Get a lawyer and contact GitHub through legal means.
What law do you think is relevant in this situation?
Ask HN: Went to prison for 18 months, lost access to my GitHub. What can I do?
101–108 of 108 posts
Re: Ask HN: Went to prison for 18 months, lost access to my GitHub. What can I do?
#102Get a lawyer and contact GitHub through legal means.
What law do you think is relevant in this situation?
No idea, which is why I recommend talking to a lawyer and not random people on the internet. Anecdotally I have heard stories of people successfully recovering web accounts via court order.
Re: Ask HN: Went to prison for 18 months, lost access to my GitHub. What can I do?
#103ez get a new account
Re: Ask HN: Went to prison for 18 months, lost access to my GitHub. What can I do?
#104[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Went to prison for 18 months, lost access to my GitHub. What can I do?
#105Brutal situation—sorry you’re dealing with it. A playbook that’s worked for folks: assemble “hard” proofs that tie you to the account and ask GitHub Support for human identity review, not automated 2FA reset. Think: old phone number ownership, email at a domain you control, past billing receipts (Sponsors/Actions/Marketplace), SSH public key or GPG signature fingerprints from your commits, WHOIS matching your name, and ecosystem attestations (RubyGems maintainers confirming you own those packages). Put all that in one concise ticket and request escalation.
In parallel, talk to RubyGems support about stewarding the gems if GitHub recovery stalls. They can add/transfer ownership with credible verification, so users aren’t stuck. Worst case, spin up a new GitHub, mirror the repos, and note the account transition in README/changelogs—plus a release on RubyGems pointing to the new home. Not ideal, but it keeps your users safe and the project alive while you push on account recovery.
Re: Ask HN: Went to prison for 18 months, lost access to my GitHub. What can I do?
#106what's your gitname?
joshmn
Re: Ask HN: Went to prison for 18 months, lost access to my GitHub. What can I do?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the same stance I have and why I'm torn. The little quirk here—where it makes slightly more sense—is that they received a legal notice at one point (from the US Government) about my account, there are plenty of online articles to corroborate me as me, and I have a fancy prison release ID that can help me identify me. Unfortunately this context is probably lost on the individuals who work their Zendesk. The pol…
I think the disconnect between you and GitHub support is that you're positioning this as a problem of proving your identity whereas for GitHub support it is a policy. The GitHub policy is: you lose your 2FA, you lose your account. Verifying your identity is not relevant. GitHub provides extensive tooling to protect your account (multiple methods of 2FA, recovery codes etc.) and so from their perspective, while this i…
They are so in love with their policies, how about a policy for something better than 2FA for this possibility? Like pay $10,000, go to their headquarters in person with a lawyer and all your documents and have a "hearing" of some kind. This is even better than 2FA, call it 20FA if it makes them feel good about it!
Someone in this unique situation needs a unique way to solve the issue.
If I lost all of my documents in a fire, I could still get my life back together and be able to fly on airplanes again. So, there is a way to do this, even if it is extreme, if people would care and stop hiding behind paperwork and bureaucracy. Yeah, maybe they would lose some of their time they spend talking or surfing the web at their desk, but it would greatly help someone with a legitimate need that can be proven.
Re: Ask HN: Went to prison for 18 months, lost access to my GitHub. What can I do?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The person should be able to walk in the service provider's office and get an in-person help, restoration of access, by presenting ID docs.
If you are not European, I will be amazed. If you set up 2FA and then lose your 2FA, then that’s just life. Happens sometimes and you move on. GitHub absolutely doesn’t need to provide an in-person recovery service.
Not to mention I’m pretty sure their only physical location you can walk into is in Seattle? Maybe SF?