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Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

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Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#31

Post by loloquwowndueo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
firefax wrote: post #7

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…

> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure Isn’t this inherent to not choosing an (EDIT: external) account-recovery method? The flip side to allowing account recovery at Google’s discretion is lessened security for everyone. (Obviously not black and white. And I agree Google should have flexibility for old accounts. But it’s an odd thing to reject a major provider over.)

op said they had recovery codes but they didn’t work.

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#32

Post by Sophira »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
firefax wrote: post #7

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…

> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure Isn’t this inherent to not choosing an (EDIT: external) account-recovery method? The flip side to allowing account recovery at Google’s discretion is lessened security for everyone. (Obviously not black and white. And I agree Google should have flexibility for old accounts. But it’s an odd thing to reject a major provider over.)

They did have a method to recover their account that they tried, though - they said that they used the account recovery codes, but that they were rejected. (Those would be the codes that Google gives you when you initially set up 2FA.)

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#33

Post by wafflebot »

vunderba wrote: post #28
HocusLocus wrote: post #5

Boss move that I learned under great difficulty: a new temporary gmail alias for every jobsearch.

It might be an iCloud+ feature only, but if you're on a Mac - you've already got the ability to generate virtual email addresses on the fly. https://support.apple.com/en-us/105078

I love this feature and wish something like it would come to Gmail.

I can't rely on iCloud Mail anymore due to its overly aggressive silent spam filtering. Not great if you're trying to log into an account, and you can't receive the recovery emails for that account.

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#34

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Sophira wrote: post #32
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure Isn’t this inherent to not choosing an (EDIT: external) account-recovery method? The flip side to allowing account recovery at Google’s discretion is lessened security for everyone. (Obviously not black and white. And I agree Google should have flexibility for old accounts. But it’s an odd thing to reject a major provider over.)

They did have a method to recover their account that they tried, though - they said that they used the account recovery codes, but that they were rejected. (Those would be the codes that Google gives you when you initially set up 2FA.)

Sorry, I meant an external recovery method. Another e-mail address or a phone number.

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#35

Post by dunk010 »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #27
saint_yossarian wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a custom domain with most providers, so when they go dark you can at least migrate to another one.

That is moving the point of failure to the domain registrar. Which is probably less likely, but you are always relying on someone.

I think that the point here is that your domain registrar will pick up the phone if there is a problem, where Google clearly will not.

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#36

Post by tcfhgj »

cedws wrote: post #16
ryukoposting wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. This post is an unsettling reminder that gmail is a single point of failure in my personal and financial security.

Email services in general. My worst nightmare is my email provider (which isn't Google) going dark and losing access to everything.

Worst case you need to self host

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#37

Post by gleenn »

fosco wrote: post #12
firefax wrote: post #7

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…

I still think about my lost address that I obtained when Gmail was invite only. My family still occasionally CCs it and it drives me nuts, I would pay money to at least have it shutdown so they don’t think I received an email. I had email forwarding to another address when stolen and immediately after it was stolen it had the weirdest messages, I tried multiple ways reaching out to google and it still bugs me I was u…

Maybe you should send it enough mail to fill it up and the it would reject emails? Send a bunch of emails with large attachments and avoid getting marked as spam.

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#38

Post by Hemospectrum »

tcfhgj wrote: post #36
cedws wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email services in general. My worst nightmare is my email provider (which isn't Google) going dark and losing access to everything.

Worst case you need to self host

Great when it works. Too many senders will only deliver to widely used hosts, and silently fail for anything outside their tiny allowlist.

Note that I'm not even talking about trying to send email FROM a self-hosted account, but trying to get someone else to send email TO such an account.

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#39

Post by ocdtrekkie »

It's incredible that in 2025, Google has sprung for "basic competency" after operating a bad email service for 24 years.

In my case, many years ago I changed my last name. (Turns out a lot of women also do this when they do things like... get married. But also for a progressive company everyone's purchases being permanently locked to their deadname seems... bad.) But all of my Android apps, my entire digital life at the time, was permanently locked to my old name. I had another account I created as a mail forwarder but if people sent an invite to it for a Google thing it wouldn't connect to my real account, and obviously there was an added security risk of someone stealing my forwarding account.

I remember talking to Yonatan Zunger about this problem during the Google+ era and it seemed to be renaming an account wasn't something the company was capable of.

Re: Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address

#40

Post by Dusseldorf »

raddan wrote: post #29
HocusLocus wrote: post #5

Boss move that I learned under great difficulty: a new temporary gmail alias for every jobsearch.

You can take this to an extreme (like I do) and use a different email address for every party with whom you communicate. It makes it rather obvious who leaked your email address, and also easy to shut them out (looking at you ActBlue!). It also leads to some amusing personal interactions. I once rebooked a cancelled flight on JetBlue at the ticket counter. When the agent saw my email she said “wow, you must really li…

I do this as well, and occasionally people get confused and think I work for the company I'm interacting with (enterprise@myname.com is close enough to myname@enterprise.com, I guess.) I usually don't bother to correct them, in case it gets me better treatment :)
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