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

Post by tomcam » Tue, Dec 10, 2024, 5:16 AM UTC

anakaine wrote: post #82

xlaacid wrote: post #54

Moving forward: always have an email client on a local machine downloading a copy of all emails. Have a local copy of all gdrive contents. Backup your password mangers to a txt file and encrypt it on a drive. And above all, dont trust google with all your stuff. They dont care. I lost a gmail years ago and only use it as a throwaway email client now. You get what you pay for.

That's completely impractical for the average, and even above average user. Just because something can be a solution doesn't mean it should be.

Post by taosx » Sun, Dec 15, 2024, 11:54 AM UTC

taosx wrote: post #121

taosx wrote: post #67

This post seems to have been flagged but I want to thank everyone for their suggestions and future measures. The plan for now is: 1. Retry again with email/pass in incognito in a 24 hour interval; 2. Try to get the same phone number from the telecom operators; 3. Make Subject Access Request (EU) to Google in hopes of at least getting my data back. In order not to get caught up in the same thing again there are many g…

Update: Recovery attempt via telecom operators failed - the number is stuck in limbo between two carriers. While this didn't work in my case, other European users may still recover their number by either: 1. Starting a new 2-year contract 2. Paying a one-time fee for a preferred number (~150 EUR in my case) Tip: Contact your local carrier to check if number recovery is possible, or if you can request a specific numbe…