Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 124 posts

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#31

Post by jeffbee »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #27
taosx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tried, first screen: "Account disabled 'myemail@gmail.com', We noticed unusual activity in your Google Account and locked it to protect your information. Learn more" and a button "Try to restore". And now I got: "Too many failed attempts, Unavailable because of too many failed attempts. Try again in a few hours.". At least I got a new message.

Yeah... this is consistent with my experience. Try to keep calm and actually try again in a few hours. It sounds like you have 2FA enabled so an account takeover is very unlikely. It sounds like you haven't violated the TOS in some egregious way, so actual ban is unlikely. Most likely is there's some type of crazy cookie thing going on that is causing the auth system to vomit. It's shocking that this happens, but ala…

Seriously, just take the messages at face value. Better headline would have been "Google proactively protected my 10 years of private data after some villains tried to steal it".

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#32

Post by jeffbee »

a5c11 wrote: post #20
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which service do you recommend as alternative?

I am very happy with Apple and iCloud, seriously. I've got plenty of cloud space for a fair price, it integrates seamlessly with Apple devices, ships with a password manager, you can hide your mail addresses, and other goodies. I've never had a problem with it.

Last time I went to France, Apple locked my iCloud for the duration until I could get back and login from a USA IP address. They even cancelled my Apple Card. And France is not exactly a suspicious destination, and I go there 4 times every year. I don't think Apple account abuse systems work better than Google's.

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#33

Post by Kuinox »

eminent101 wrote: post #30

I'm sorry this happened. This is my digital nightmare scenario! It is disturbing how much of our digital and physical life (utility accounts, medical insurance, etc. etc.) are tied to email addresses and these email addresses are something we can never ever truly own. If you are locked out of email, you are also locked out of at least half a dozen critical portals that send password resets, OTPs and all kinds of auth…

While you dont own a domain name, you have legals means to get it back.

Thats not the cast with a GAFAM email account.

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#34

Post by pockmarked19 »

> The thought of permanently losing access to this account is terrifying.

Complete non-sequitur here, but that is one of the two inevitable things, according to Ben Franklin.

Yes, I’m talking about death.

So we should all make plans if there is actually worth anything preserving in posterity, plans that go beyond “just log in to my account” (which as OP shows is a huge PITA).

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#35

Post by taosx »

Loughla wrote: post #26
taosx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, will probably resort to that as well.

Also do Twitter and whatever other socials you have. The only way to get them to help is public shame. It's sad, but we don't make the rules, we just play by them.

I'm not on any socials. At this point I'm more ashamed of myself, I'm technical enough to build a homelab, I was just delaying the migration until I had something a bit more solid with k8s and ceph that I could share with a nice UI.

Even a small job that would backup emails and data to S3 and a hdd once a day would have saved me all this embarrassment. Hopefully starting with 2025 will have something to share with HN that is more positive.

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#36

Post by eminent101 »

Kuinox wrote: post #33
eminent101 wrote: post #30

I'm sorry this happened. This is my digital nightmare scenario! It is disturbing how much of our digital and physical life (utility accounts, medical insurance, etc. etc.) are tied to email addresses and these email addresses are something we can never ever truly own. If you are locked out of email, you are also locked out of at least half a dozen critical portals that send password resets, OTPs and all kinds of auth…

While you dont own a domain name, you have legals means to get it back. Thats not the cast with a GAFAM email account.

> While you dont own a domain name, you have legals means to get it back.

Can you or someone else share more about this? Do these laws work across countries? Can someone in Bhutan exercise their legal right to get back their .com or .org domain name? Must someone in Bhutan always buy a .bt domain name? I'd like to learn more about how the legal framework works and protects the customer from loss of their domain names?

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#37

Post by stevenicr »

nice reminder that I need to set a reminder to download a full backup of all things google takeout regularly.

In a (maybe, maybe not) similar situation when a friend got a new phone, added sim card - then could not start the phone because google pass was not working.. (and he could not get 2fa of sms auth)

I suggested he go home where is already logged into gmail - and update account settings to allow additional methods of account recovery - bam - fixed.

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#38

Post by littlecranky67 »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #11
voisin wrote: post #9

Not intending to shame OP, but in 2024 with stories like this occurring regularly, I am totally baffled why anyone still trusts Google with anything important. Make the switch! Run, don’t walk. Do it today. Google is the Scorpion in the parable of the frog and the scorpion - it cannot help its nature. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

Which service do you recommend as alternative?

Proton.

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#39

Post by Loughla »

taosx wrote: post #35
Loughla wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also do Twitter and whatever other socials you have. The only way to get them to help is public shame. It's sad, but we don't make the rules, we just play by them.

I'm not on any socials. At this point I'm more ashamed of myself, I'm technical enough to build a homelab, I was just delaying the migration until I had something a bit more solid with k8s and ceph that I could share with a nice UI. Even a small job that would backup emails and data to S3 and a hdd once a day would have saved me all this embarrassment. Hopefully starting with 2025 will have something to share with HN…

No reason to be embarrassed. You put your faith in one of the largest companies that has ever existed. That is a logical thing to do.

Re: Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data

#40

Post by eminent101 »

Loughla wrote: post #23
chistev wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to what?

You don't necessarily need to switch, just ensure Redundancy. If you keep a password database in there, or personal files, keep it on a secure external drive and make backups. Or Dropbox. Or anything. Just keep an extra. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. We have a home media server. Our important data automatically backs new files to a secure folder in there once a week. If I can do it, anyone can. And it could…

How does that work in practice? I mean I may keep my data at multiple places. But my government, my hospitals, my utility accounts, they all want my email address to send me OTPs, password reset links and such things that are necessary to prove my digital identity.

How do I spread this risk and make it manageable? I have to give them some email address and I fear losing access to my email. And yes, I can lose my email address even if I have my email on my own domain. There are many failure modes for losing domain names. So how do I manage this risk?

Post reply on HN