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Comment by cube00 | Hacker News Reader

> You have to consider that the user base of Google accounts is in the billions.

Basing your security decisions on "it'll never happen to me" because there are billions of other users who will get burnt first is not a wise strategy either.

Why take the chance when there are so many other alternatives that let you own your vault or at least companies that still have some semblance of a support team.

Losing a decade of my Google Maps Timeline data even with backups enabled made me realise I may not be lucky enough to win the lottery but I am lucky enough for Google to pick little old me, hidden in the billions, to lose my data.

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> Basing your security decisions on "it'll never happen to me" because there are billions of other users who will get burnt first

That's not my argument. My argument is that your evidence that Google is uniquely bad at locking people out of their accounts is not good evidence. A few stories in the news represents a beyond negligible fraction of billions of user accounts.

> A few stories in the news represents a beyond negligible fraction of billions of user accounts.

https://support.google.com/accounts/threads?thread_filter=(c...

How many times do you have to click "View more" to reach a post from last week? It's a problem.

The repeated advice from the "diamond product experts" says it all:

If you can't recover your account using Google's automated recovery process, the account is lost. [1]

Personally I thought I was OK because I had a recovery email set but what Google doesn't tell you is they outright refuse to even send a recovery email if you don't use a device, browser and same wifi they've seen before. [2]. At the time I was all in on Gmail so it was an especially sobering experience.

I accept it's a hard problem to protect that many accounts, but to dismiss it as a "few stories" is understating the problem and diminishes the terrifying experience all these users are having.

[1]: https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/453660883/locked-...

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleSupport/comments/1ps28fn/coul...

Those complaints aren't Google arbitrarily or maliciously locking accounts. They are mostly people who forgot their password and also simultaneously lost their sim card and phone number and recovery email and backup codes etc etc. Google provides excellent features to prevent this from happening and I have already taken advantage so that I won't simultaneously lose access to all my recovery options. You also have no way of knowing how many of those complaints are from scammers trying to compromise accounts, and if you think that isn't a gigantic problem in support forums you are fooling yourself.

You don't have any accurate data to support your suspicion that Google is worse than others, only anecdotes and vibes. The true source of your fear is a generalized mistrust of big tech relative to other institutions, which while common and popular these days is not a sentiment I share.

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