>My conclusion - have two physical phones + laptop all synced, plus hardcopy of important pswds etc.
Why do you need more than a single phone plus a hardcopy of your Google recovery codes (assuming you know your Google account password)?
Why do you need more than a single phone plus a hardcopy of your Google recovery codes (assuming you know your Google account password)?
Society was collectively sold this deal where if you entrust everything to a trillion-dollar company, you'll be treated well and this sort of thing wouldn't happen. Yet it appears to be happening, and the trillion-dollar company that has the resources to deal with this so far isn't being very helpful, and it's falling to the consumer to take insane amounts of proactive measures to not have their digital lives fucked up when the exact deal was that you wouldn't have to, but of course now the party line will be "well you were obviously stupid to believe the trillion-dollar company's trillion-dollar marketing, then."
And I'm annoyed as one of the people who did not buy into it.
Because, as I can tell from a similar experience to GP's, they also won't save you if the authentication infrastructure decides you're not who you say you are.
- I have my recovery codes
- I have access to my recovery email address
- I have access to a TOTP token
I would hope this is sufficient to persuade Google's authentication infrastructure to let me in.