[HN Gopher] When you get locked out of your Google account, what...
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When you get locked out of your Google account, what do you do?
(2021)
Author : cube00
Score : 164 points
Date : 2022-04-18 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.linkedin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.linkedin.com)
| wrren wrote:
| This is one reason why I decided to switch to ProtonMail a couple
| of years ago as the account backing most of my internet services.
|
| Given that I pay them money, I figure they're at least somewhat
| invested in keeping me happy as a customer. Google clearly don't
| give a shit.
| niuzeta wrote:
| I'm thinking of doing this and I haven't yet figured out how to
| migrate all the accounts I have associated with my GMail
| account. Do you have any suggestion/tips for a fellow potential
| immigratnt? :)
| peepop6 wrote:
| I moved to Tutanota and what I did is forward all my Gmail
| emails to my Tutanota email. It made it much easier to switch
| because I could immediately start using Tutanota and then
| migrate my accounts overtime to eventually delete Google
| completely.
| abbabon wrote:
| Soooooo the main take here is to not put all your eggs in Google
| One basket?
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Considering how much our digital lives are interwoven with our
| real lives, who will be held responsible if someone takes their
| life in shear helplessness basis Google's absolutely thoughtless
| and inhuman actions and unresponsiveness in the wake of them?
|
| It might seem hyperbole but it isn't. Who is to say it hasn't
| already happened?
| adamc wrote:
| Good reminder that I need to migrate my data away from Google.
| They are notorious for terrible customer support. I'd rather pay
| someone competent.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Putting any Google service connected to your account as a
| recovery method for your Google account seems like a problem to
| me. I don't know why the author didn't get any alternative
| recovery options if they had those configured like they said, but
| this is a good reason to only enter external services as any kind
| of contact or recovery mechanism.
|
| Worryingly, after the whole ordeal the author still seems to
| choose to rely on their Google account now as much as before this
| all happened. It's kind of a miracle they got through to Google
| in the first place and it definitely won't happen again; it
| worries me that this post doesn't end with "and that's why I
| split my life across separate dedicated services". It feels like
| the author learned This One Cool Trick instead of the underlying
| lesson, which is that Google (or Apple, or Microsoft, or any big
| provider) cannot be trusted to not randomly cut you off without
| warning.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Unfortunately even doing everything right is no guarantee. I
| have Google accounts that Google will not let me into even
| though I have the correct password because it requires a
| connection from the same network as past logins, which are in
| places I no longer live. I've read accounts from others in the
| identical situation.
|
| My answer to this is that I've completely moved off of Google
| except for an account I use for YouTube/Maps access that I
| could painlessly lose.
| e40 wrote:
| _> I have Google accounts that Google will not let me into
| even though I have the correct password because it requires a
| connection from the same network as past logins_
|
| I don't get how that can possibly be a requirement. I mean,
| it's trivial to dream up a scenario where it is 100% legit to
| be in this situation.
|
| What is wrong with Google?
| javajosh wrote:
| _> What is wrong with Google?_
|
| They made a rational 80/20 decision and then got insulated
| from feedback on the 20.
| medstrom wrote:
| Yup, I'm in the same boat. I have no "past logins" because
| VPN, so haven't been able to access my Google accounts for
| years.
| guessmyname wrote:
| There must be something else in your inability to access
| your account because I have been using a VPN for more than
| nine (9) years, changing locations every 5-7 days, and I
| have no problems accessing my Google account.
|
| Interestingly, I remember creating a new Google account a
| couple of years ago from the Philippines, without a VPN,
| and when I moved back to the US I couldn't access it
| anymore.
|
| I believe the account's age has something to do with the
| restrictions.
| e40 wrote:
| Has your account been locked by google and you recovered
| it OK?
| jmuguy wrote:
| I kind of hope she reached that conclusion but just didn't
| include that in the post. In particular having your primary
| phone and email tied to Google is just a bad idea, period. They
| do not care. They do not have the capacity to care, by design.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Hahah. Some stories like these.
|
| My elderly parents were on google forever. Forgot password
| because they'd just stayed logged in.
|
| What was weird is even though they had a recovery email (mine)
| that we were able to get a code too google had a second check - a
| requirement to TEXT a code to the phone number on the account.
| Unfortunately my elderly parents had put a landline phone down -
| which doesn't accept text messages.
|
| I gave google the benefit of the doubt on that, because they'd
| actually forgotten the password.
|
| More seriously, I was doing an apps setup (way way back) for a
| nonprofit. They give you a weird temp email domain, then you port
| in your domain etc etc. Some issue (no fault of ours) got the
| state stuck in a doomloop. Even though it was a paid service,
| there was no support.
|
| I contrast that with AWS. Fine support on store side and on
| compute side in my experience.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| In this case I'd consider Google Workspace. It costs, but it
| gives you ironclad control over the accounts, and your parents
| won't lose access to their accounts no matter what they do.
|
| As a bonus, Workspace is sold by partners, so you contact
| actual humans if Google does anything weird.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Yeah I agree - this is the real comparison to AWS. You have
| to pay for AWS which is mostly a professional service (even
| if there are free aspects) vs Google services that are mostly
| all free. In my professional experience the support for
| Workspace has been excellent. Luckily I have never had to
| contact their support for my personal stuff.
| frfl wrote:
| Post on Hacker News or Twitter for customer support.
| djbusby wrote:
| Looks like LinkedIn is in the mix. Hat-Trick!
| taneq wrote:
| Step 1: Be important enough that your causing a stink gets
| attention.
| kurthr wrote:
| Nope. As the article says... contact the FTC to port the phone
| number since they (or their supplier) are in violation of
| law... get response within a day and number ported within 30
| days.
| metalforever wrote:
| I had this happen before and I was asked a bunch of obscure
| questions such as the month the acct was opened. They restored
| access but it took a few months.
| taneq wrote:
| Think hard about this question _now_ and start working on
| reducing your reliance on any such freely registered online
| account. That goes a hundredfold for the email account you use as
| a recovery address.
| amf12 wrote:
| > And since Google Voice is my main phone number,
|
| There are enough comments about Google supports, so I won't
| comment on that. OP however has worked in tech for 20 years, yet
| made a very naive mistake - circular dependency, so to speak.
| They used a VOIP number from the same account as the recovery
| phone number.
| steveylang wrote:
| I got locked out of my Gmail over a decade ago when it was just
| another webmail service (but with 1GB of free storage.) I believe
| there was some sort of unauthorized log in attempt, I couldn't
| find any answers or get any help from Google until I started
| googling for random Google employees and found a phone number for
| one.
|
| He was a bit put off by getting my rando phone call, but I
| explained my predicament and he took the time to look into it and
| helped get my account restored. Thanks Google engineer guy!
|
| This probably doesn't work in 2022 though. ;-)
| favourable wrote:
| I propose Google Human(tm), a new service that gets you in
| contact with a Google support person, where you pay a rate of
| $5.00/mo to get premium Human(tm) support services, so you can
| get back into your account without having to yell over social
| media in an outrage and 'escalate' your issue to Google employees
| over Hackernews or Twitter.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| To be deprecated and sunset within 2 years for no apparent
| reason.
| Tagbert wrote:
| And partially replaced by a new product, Sapiens(tm), which
| includes some of the same features but not all of them.
| ncmncm wrote:
| And, in particular, not the ones you relied on.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Google One comes with phone, chat, or email support in 23
| languages. Hit the support button and they call you within
| minutes, which is a support system on par with Bloomberg
| terminals. $1.99/month.
| cube00 wrote:
| _> Under the locked account, I have a paid subscription with
| both Google One and YouTube Music._
|
| According to this article being a Google One member didn't
| help them.
| tyingq wrote:
| I wouldn't be terribly surprised if none of those options
| would actually fix "locked out of your Google account".
| Melatonic wrote:
| Didnt know this - I was gonna subscribe potentially to GSuite
| for personal stuff but I guess I already have official
| support. Probably will just stick with that then!
|
| edit: As people are pointing out below, however, is there no
| way to use Google One support if you are locked out of your
| account?
| mysterydip wrote:
| That's a good metric, but can they solve any of the "locked
| out of account" problems?
| dmd wrote:
| No, because you need to be logged in to use it.
| erdos4d wrote:
| This has so much extortion potential I'm surprised all the
| major tech companies aren't doing it and milking it for all
| it's worth. It's amazing they have left this cash on the table
| for this long.
| nosianu wrote:
| Too bad low-level support workers cannot do anything. All they
| will be able to do is read the AI-auto-generated text to you
| and answer your questions by reading from the prepared
| responses. You pay for having a human read to you what the
| computer system produced. For supporters to be cheap and
| exchangeable (for the business) they are bound to executing the
| prepared algorithm and script without option to deviate. Often
| they cannot even access relevant information about you, never
| mind updating anything in the database.
|
| To get someone able to actually make decisions, especially when
| they are against a measure the system automatically put in
| place following its programmed or AI-.derived rules, you need
| to go at least two levels higher. Even "managers" often -
| usually? - only have digression within pre-determined
| possibilities and scenarios.
|
| It's going to be like this:
| https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430
| ricardobayes wrote:
| 100% true. What to say to get escalated to these levels? In
| situations like this I asked to escalate it but was denied.
| Said there was 'nothing they could do' and parroted the
| relevant sections to ad nauseum.
| favourable wrote:
| Largely, support has been relegated to very extensive and
| exhaustive FAQs and if your issue is not found in them, you
| have to pick up the phone and spend 5 hours trying to reach
| a human at Google, or yell all over social media as a last
| resort.
| bluGill wrote:
| You can find a number for google? I've been trying to
| find Ebay's number for months. Support told me I have to
| call them, but they are not allowed to tell me the phone
| number.
|
| I'm not enough of an influencer to get my rants here
| noticed.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| What I find funny is that low level support at Google can't
| do anything at all to help you, unless it's a low level
| Google Ads rep. Then they ask for carte blanche access to
| make any and all changes to your Ads account to 'help you'.
|
| It all comes down to which direction, and how much, the money
| is flowing with them.
| tptacek wrote:
| This isn't really a story about missing access to human tech
| support at Google so much as it is a story about Account
| Recovery, The Hardest Problem In Authentication. Anything
| Google did to make it take just a day or two to recover a
| totally locked account would be abused ceaselessly to take over
| people's accounts.
|
| There are no good answers here. A lot of things that work as
| one-offs or rarities will stop working if everyone does them.
| If there's a FCC form you can file that short-circuits Google's
| current process, and it becomes popular, that form is going to
| stop working. Restoring your access to a locked account is
| simply less important than ensuring strangers can't "restore"
| access to your account.
|
| Obviously, one good change Google could make here would be to
| refuse to accept Google Voice numbers as an authentication
| factor.
| melony wrote:
| AWS has a decent (corporate) solution to this. They simply
| outsource account recovery and user attestation to the state
| and the finance industry. You stake money on a financial
| medallion (a contractual instrument that's a guarantee of
| sorts). Presumably you will get sued and armed men will come
| after you if you commit fraud. It doesn't scale well outside
| of the big cities but it could be a viable option for Google.
| ghaff wrote:
| Requiring physical presence in some manner makes identity
| verification, if not failsafe, a lot harder and riskier to
| spoof. I observe that my broker was allowing transfers over
| the phone early in the pandemic. But when I did a similar
| transaction earlier this year, they were back to needing me
| to go into an office.
| keskival wrote:
| Most civilized countries have strong authentication methods
| which are behind easy and cheap APIs for Google and others to
| use if they really care about restoring access.
| underdeserver wrote:
| I completely disagree.
|
| There have been complaints after complaints about people
| being locked out of accounts, and there are no easy ways to
| recover - often no way at all.
|
| To say that the paid support you're paying for can't help you
| access the service you're paying for, that's a bit rich.
|
| > Restoring your access to a locked account is simply less
| important than ensuring strangers can't "restore" access to
| your account.
|
| That's a false dichotomy. If you can pay, say, $200, and get
| 30 minutes with a tech who has access to your email and can
| go through a manual, interactive process to verify you are
| who you say you are - for example, if you can prove you hold
| the credit card that's been used to pay for Google One for
| the past couple of years - well, these "strangers" are going
| to have to work REALLY hard to "restore" their access to your
| account. Probably well more than $200 and more than it costs
| to install a keylogger and sniff your password anyway.
| tptacek wrote:
| It doesn't so much matter if you like the current state of
| affairs; it is what it is. If paid Google support could
| easily reset accounts (or, really, reset accounts at all),
| the accounts of paid support subscribers would regularly
| get taken over. Try to design an account recovery program
| for a service with, say, more than 10,000 clients to see
| why.
|
| Think through what you'd hope Google would be able to do
| here. How do they authorize the request to unlock the
| account? Now imagine a well-funded adversary that knows
| exactly how Google's processes work (probably because they
| continuously pay for accounts and have them reset, to track
| what Google's doing). What's the reliable signal Google can
| use here, one the majority of their users actually have
| access to, that they can quickly execute on?
|
| There are companies that have relatively quick Account
| Recovery processes through customer support. But those
| companies either aren't worth defrauding, or are regularly
| but quietly defrauded.
| jfim wrote:
| At least for accounts that have services that have a
| billing address, they could send a postcard with a
| special code to unlock the account. In the case of the
| OP, that would have solved the problem.
| ghaff wrote:
| Historically, that's how things like PINs were often
| reset. Of course, the more frictions and tie-ins to
| physical things you throw in, the more people will have
| legitimate sob stories about how they don't have that
| phone number any longer or they just moved and so forth.
| There's always going to be tradeoffs.
| tptacek wrote:
| To what address would Google send such a postcard? What
| do you do about the problem of estranged spouses and the
| like triggering recovery to break into their partners or
| ex-partners account? It's a mess. All the options are.
|
| Remember, this is the most valuable account most people
| possess.
| vageli wrote:
| > What do you do about the problem of estranged spouses
| and the like triggering recovery to break into their
| partners or ex-partners account? It's a mess. All the
| options are.
|
| Nothing? Google sends postcards to verify business
| addresses already. If it's good enough for the bank to
| send me a card and PIN via post it should be good enough
| for Google. We have laws in place to deal with estranged
| spouses breaking into accounts.
| tptacek wrote:
| What happens when you don't already have a verified
| address? None of this is easy.
| aliceryhl wrote:
| Have anyone actually tried to file a lawsuit to get Google's
| attention in a case like this?
| _fat_santa wrote:
| After reading stories like this, I've moved to "single purpose"
| accounts with Google. I have a youtube account, firebase account
| and a google analytics account, and all of them are seperate from
| one another. My hope here is if google shuts down a single
| account, I only loose access to what that account did.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| Hm that sounds sketchy I am inclined to think they might think
| you are a bot running multiple accounts and ban you and all
| your accounts together.
| taneq wrote:
| Hope you're running all the up-to-the-minute anti-
| fingerprinting you can find. For a long while any time I went
| to YouTube even in a private window they'd ask me to log in
| under my old Google account that I hadn't used on that computer
| for years. It was creepy as hell and I'm still not sure if
| they've stopped because they can no longer associate that
| account with that computer or if they're just confident enough
| now not to ask.
| kazinator wrote:
| "Google containers"
| bovermyer wrote:
| I read somewhere on HN in the last couple months that Google is
| prone to banning/deleting accounts that it thinks are
| associated with accounts it bans, so I would not do this.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| I even recall an article where the google developer account
| of a company was blocked because it got associated with the
| personal account of one of their old employees.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30855065
| favourable wrote:
| I think Google allows 3-4 accounts since it's common for
| families to all use Gmail, so they're lenient in that regard.
| Obviously, creating 10 accounts with 10 Twilio numbers would
| arouse suspicion and those accounts would be swiftly banned.
| [deleted]
| alecco wrote:
| Use different emails and phone numbers for each. At least that
| used to be the trick to separate YouTube channels a while ago.
| rolph wrote:
| TLDR:
|
| associate a VIOP number with your google sphere, so when it
| happens, file an FCC complaint re undue termination of telephonic
| service.
|
| it seems this was the only thing that elicited a proper response.
| reading the article and google response to FCC complaint makes it
| evident, that google is full of it as far as "we cant do anything
| about it" is concerned.
|
| the only problem i see is that it seems the complaint was dropped
| or left orphan, rather than followed up on. thats why google
| keeps on doing it because there are no real consequences other
| than being told to Give it Back.
|
| it reminds me of when one kid swipes a toy out of anothers hands
| and keeps doing it because there is no real deterrent in play.
|
| dont drop your FCC complaint, follow up on it.
| borgbean wrote:
| It sounds like they responded to the complaint by unlocking the
| number, allowing her to port it out. Not by restoring her
| access. Not much of a deterrent.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I would completely unsurprised if Google kills off Voice
| specifically because there's a regulator who makes them provide
| customer support and they'd rather not.
| usrn wrote:
| jmp.chat is better anyway and doesn't randomly kill your
| account.
| woliveirajr wrote:
| (2021)
|
| After the response, the best thing would be to sue Google, of
| course. Not once, Not for big values. One small cause for each
| small annoyance. Not at the same time nor the same
| jurisdiction. Then read all the defences they make and mix then
| among the causes. If their system is so fragmented that they
| can't deal with your original problem of losing acess to your
| account, so they'll have trouble finding the pieces to defend
| themselves. And if they can find, even better, use it as a
| proof that they can connect the dots when they want to.
|
| IANALITUSOA
| DarkSucker wrote:
| > I'm not the type to get bitchy with customer service reps. I've
| managed teams that do that job, and I know how scripted their
| support has to be.
|
| "has to be" burns. It could be different. Why is a script
| essential? These support scripts drive me crazy. I would probably
| melt down in the OP's case.
|
| Answers like "they allow less skilled first line workers" don't
| count because one could hire skillful people to solve problems on
| first contact.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Recently we had to deal with amazon. And we try not to Karen
| when we call any customer support. But man does the getting
| audibly angry and asking for a manager actually get the ball
| rolling. There's a reason people do this, and the reason is
| because companies don't care until you show some anger.
| guru4consulting wrote:
| May be Google can have trusted contacts to help the account
| recovery. If I set-up 5 trusted contacts, all of them would
| receive different temp passwords and the temp passwords from at
| least 3 would be necessary to recover. The only risk is 3 out of
| 5 trusted contacts getting compromised at the same time or 3 of
| them colluding which again is unlikely with trusted contacts.
| bbkane wrote:
| What a nightmare. I really should start migrating from GMail to
| something else (or at least use my own domain in front of it).
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Just do it! You'll have to choose anyway if you are one of the
| many folk here who use(d) a grandfathered free Google workspace
| plan with your own domain: it ends on June 1st, or thereabouts,
| and you'll be shunted into a paid plan (although there seems to
| be a waiting list for a free plan).
|
| I did it last week. I signed up for Fastmail, followed their
| excellent documentation, and now only have a mandatory (new)
| Google account for a few apps in the Play Store that are not
| available anywhere else (but nothing paid). If I lose access to
| my Google account, I lose nothing.
|
| My Fastmail migration basically went like this:
|
| * Clean up mailbox, truncate mailing list folders.
|
| * Copy mail to Fastmail using their importer.
|
| * Change domain settings at your domain host (changing MX-
| records and a bunch of others); mail now goes to Fastmail.
|
| * Set up mail and calendars in Thunderbird on Ubuntu and K-9
| Mail on GrapheneOS.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| The setting up part is easy. It's migrating user logins,
| subscriptions, and everything else tied to your GMail account
| that takes time and energy. Someone really aught to create a
| migrator app to get people off GMail and do the hard stuff.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| I dedicated most part of a day to migrate most of the
| subscription to a new email. Iirc, it took me more than 8+
| hours.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| This might actually be a great service for fastmail et al
| to provide: after you import old mailboxes, they should
| scan them for signup mails and show you a list with to
| migrate accounts i.e. red marks.
|
| After migrating an account, they know it, as they can scan
| your mail. Slowly, each red mark on your dashboard gets
| replaced with a green mark.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Actually I was thinking it would be a good idea for a
| password manager to implement. They have all of the
| credential information, they'd just have to implement
| "Change my userid" logic for all websites out there.
| That's definitely a hard problem to solve...
| dmd wrote:
| I would love to do this - and it would be easy, as I'm already
| forwarding from my own domain and have been for 25 years - but
| I receive so much spam (>600 per day vs. ~20 non-spam per day)
| that only Gmail's spam filtering is good enough. I've tried
| others (like Fastmail) and typically ~50/day get through their
| spam filters, vs. at Gmail where on a typical day 1-2 get
| through.
|
| As soon as anyone besides Gmail can successfully do spam
| filtering, I'm stuck with them.
|
| (Why do I get so much spam? Because I've been using the same
| email address, never hiding it at all even on Usenet, for 25
| years.)
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Have you tried training a user-specific spam filter like
| bogofilter? You might need to save a few months of spam for
| training. I have a quite good false positive and negative
| rates.
| dmd wrote:
| Yeah I've been trying various filters off and on for two
| decades.
| adamc wrote:
| Recommendations for good commercial email services?
| beardbound wrote:
| I switched to fastmail a couple of years ago from google and
| quite like it. I even switched some other people in my family
| too.
| martinflack wrote:
| It's a good idea to use something like gmvault [0] to ensure
| you have regular downloads of your mail corpus locally.
|
| [0] http://gmvault.org/
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Just start doing it. It's easier than you think.
|
| 1. (Optional) Register a domain (So if you need to migrate in
| the future, you don't need to change your email address!)
|
| 2. Sign up for _paid_ service somewhere else. Paid email
| services are extremely cheap, and worth it to have a phone
| number where you can call a real human person.
|
| * If you wish to continue using the Gmail interface, skip step
| 3 *
|
| 3. Forward Gmail to the new account.
|
| 4. As you see messages you want coming to your Gmail account,
| switch them to your new account.
|
| 5. (Optional) If you really like the Gmail interface, use
| IMAP/SMTP to check your email in Gmail, even though it's really
| coming from/to your external account!
|
| It's really easy to get away from GMail, and definitely worth
| it.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| I've had a custom domain for some time, but it has its own
| risks / drawbacks.
|
| 1. If your registrar account is compromised, someone can
| redirect your mail at will.
|
| 2. If your payment lapses you might lose the entire domain.
|
| 3. If you die, it's unlikely your family will understand how
| to maintain the system.
|
| 4. Some systems will classify your email as spam even with
| the right MX configuration (DMARC,DKIM etc)
|
| I think the right choice is having a paid relationship with a
| mail provider that's been in the business a long time, and
| use their domain.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| That's great and I started doing it, just don't forget to
| renew your domain cause then you are really screwed
| imtringued wrote:
| I use gmail because it has this obscure addon thing that shows
| the number of unread emails in the favicon. Default gmail and
| all other email providers I have tried show the unread emails
| count in the title which is invisible on pinned tabs.
|
| I have three email accounts outside of gmail that are
| forwarding to gmail so I can have a favicon counter. Those
| email accounts maintain their own copies of the emails. If
| gmail were to lock me out I would lose my favicon counter. I
| would need to get a new phone number to create a new account
| and set up the fowards to the new address.
|
| Why do I insist on this convoluted setup? My previous email
| client was a firefox addon that showed me that counter and it
| made me read my emails. Every email account that doesn't follow
| this set up that I have has lots of unread emails.
|
| I have a thunderbird instance with 140 unread emails open right
| now. I have 0 on gmail.
| everyone wrote:
| Make a new one.
| rolph wrote:
| before you make a new one you probably need to reinstal, or
| scrub the OS for google bugs, replace the NIC, and get a new
| router, new modem, new ISP with a new, pseudonymous/business
| account.
|
| you might be able to evade google fingerprinting if you do all
| these things.
|
| it would not surprise me if google pays to be allowed to crawl
| everything that touches google for even one tick, so they may
| still connect the dots when the AI sees a browser activity
| graph just like your last one. Who knows how well a VPN my hide
| your breadcrumbs, i just avoid making accounts with google or
| letting any overt analytics through my browser.
| sayhello wrote:
| When I was a Google employee, I helped a friend go through their
| account lockout issue. It was because they used MFA to a phone
| number, but later changed their phone number, which made them
| unable to login. He tried so many times that some velocity
| threshold was hit, further limiting the possibilities.
|
| My friend needed to respond to some interview scheduling, so, it
| was a stressful situation.
|
| Part of the problem was that it was hard for my friend to find a
| way to create a support ticket. He did in the end and got in a
| line of communication via an alternate email.
|
| There were many miscommunications from both my friend and the
| support agent. While Account Recovery or even basic
| identification are hard to navigate for technically-minded folks,
| it's even more challenging for non-technical folks, including the
| support agent.
|
| In the end, I got in touch with the support person, helped
| translate what they wanted to know to my friend, and likewise,
| translated what my friend was saying in a way that the support
| person could understand.
|
| I don't think I was able to see the support ticket itself,
| because of PII restrictions. In the end, my friend was able to
| restore service. I doubt he'd have been able to without my
| support in time to respond to the interview scheduling.
|
| It still took a couple of days.
| muh_gradle wrote:
| This was more or less my exact same scenario as well. MFA with
| an old phone number makes account recovery from Google about
| close to impossible. I had a friend who worked at Google that
| was able to create a support ticket for me. Before talking to
| my friend, every single customer service support rep more or
| less confirmed that I was completely SOL.
|
| It is the reason why I have transitioned from Google.
| bogomipz wrote:
| I'm curious was the second form of auth an SMS text with an
| auth code or is their Google Authenticator app somehow tied
| to the phone number?
| Tozen wrote:
| Google is a monster that people should know not to trust. Better
| to not use a Google account for anything serious or unless you
| really have to. Even then, expect and prepare for the worse. Way
| too many, "Google locked me out.", stories.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _She said that the recovery team is allusive_
|
| Accidentally apt malapropism/typo? They keep alluding to the idea
| that there may be something that can be done, but it remains
| illusive. :)
| breischl wrote:
| I assumed that she meant "elusive", but it could also be
| "illusive" in the sense that it's merely an illusion. :P
| lamontcg wrote:
| allusive (adj):
|
| 1. Containing or characterized by indirect references.
|
| 2. Figurative; symbolical.
|
| 3. Having reference to something not fully expressed;
| containing an allusion.
|
| 4. Containing or making use of indirect references or hints.
|
| 5. characterized by indirect references
|
| Sounds about right for Google tech support really. I'll allow
| it.
| rdl wrote:
| I think for most people on HN the answer is "contact a friend who
| works at Google"; I don't know the general solution.
| yreg wrote:
| And hope the ai didn't ban your account with one of the reasons
| no one wants to touch.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I have considered paying for a personal GSuite account partially
| because of this - I use my Google account for a lot of MFA stuff
| so it is fairly critical to things I do. At work we have a
| corporate account and their support is pretty solid (especially
| the chat support - I seem to get someone very quickly and they
| are way better than your typical tier 1 drone). I get that people
| are upset over this but are we REALLY surprised that we get shit
| support for a FREE service?
|
| They also have a separate site / login / forum for proposing new
| ideas, bugs, etc etc that you can use if you have an actual
| corporate account (strangely it requires creating a separate
| login and password). I have found that using this forum you can
| also get some decent support for weird issues or bugs or
| suggestions (sometimes from other users as well).
| waynesonfire wrote:
| create a business account so you have support.
| psanford wrote:
| I wonder what happens if you have no recovery methods enabled on
| your account?
| johnklos wrote:
| Google is just one of many companies that are too big to actually
| communicate (like Verizon, AT&T, Amazon, Microsoft) and have to
| be forced to do anything if you're not paying them tons of $$$.
| They do what they want.
|
| If your livelihood is tied to your email / phone, then you really
| should consider a company with which you can communicate.
| wereHamster wrote:
| Google's response... <<We are disappointed that [...] experienced
| [...] difficulties [...]>>... ah stfu, you are lying, you are not
| at all disappointed. They also show no intention at all to find
| out what happened so they can improve their internal processes.
| Working as intended...
| [deleted]
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