That kind of solution is unlikely to be of use to customers who don't have the ability to bypass the common process...
It's one of those things where you want to tread carefully.
I mean, say my account got hijacked.
I want to get back in. So does the hijacker. I would much rather prefer waiting an extra day or so, than risk having the hijacker purporting to be me getting back in.
I've actually had to deal with the exact above scenario for a friend before - they had a Gmail email account, and another (unnamed) email provider. The hijacker did try to get back in, and it's a pretty scary proposition. So having a bit of peace of mind that the bar is suitably high is good.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but any statements above are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer).
doesn't sound a lot like the standard support process to me.
My understanding was he'd already kickstarted a normal recovery process https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery
And he wanted more details, so I assume he spoke to somebody up the escalation chain in our support org, who gave him more details.
"Mehta was lucky. The public outcry and press attention prompted Google to manually review his case."
"It could have turned out differently. Without his impressive credentials and far-reaching network, Mehta never would have found out why his Google account was shut down. He wouldn't have been able to access his correspondence or restore his blog, which he says has been read by the likes of Elon Musk and Warren Buffett."
I actually work in a support org at Google (on the Enterprise side, admittedly).
That account recovery link I provided (https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery) is available to anybody (This is for consumer - i.e. GMail. If you have an enterprise - i.e. GSuite account, it's slightly different in that your domain administrator can also restore you as well).
You don't need to be anybody special - you just go to that URL, fill in your details, and somebody will review it for you.
Yes, it will take time. If you make noise, it's possibly it will get escalated and you will get assurances from somebody that it's being looked into. But in general, it will take some time to process it, simply to ensure that we're giving you (and not somebody else) access to your account.
I know it sucks, but account security is tough, and I have nothing but respect for the hardworking people that handle that. In my second week at Google, I accidentally typed my password into a non-secure (but still legitimate) web-form. Within minutes, I got an alert asking me to change my password immediately. They take security very seriously.
Disclaimer: I work for Google, but any opinions above are my own.
" A Google spokesperson told Inc. that Mehta mistakenly marked some of his own email as spam, which confused the algorithm and triggered the shutdown. By August 21, the account had been fully restored."
Given that you think that a person without that reach would have had a similar experience....
that's your perogative of course, but you should forgive a little doubt from outsiders that things would've been so smooth for those without recourse to similar avenues.
Except, that’s not what happens.
Google lets the hijacker in, and locks you out. I live in Germany, and yet, as detailed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404541, Google let a hijacker from Russia with knowledge over nothing except my password in, and I had no way to reset it despite access to all reset questions and reset email (but no access to the reset phone number).
Not even a Google employee friend was able to help me, as their internal escalation team for this... contacted my hijacked account via Gmail.
Google’s system is useless, and if you honestly rely on it, you should stop right now.
Go into Gmail, IMAP settings, and write down the "POP3 activated since" date, that’s the only place you find your account creation date, it’s required for account recovery. Update your phone number, and choose an ISP that NEVER deactivates unused phone numbers.
That's a straw man argument because, as far as anybody can tell, the account in question wasn't hijacked.
In reality, this person had a big, multi-day inconvenience foisted onto them out of nowhere, for reasons they apparently can't even talk about. And that's assuming Google even told them what the violation was.
If Google wants people to buy in to their platform then they need something better than an across the board zero tolerance policy.
Let's be honest, nothing is 100% safe. If you decide to keep everything off of the cloud also has its own risks.
Either could be true...