/coulda/woulda taken steps to avoid being locked out of their Google account is not practically different from victim-blaming.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#49

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

I understand that 2FA is good but it can also be annoying when you've forgotten the email backup.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only at the moment, YouTube was included as part of the content they're going to delete from accounts as per the VP announcement. People should use this as a warning to save content they want to keep from YouTube that's particularly old and the account seems abandoned. Just in case Google isn't so lenient with the generous solution; unlinking YouTube accounts but keeping the video up.

I already download any video I find valuable with yt-dlp. So many videos just randomly disappear or are difficult to find again because Google keeps mixing more and more irrelevant suggestions and shorts into search results. Disk space is cheap, and it can be nice to scroll through the folder now and then and rediscover some great content.

Very true. It really doesn't take much these days!
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