Ask HN: Google Account Is Being Deleted
I am very careful to not do questionable things connected to my account like bad mouth on YouTube comments or anything at all that could risk my account so was freaking out for a second when this notification showed up today.
But once I opened the Gmail app and saw the email I learned it was not my main account but rather a different one. An account that apparently hasn't been used for such a long time that Google was now going to delete it. My main account is my name followed by a number @gmail.com. This other account was "mynameads@gmail.com". My main account was listed as the recovery email for this unknown account I did not create.
I guess my question is has this happened to anyone else before? My understanding is that for a recovery email you have to verify it but from what I found it is possible to skip this step but then it may not work.
So did someone put my email as a recovery email but not verify it or does this possibly mean someone had access to my account? I use a strong password over 15 characters long and don't use the same password on other sites.
How did this happen and should I do anything? Thank you for any insight you can provide.