Ask HN: Google just kicked me out of my account, no option to verify | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Google just kicked me out of my account, no option to verify

13 pointstr1ll10nb1ll16 comments

Earlier today, I got logged out from one of my devices (Macbook Pro ) on Chrome. I thought it was not a big deal so I tried signing in again but then it asked me to verify my phone number which I did not have at the moment, my phone's screen had just broken and it was gone for repair. Eventually, Google just gave up on my device when it even stopped asking me to verify. I tried clearing cookies, switching VPN on/off, restarting my system, using location spoof but literally nothing helped and now I'm just locked out of my own account on one of the devices. Not sure what to do next.

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I had something similar happen a few months ago (dead phone and no access to my backup email).

In the end, I had to put my simcard into a new phone and verify.

Sorry I can't be of more help right now with the access issue.

But, some advice from my lesson: EVACUATE FROM GMAIL IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT IN YOUR EMAILS.

Switch to an email account using a domain you own (and ideally use a paid email provider so you can at least contribute to them sticking around).

a domain you own is smart, but what will you do about storage ?

email or storage, I doubt that a paid service will be any better unless you are a big company.

Unfortunately, GSuite seems to be the way for it. I already have my company mail at GSuite so I've got lots of storage but well I think I should start looking into other options as well. Maybe Zoho Mail for emails and Mega.nz for cloud storage. But guess we'll see about that given Google does provide extensive support for GSuite so it shouldn't be as big of a problem as it is for the normal accounts. Most of all, for my personal account which is the one normally signed in everywhere, I'm switching it totally to iCloud with some parts still on Google however none of them being the ones I'm too reliant on.

Fair point.

My current setup for email storage is three fold:

* Fastmail's servers (30GB included).

* Local laptop. I have imap setup to automatically grab new emails, which are stored in a local email client.

* Automatic backups to s3. I automatically backup all "core data" folders on my laptop to s3 every afternoon.

I also backup everything on my local laptop to an external HDD every month.

What about paying for Google services? I do worry about my dependency on the GSuite, perhaps being a paid customer is the way to secure yourself a bit. Looks like the lowest paid tier is £15 a year, I should probably pay that!

Being a paid customer won't change googles paranoid attitude towards you.

Good plan. I use Fastmail with a personal domain and family account. Highly recommended.

Dropbox locked me out of my account.

I only have about $20k worth of dev work locked up in it, but it's gone.

Fuck dropbox.

do you have other device in which you used to login? if yes,try to verify through that system, google do fingerprint all your recently used devices and may allow you to login. other option is wait for your device repair or swap the sim in other device.

Well that's what I had to do. Got my spare phone while my primary phone was still out for repair.

while your phone is out for repair can you call the repair person and ask him to give you the code sent from google?

well that's the thing, Google isn't even asking for the verification code anymore. Somehow I'm still logged in on my other device, I'll use that as a sign of luck and migrate all of my data to a new account while I can. Will also try to rely less on Google for instance. Would also need to start receiving mails from my old email address. The worst part though, the moment I logged in with my new account to my old Macbook Pro, it treated it perfectly fine and rather said that my other device (the new Macbook Pro from which I was locked out in the first place) is suspicious or something without any rhyme or reason. I've checked all of my apps, extensions and everything, it's all legit. Guess Google simply sucks since it doesn't even provide customer support in this matter.

Google has customer support. You are a user, not a customer.

you have essentially vendor-lock-outed yourself. people love to keep multiple things in the same place but it creates a single point of failure.

iirc google requires another email as backup address for exactly this kind of situation. don't you have one set up instead of just a phone number?

I have actually, but for some reason Google kept asking for my phone number on the device from which the problem originated in the first place. I got a spare phone lying around and turned phone verification on from there to be able to login to my other devices. It's simply not safe to be using a Google Account without a mobile device by this logic. I have in turn decided to move away from Google, my Drive is now like 100 mb used cause of GMail which I have now forwarded to iCloud and am also just slowly changing my email everywhere I had signed up to my company mail or my personal iCloud mail. Relying totally on Google was the worst decision ever I suppose.

Backup address adds a "single point of failure".

I added both phone # and backup email to my gmail at some point, now I can't reset the gmail password because I only have access to the phone and incoming gmail messages and not the backup email.

Following your advice was exactly my mistake.

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