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

lauren.vortex.com

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

#31

Post by em-bee »

gerdesj wrote: post #21
fnord77 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These backups could be local or remote

backups better be local AND remote.

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

#32

Post by franciscop »

> I recognize that there are many different kinds of google users. Some folks [...] need maximum security.

(un?)fortunately this is not exactly true. While it's true that some folks do need "extra security", the steps in discussion here are fortunately still applicable for the general population. We as a society have decided (correctly) that leaking your private photos, conversations and data is an unacceptable risk, and punish the companies strongly for it. So companies cannot just make it less secure.

Auth is a complex topic with many gotchas, and there is just no way around it. It's like saying you'd like to drive a car without a license, sure taking the license is "hard", but if you want to drive it's what you've got to do. But only there's a hundred cars actively trying to crash into you and steal your goods.

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

#33

Post by kevincox »

prepend wrote: post #29
kevincox wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's been about a year since my last round (so it is probably time to do another backup) but there were a few services that were flaky. It wasn't even me auditing for missing data, the takeout page would notify you that some data failed to be packaged up.

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

#34

Post by Nextgrid »

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.

In theory yes, in practice Google will stonewall you just as usual and none of the regulators is interested in enforcing the GDPR enough to get this pushed through, so in practice you're still out of luck. Here's a real-life example: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/

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

#35

Post by jamiek88 »

em-bee wrote: post #31
gerdesj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These backups could be local or remote backups better be local AND remote.

Why?

I don’t see how that is better than two or three remote backups?

Do I need to change my strategy?

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

#36

Post by clipsy »

franciscop wrote: post #32

> I recognize that there are many different kinds of google users. Some folks [...] need maximum security. (un?)fortunately this is not exactly true. While it's true that some folks do need "extra security", the steps in discussion here are fortunately still applicable for the general population. We as a society have decided (correctly) that leaking your private photos, conversations and data is an unacceptable risk,…

> We as a society have decided (correctly) that leaking your private photos, conversations and data is an unacceptable risk, and punish the companies strongly for it.

On what planet do companies get punished strongly for leaking PII? It happens to me multiple times per year and if I'm lucky I get a pittance from a class action suit years later. The executives who raked in huge bonuses cutting security don't get punished and the company stock price rarely suffers beyond a blip when the leak is first disclosed.

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

#37

Post by abirkill »

prepend wrote: post #29
kevincox wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a counter-example, I haven't had an entirely successful Google Takeout export in at least a couple of years, using their service to schedule the exports automatically every two months.

I always have a failure with Google Fit data, which reports 'Service failed to retrieve this item' on the same JSON file every time. I assume this is something corrupted at their end.

It's not that uncommon for my exports to intermittently show failures with other services -- for example, my latest export, taken on April 20th, also failed to include one of my YouTube videos, with the same 'Service failed to retrieve this item' error. That video is usually included successfully, so I'm guessing this was a glitch.

Nothing major, but I can well believe that others also experience regular errors, although I'm sure we're in the minority.

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

#38

Post by qmarchi »

bananasmarties wrote: post #24
saagarjha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

legal@ is a great way to talk to a real human.

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

#39

Post by paranoidrobot »

qiqitori wrote: post #26

> 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 recove…

If you get an old iPad, you can't (re)install modern apps.

Apple has forced app developers to upgrade their apps, which has revoked support for older iOS versions.

I ran into this over Christmas when trying to help someone who had been using an old "The New iPad" (I think the iPad 2) but had lost the charger cable.

We charged it up, it powered on and reconnected back to their wifi. They had to re-sign in to Apple, but was unable to install any of the Google apps.

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

#40

Post by new299 »

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 a google account. I know the password. I have access to the recovery email.

I however don't have access to the associated phone number. Google won't let me log in...

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