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by firefax·7mo ago·view on hn ↗
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 imported my phone number I'd had since I was 16 into voice, and it doubled as my Signal number. I even had a Gsuite subscription so I could use their (admittedly decently) UI to power my firstname @ lastname dot com email address.

I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure.

21 comments
I had something kinda similar happen to my hotmail account. While I didn't lose access to it, I lost more than a decade of correspondence dating back to my teenage years. The reason was that Microsoft at some point required you to "login" once every 30 days. It seems they only counted logins through their web interface or something like that, so even though I was receiving emails daily, I didn't trigger a "login" in their system. They then deleted all my emails, but I could still login.
This happened to me ten years ago. A while later they did the same thing with my Minecraft login that I had purchased before the EULA was in place; I’ve avoided their services like the plague since then.
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 unsuccessful. I’d love the their of my account to at least have it shutdown
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.
I got mine when it was invite only too, I had it a very long time.

I use protonmail now -- 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 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 into law with regards to customer service minimums that would cover anyone doing business in the state, free or paid.

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 think of users as distinct from customers because it let's you understand the provider company motivations.

For example, Google's customer's are advertisers. Hence they cull services not conducive to advertising.

Most startups see VCs as the customer. Their business model is to sell shares to VCs in round after round. Seen in that light their attitude to users is rational and users only exist as props to VC sales.

VCs (and founders) are chasing an exit, which is usually acquisition or aquihire. Your use of the service will thus rarely survive the exit.

These are not things to be outraged about. They are all completely rational and predictable outcomes. When you use a service, these are factors you should evaluate.

I had this issue with my alternative account. Despite my main account being associated (not by recovery, I think this predates that feature), and most messages being forwaded to my main I was never able to successfully recover the credentials.
I had the same issue with my Hotmail address. I know the address and password, but Microsoft won’t let me login. And they ask ridiculous things like, what emails are in the inbox. I haven’t used this address for 20 years, I just want to access the Hotmail address from when I was a teenager.
Send some emails to the address, then you'll know what is in the inbox :)
Haha that’s clever, I will try this
>I just want to access the Hotmail address from when I was a teenager.

Logging in doesn't solve your problem. It gets way worse after you log in [0]. At least now you still have hope.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36000161

Gmail is a throwaway email. I lost my SIM and hence can't log in anymore.

Never ever rely on Gmail.

Huh? Are phone numbers tied to physical sims in your country? You can't just ask the phone company to give you a new sim with the same number?
It was a Google Project Fi phone with a very valuable number (for me, many 8, no 4). Was not able to recover.
If you’re on a contract that can work.

If it’s a PAYG sim card then you’re out of luck without the PUK code, which, if you’ve lost the sim then you have most assuredly lost (or never had).

PAYG is a lot more common in parts of western Europe than contracts.

People associate contracts with “overly expensive” phone deals.

> 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.)

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.

I can't get my Rockstar account because it has 2FA with an app that I somehow lost.
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.)
When I first got the account, my cell phone was a recovery method. Later in life I imported the cell into google voice... thus when the recovery codes failed, there was no other option.
Sorry, I meant an external recovery method. Another e-mail address or a phone number.
op said they had recovery codes but they didn’t work.
I am fearful of losing my first.last@gmail.com and last.com access presently. Any Google Wallet/Payment folks that might help me..? Please see email in profile if so. Would really appreciate it.

Story is I started a new job. I tried to add a corporate address for a corporate card to Google Wallet. This tripped some security indicator requiring me to upload government-issued ID. I did so twice without it working despite first/last/address match. I have tried also submitting an employment verification letter with the corporate address. Haven't heard back on the last attempt.

I have also written but I have low hope that'll work. (Update: Nope, "Billing and Collections" isn't "Payments" but at least they wrote back).

Because of the incomplete verification, all Google service payments are rejected right now. I am presently frantically emptying my Google One storage to get back under the free tier before my paid One subscription runs out. Literally, because I cannot submit a $2 payment I am right now removing attachments from 20 years of correspondence.

This stinks. I just need a human to review what I submitted given the above context. There should be some middle ground between rejecting a new credit card address and de facto locking down someone's entire collection of Google services via manufacturing an inability to pay.

> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure

Was there ever really an agreement that they'd be storing your cherished memories for decades? I still treat email the same way I've done since the 90s. Your email provider is just a cache but you download and backup the messages yourself.

Hopefully this has been a wake up call for you. If you care about data then you need a copy that you control and have a good backup plan.

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.
You can use a custom domain with most providers, so when they go dark you can at least migrate to another one.
If you use a password manager like Keepass, you should still be able to log into your other accounts if you lost access and at least with financial institutions you can call, ask that no changes be made with without coming into the branch and showing ID.
Why don't you keep a copy of your email offline?
Worst case you need to self host
Realizing this is why I bought my own domain name and pointed the mx records at Gmail. This way I can change it to different mails servers if needed, even self hosted. One useful thing you can do is configure Gmail to forward mail to unknown address to a known one. So I can create addresses like Facebook@ultrasane.com or Amazon@ultrasane.com, etc
My mother only uses the computer for fun. She scrolls Facebook and sends my aunt cringe photos. If she gets locked out of her email, no big deal.

Maybe we should just panic less.

I'm mystified why technically competent people keep their email in the cloud. Do they never find themselves unable to refer to an email because they are not connected to the web? Isn't obvious that you risk losing everything if the provider goes bankrupt, there is a glitch in their system, or they change the rules?

I use Thunderbird on my laptop precisely so that I have a copy of all my email. I can consult it while offline, I can switch providers, change my mail address, without losing anything and without having to rearrange anything.

Back up your seeds! Aegis for Android lets you do encrypted exports.
Or just write down the TOTP seed on paper backups instead of backup codes.
> seemed like some failure in their systems was causing me to lose access despite having followed proper procedures.

I had the same problem with GitHub's backup codes not working: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35735996

Whoa, I noticed something similar. I was updating my password or something a few years back and decided to test the backup codes too. They didn't work. I don't know what went wrong but that got me worried a bit.
Wait a second - if you have gsuite it isn't a regular gmail account. Did you talk to gsuite team? If you even paid there is real support.
You think that sucks, my childhood angelfire is gone.
Try contacting their support. They did help me regain access to my late 90s angelfire account, even though the original email address I had used was long dead.
Let's be realistic here. The vastly more likely possibility is that you screwed up somewhere with your backup codes.
Save a picture of the TOTP QR code and print it out.
> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure.

Without such measure anyone with your password could "reset" your 2FA.

The solution to "I may lose my 2FA" is not to make GMail a 1FA: it is to configure beforehand your GMail so that if your account is inactive for 6 months, access to your account is given to a person of your choice. It's so that a death spouse (for example) can eventually access the account.

I'm paranoid and print off my TOTP key for each account I make that might matter in any way.
This is exactly what happened to me on Dropbox, where even the backup codes did not work.
Are you based in the EU? You should be able to file a GDPR request for your data.