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Comment by qingcharles | Hacker News Reader

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself.

Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

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Ideas:

(1) sign up for Google Workspace subscription and then log a support ticket saying you want to migrate your old account to Workspace

(2) hire a lawyer and get them to write a letter to Google asking nicely. If that doesn’t work, you could have the lawyer escalate to threatening a lawsuit, filing a lawsuit, subpoenaing the account contents, asking for a court order that Google give you access to the account, etc - even if it turns out the law is on Google’s side not yours, they may decide to fold just to make the issue go away

(3) contact a journalist. Since you are a former prisoner, you’d need to find one with appropriate sympathies (pro-criminal justice reform, etc). If they make enough bad PR for Google, they may give you back your account in response. Probably depends also on what your conviction was, since some offenders the public finds it easier to sympathise with than others

None of those methods is guaranteed to work, but they all have potential. It really depends on how much you want that account back, and how much time and money are you willing to spend on it

Let me start with number one and see what happens. The frustrating thing is I swear I set a recovery email. I actually still get all the email that arrive in the account as it has a forward rule to another email address I have access to.

You may be able to use this fact to your advantage if you can get someone to pay attention. Ask them to send a confirmation code to the old email and then produce it

How do u unexpectedly go to jail for 10 years?

Well I doubt they expected to get caught ;)

For example you are in Russia and are accused of being a US spy as retaliation.

I understand that 2FA is good but it can also be annoying when you've forgotten the email backup.

Right, a lot of times when people push for increased security measures they omit the cost.

Surely there was some buildup to it :)

"Unexpectedly" in this context might be referring to the actual event in which they traveled from their home to their cell, in which case the unexpected nature could easily prevent them from securing the Google account.

I hardly think it matters anyway. Take out "unexpectedly" and their complaint is exactly the same. Suggesting that someone who went to jail shoulda/coulda/woulda taken steps to avoid being locked out of their Google account is not practically different from victim-blaming.

It's very easy to be arrested, denied bond, be convicted, and serve your time, without ever leaving the jail/prison system. Especially if you're poor.

This. I am a British citizen living in the USA so I waited nine and half years in custody to go to trial.

That’s horrific, and the actual sentence was 6 months+ time served or you ended up winning at trial? Is it bec only US citizens are protected by the constitution’s promise of a speedy trial?

> only US citizens are protected by the constitution’s promise of a speedy trial?

US citizens aren't really protected by that promise either.

Why did it take so long?

This is very common in the US justice system. There's a general institutional apathy or sometimes even vindictiveness that causes random delays to get to trial. If you don't have the money for bond, don't have someone to pay, or a bondsman wont cover you, you just stay in jail.

Every year multiple people die in prison from preventable causes without ever being sentenced.

This is why bail reform is important. A well-off person can pay-away the bond and prepare to defend themselves. A poor person will be stuck, lose their job, home, important documents, pets, etc all before being found guilty. If they're found not-guilty, its simply their fault for being poor or being in the wrong place at the wrong time and there's zero recourse for these people having their life basically lit ablaze. Please don't take the anti-bail reform propaganda at face value, for every terrible outlier case, there are hundreds of people who don't have their life grenaded over a small charge.

Making people desperate is an easy way to increase crime.

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