How likely is losing a Google account? • Hacker News Board

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#301

Post by ipython » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

nirvdrum wrote: post #192

Eisenstein wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The provide support for users that pay them, and for advertisers. Their business model is to sell things, and it is working pretty well. They can certainly 'afford' it, but they don't want to, and your complaint as a 'free' tier user means little to them. What is needed is legislation or some practiced standard regarding real-person online-id so that losing access to your email account doesn't nuke your ability to op…

I've managed a Google Workplace account (~30 paid users) for over a decade and have never had support respond in less than a week. And each time I got a canned response. I just don't even bother anymore, which is likely what they want. I don't think this is a free vs paid thing. It's just the way Google operates.

That's weird, I have a Google Workspace account with less than 10 paid users and had several in-depth conversations with support personnel on SMTP and DNS setup issues. It was outsourced to an overseas call center, but they did respond to my queries.

That said, I have issues with spam being delivered to my organization's group aliases and I can't report the spam because it flags it against my group alias not the original sender (!) I can't turn spam filtering on the group alias because it flagged legitimate emails from our customers. So I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place, with no one at Google to talk to about it.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#302

Post by FrontierPsych » Thu, Feb 02, 2023, 6:14 AM UTC

I just lost mine a few months ago.

I used to just log on.

I guess at one point, I gave them my mobile phone number. I no longer have that phone or phone number.

So now, google keeps sending a security code to that phone number, which I no longer own. There's no way to put in a new mobile, but I don't want to do that anymore, anyways. Nobody gets my personal info if I so choose, and for google, I so choose - they are not getting shit from me if I can help it. They also ask for a backup code, which I am positive I never had one of those for my google account. They never asked for security questions, I always have those copied if they do.

So I'm locked out of my google account.

My new email provider only requires a password. That's what I want.

Plus, as far as email goes, Google or Yahoo or any of those commercial providers can scan through all your email. People would not put up with this if someone scanned their personal mail that came into their physical mailbox, but for some reason, it is ok if google, the largest information gathering company on the face of the earth, gathers all their data and sells it to the highest bidder. Nobody would allow this on physical mail.

So now all my email goes to tutanota, who don't do this. If they did, fine, I know how the world works, but word would get out sooner or later and they would destroy their business. I'd certainly go somewhere else and they would lose my monthly income stream. I pay for email.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#303

Post by unixhero » Thu, Feb 02, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

timbit42 wrote: post #294

unixhero wrote: post #56

I have decided to multiplu Cloud services by 2. So I also use Microsoft 365, onedrive and Outlook. It feels more solid than Google nowadays anyways.

Just last week someone called my shop saying they couldn't get into their Outlook.com account. They had a backup email and had a code sent to it but Outlook.com said the code was bad. I told them to look into FastMail, preferably with their own domain name. It's not free but it's inexpensive and you can contact someone if there is a problem, and worst case, you can re-point your domain. Mailbox.org is another option.

I like getting an Office license wand functionnality with my email.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#304

Post by unixhero » Fri, Feb 03, 2023, 9:05 AM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #115

unixhero wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will not go down, but you can get locked out by AI policies. This is likely.

Why do you say this is likely?

This explains it, better than I would in an Off hand comment: https://www.devever.net/~hl/logindenial

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#305

Post by jefftk » Fri, Feb 03, 2023, 12:48 PM UTC

unixhero wrote: post #304

jefftk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say this is likely?

This explains it, better than I would in an Off hand comment: https://www.devever.net/~hl/logindenial

Your link describes how security lockouts are probabilistic, yes, but it doesn't get into what the probability is. The article we are commenting on does try to get there, by looking at how often ending what scenarios HN users report getting locked out.

Your link is also talking about the no 2FA case, while the article is recommending 2FA with (multiple!) hardware security tokens.