I wish they'd let me recover my original -- I lost my TOTP generator, and the codes I'd written down in a paper notebook were rejected. I even hunted down the electronic copy in case there was a transcription error -- seemed like some failure in their systems was causing me to lose access despite having followed proper procedures. Lost a decade and a half of correspondence dating back to my teenage years. I had impor…
Are you based in the EU? You should be able to file a GDPR request for your data.
You can have all the right details and recovery methods but if at some point they request you to provide the code they sent to the phone you don't have for the last 10 years......... That's it.
> if at some point they request you to provide the code they sent to the phone you don't have for the last 10 years AFAIK once 2FA is up, you can remove your phone number from GMail. I know it takes time to set up a recovery account (in case the account is inactive for x months), to remove a phone number, etc. but if one's GMail is important it could be worth doing both now if it hasn't already been done.
You will eventually be forced to re-add it at some point.
The point is (it's not my account) that unless you religiously update the phone number in all your accounts you will at some point lose access to some of them despite being able to prove with all the other details it's you who created and used them.
Just because.
Because phone number is a very valuable identifier for the ad company.
You can have all the right details and recovery methods but if at some point they request you to provide the code they sent to the phone you don't have for the last 10 years......... That's it.
> if at some point they request you to provide the code they sent to the phone you don't have for the last 10 years AFAIK once 2FA is up, you can remove your phone number from GMail. I know it takes time to set up a recovery account (in case the account is inactive for x months), to remove a phone number, etc. but if one's GMail is important it could be worth doing both now if it hasn't already been done.
Oh, and no, recovery email account is useless. Its been set since the inception and there's not way to use it to regain control over the account.
Not only is it strange, it’s obviously very sexist in practice. In majority of the cases, it’s always the woman who changes her last name. The husband gets to keep his. I still find it very strange and shocking that powerful women with successful careers in modern society still keep changing their names after getting married.
By such a definition any tradition related to gender would be sexist. The tradition is that the wife will change her name. This tradition is why it makes up the majority of cases.
Any tradition had to be introduced as new at some point. Matriarchies were a thing. And still are in some regions of the world.
So don't put it off until it is too late -- if you haven't already, regenerate and copy TOTP seeds to paper now . When you set up TOTP on a new account, copy the TOTP seed to paper then and there, resist the "I'll do this later".
If it isn't backed up it doesn't exist. Corollary (likely unpopular I'd hazard) - hardware token implementations that I can't back up to paper don't exist as far as I'm concerned.
I stopped using webauthn for this reason, plus the fact requires a ton of intrusive browser features and access. This surely will enrage most readers, which itself reveals an interesting conditioning that has taken place.
Oh, finally. I’m one of the first.last@gmail folks, which I assumed would never change when I was 13 years old (hah!). Fast forward a few years, I got married, and am stuck with my old name in the address.
I have a first.last email, but it's created quite the interesting situation. Turns out some dude in Australia has the same first+last name as me, and he's been using firstlast@gmail.com. As far as I can find from Google's documentation, the email with no dots should be the primary and the one with dots an alias, but I'm guessing because I registered mine ages ago (back in 2006) it takes precedence. I have no idea how…
Same here, I have first.last since 2005: every combination of dots or not are aliases to my first.last and cannot be registered.
There a thousands of first last in the world, and apparently, all of those that have a gmail account are also quite bad at giving their email address... ^^ They probably have firstlast123 and the numbers evade!
I receive things daily, from simple accounts miscreated (thanks for the one month Netflix account 6 years ago) to plane tickets, notarized acts for land sell, medical things etc. I tried to respond etc. but no one understands that I'm not their recipient. Crazy.
I have a first.last email, but it's created quite the interesting situation. Turns out some dude in Australia has the same first+last name as me, and he's been using firstlast@gmail.com. As far as I can find from Google's documentation, the email with no dots should be the primary and the one with dots an alias, but I'm guessing because I registered mine ages ago (back in 2006) it takes precedence. I have no idea how…
Same here, I have first.last since 2005: every combination of dots or not are aliases to my first.last and cannot be registered. There a thousands of first last in the world, and apparently, all of those that have a gmail account are also quite bad at giving their email address... ^^ They probably have firstlast123 and the numbers evade! I receive things daily, from simple accounts miscreated (thanks for the one mont…
As a matter of fact, I just wrongly received a confirmation email for the order of an engagement ring!
>I think the "free" model enables providers to shrug and go "hey you don't pay us" (if there is support at all -- I've never been able to speak to a human about this issue) I also have paid services a lot of money where customer service was nonexistent until I did a credit card chargeback or raised an issue with government regulators. I'm trying to figure out exactly what I want to push my state legislature to encode…
I'm in the camp that paying makes you a customer. Inversely using a free service makes you a user, not a customer. And as you correctly note, there I'd no "user service" department. You can of course push for any law you like, but I expect laws protecting "users" to be toothless. Basically the TOS will boil down to "we can do anything we like" - which I guess is more or less what they say now. I find it helpful to th…
> I'm in the camp that paying makes you a customer. Inversely using a free service makes you a user, not a customer.
I agree, but what do you do when a large player like Google kills the competition by making their service available for free? I used to pay for email hosting with good customer support. That company went out of business when free GMail wrecked their business model. I moved to another hosting service, which almost immediately went out of business for the same reason.
Something similar happened with YouTube. It's chock full of ads and/or subscriptions now because they subsidized it long enough to ensure competitors couldn't gain a foothold.
no, I got my puk code from my phone operator when I moved services before. at least in the UK it works that way.
Yes, but you are unlikely to have your PUK code (its on the card you got your sim with) if you have also lost the sim. Its a much more losable bit of plastic, and without it (or a contract) why would an operator give you the PUK code for a number they can’t prove you used to have access to? It would be impossible to tell if you are trying to steal someones number.
you walk into the shop with your passport or driving licence....