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An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

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Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#21

Post by gerdesj »

fnord77 wrote: post #7
usernew wrote: post #6

I've said it once, and I've said it again for well over a decade. The only google account recovery is creating a new account in 5 minutes. If doing that does not restore the full extent of the purpose for which you were using google's services, you're doing it wrong. Google accounts serve one purpose: if you are trying to use a google resource that requires an account. Example: save some marked places on google maps.…

what do you suggest for cloud storage? I've had better luck over the years with google drive to store my documents than a physical backup drive. But the thought of losing access to my account scares me

You will always need backups, regardless of where your primary storage is. These backups could be local or remote.

You have to decide how important your data is. You might divide it into a few categories and decide what you can or cannot afford to lose for each category. For example your password database and family holiday pics are often more important than nearly everything else! Then you decide how much money to throw at all this. It's all a big risk assessment thing.

If you will insist on cloud then please use two of them or one and a local backup system. For really important stuff you can buy a brand that you have heard of 128GB USB stick for about £13 (just checked on Amazon). That's bugger all cash! Buy 10 of them.

Please take responsibility for your data. Use cloudy stuff for convenience but do not lose sight of who really is responsible for it - you.

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#22

Post by toomuchtodo »

iudqnolq wrote: post #8
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know about Takeout, right?

Have you ever tried to takeout a large amount of data across many services? Describing it as a process you do slowly is entirely fair.

You can auth it to your Dropbox account if you have one and they will export to it on a cadence into the /Apps folder.

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#23

Post by kevincox »

prepend wrote: post #9
iudqnolq wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried to takeout a large amount of data across many services? Describing it as a process you do slowly is entirely fair.

For me, I just used google takeout to generate a giant 18gig zip and then I downloaded it. I do that once a year. It takes a long time to download, but it’s actually fairly quick and I wouldn’t describe it as a slow process.

For me there are always a bunch of services that fail or are missing some data. So you need to keep retrying.

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#24

Post by bananasmarties »

saagarjha wrote: post #18
greatgib wrote: post #15

The worst in all of that is that when it is for nefarious purpose, like government access or spying, they don't have issue to have an employee giving access...

I wonder if GDPR, etc can require Google to hand you your data back even if you can’t access the account.

You most certainly can and they have to provide you the data. GDPR is about you as an individual and the login itself is irrelevant. Chances are you'd most likely hit the same wall when talking to the customer support.

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#25

Post by itsagavin »

I pay for Google One for this reason and ultimately account recovery due to theft if it came to it. I've never had to reach out to Google but supposedly of you are a paying customer customer service does exist. I know that the FI infrastructure has CS you can reach as I talked to them back when fi first launched and I did some promotion flipping to get a pixel. I'm probably gonna pay for Microsoft's offering it seems you can't just buy hotmail anymore and instead have to pay for the whole office + storage subscription. Same reasoning though I want CS I can reach at my email provider and I want to know they still exist in 20 years if email still exists.

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#26

Post by qiqitori »

> When her ancient iPad finally died, she tried to add the gmail account to her new replacement iPad. However, she couldn’t remember the password in order to login.

There are of course no details on how exactly the iPad died, and it's possible it's been thrown away already, or that it has been remotely disabled, etc.. But I'm very sure that the iPad can be repaired, or at least that the data on the iPad can be recovered. If the problem is that it doesn't "turn on", maybe spend a couple hundred dollars and send it to e.g. Northridge Fix.

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#27

Post by neilv »

saagarjha wrote: post #20

> They’ve all basically hit the brick wall of Google suggesting that at their scale, nothing can be done about such “edge” cases. The thing is that at scale your “edge” cases are still millions of people. Companies love the benefits that come from scale, like having a billion people use their service, but they never seem to be capable of handling the other parts that come with it :(

When Google was first starting, savvy techies were aware of aggressive sociopath companies (e.g., Microsoft), and also that Google would probably be very powerful.

Maybe Google had some of that savvy and that's why they instituted "Don't Be Evil".

With all the supposedly smart people and resources that Google has, you'd think they could somehow figure out how not to be the cause of marginalizing people while dismissing them as "edge cases".

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#28

Post by rezonant »

readyplayernull wrote: post #12
crazygringo wrote: post #10

Given the difficulty people talk about recovering an account to which they've lost the password or recovery methods, it seems like Google ought to periodically ask you to verify that your recovery e-mail and phone number and 2FA device are still correct. It seems like that would basically solve the problem in most cases. So I kind of find it strange that I use Google services extensively, and yet I can't recall ever…

I have several accounts and Google will only show remiders for those I barely log in. It even used to send reminder emails but that seemed to stop after I marked them as spam.

Welp, no offense but this gets the "dumbest thing I've read on the Internet today" award.

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#29

Post by prepend »

kevincox wrote: post #23
prepend wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I just used google takeout to generate a giant 18gig zip and then I downloaded it. I do that once a year. It takes a long time to download, but it’s actually fairly quick and I wouldn’t describe it as a slow process.

For me there are always a bunch of services that fail or are missing some data. So you need to keep retrying.

With google takeout? I’ve never experienced that and subsequent downloads always yield the same results.

Re: An Example of a Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects

#30

Post by julianz »

crazygringo wrote: post #10

Given the difficulty people talk about recovering an account to which they've lost the password or recovery methods, it seems like Google ought to periodically ask you to verify that your recovery e-mail and phone number and 2FA device are still correct. It seems like that would basically solve the problem in most cases. So I kind of find it strange that I use Google services extensively, and yet I can't recall ever…

That happens to me periodically, I am prompted to check the 2FA settings and confirm the phone number.
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