[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Access to my personal Gmail blocked
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       Tell HN: Access to my personal Gmail blocked
        
       I have completely lost access to my personal Gmail email that I
       have used for more than 10 years.  I know and am entering the
       correct password, yet I still cannot log in.  Google is requiring
       an extra security check (because I use the browser in incognito
       mode).  This seems to be a recent change that is affecting many
       users.  I can't verify access to my email because I have no
       recovery email/phone and I can't remember the answer to the
       recovery question (the account was created more than 10 years ago).
       Very sad! Being barred from accessing my account without a valid
       reason... and nothing I can do about it.
        
       Author : g_private
       Score  : 8 points
       Date   : 2022-09-16 21:43 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | That's a bummer, I think we've all learned this lesson the hard
       | way at least once before wising up.
       | 
       | Hindsight is 20/20, obviously would've been an excellent idea to
       | enter that recovery phone or email address field. Why wouldn't
       | you do it? In my experience, Google doesn't care how many email
       | accounts you associate to the same phone number (within some
       | degree of reasonability).
       | 
       | You know this is how it goes when you're dealing with ElGoog.
       | Better luck next time.
       | 
       | Someone could've guessed your password and taken over the
       | account, what would you like (or expect) to happen next?
        
         | nytesky wrote:
         | Doesn't having a recovery phone make you vulnerable to a port
         | out scam, basically invalidating any 2FA?
        
           | bigcoffeeguy wrote:
           | If you have Verizon, they have a number lock feature
           | (https://www.verizon.com/support/port-out-faqs/#) that is
           | designed to protect against this very thing. I have it
           | enabled and feel much better about using SMS 2FA/recovery.
        
         | g_private wrote:
         | I only have this address (I don't have any secondary email), so
         | I never set a recovery email.
         | 
         | My password was relatively strong (and only used for email).
         | 
         | I don't know how I'm going to do it. Possibly I will lose
         | access to some things or have some difficulty migrating
         | everything to a new email address.
         | 
         | All my services (social networks, paypal, and others) are
         | associated with this email.
        
       | sleton38234234 wrote:
       | Whats worse, is something like this happened to me on Yahoo,
       | except instead of not being able to login, they simply deleted my
       | account. they said my account no longer existed. I never used any
       | yahoo product for anything serious, after that.
        
       | nytesky wrote:
       | Recently my gmail required password and only 2FA It would accept
       | was hardware security key. No OTP or Google auth. It was weird
        
       | MerelyMortal wrote:
       | Can you use an IP address that you might have used before? Maybe
       | they are seeing a new IP address and that tipped the scale in
       | their fraud prevention algorithm.
        
         | g_private wrote:
         | My ip is dynamic, so it sometimes changes. The ISP is the same
         | as always (and the approximate location too).
         | 
         | I access the Internet using the browser's incognito mode. So
         | Google considers each login as from a new device.
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-16 23:02 UTC)