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Being locked out from google account is one of my biggest fears in practical computer usage. Over the years I can't even tell how much I'm sunk into using tiny

by szszrk 6y ago

Being locked out from google account is one of my biggest fears in practical computer usage. Over the years I can't even tell how much I'm sunk into using tiny pieces of google's services, even though for most crucial things I tend to omit google and look for alternatives that are easier to handle in problematic situation. Mail is one of the things I'm most worried about.

quickthrower2 6y ago
Do a google takeout ASAP if you haven’t done so already. This mitigates against data loss through being banned. You then just need to change your email in myriad places!
- viraptor 6y ago
  I went through this recently and... It's not actually as many as I thought. I've got 454 entries in bitwarden, but anything past 20 or so most common entries, I can completely ignore / wouldn't care if they disappeared.
- tjoff 6y ago
  You often need to have access to your email to be able to change email. And many services will be like, oh, haven't seen you in a while so we sent you this code to your email to verify it really is you. Do it now.
  - avh02 6y ago
    ebay's stupid about this. you can reset your password but then they'll still send you an SMS(!) to verify it's you when you try to use your successfully reset password. I no longer have access to that old number, i ditched that particular account cos it didn't mean much to me and opened a new one, wasn't worth the hassle.
grishka 6y ago
> Mail is one of the things I'm most worried about. Use an IMAP client. It would keep all your mail on your device, so at least you don't have to rely on having uninterrupted access to your account for your old conversations. Actually, I'm surprised just how many people use email through web interfaces for some reason.
- Tor3 6y ago
  Search and find old emails.. that's where gmail works. I guess that's why I keep using it. For work I use Thunderbird (the best of the bad alternatives), and search is horrible and extremely slow (and usually never find what I want to find). If I had something which was as easy as gmail for handling tens of thousands of emails I would switch.
  - Xylakant 6y ago
    You can use an imap client as “backup” and continue using the gmail web interface for day-to-day usage. Or the other way round, depending on how much you rely on gmaial search. There’s also a few mail backup tools that effectively let you create a local copy of your mails.
  - tjoff 6y ago
    People constantly bash on thunderbird search, when it is actually the opposite. Gmail will often fail on exact-match searches. Unbelievable frustrating and next to useless. Thunderbird is a bit clunky but does what you ask of it and has much better+simpler filtering options. Which makes sense, gmail is in the cloud so it can't perform intensive search queries because that would cost way to much. Thunderbird has a dedicated machine for it, no matter how old and slow it is it will have way more resources at hand than google will ever allocate to you, even if you pay.
    - hilbert42 6y ago
      I use Thunderbird but I only do so as it's the best of a bad lot (before that I used Eudora before Qualcomm dropped it - Eudora users know everything else is a letdown). Thunderbird has forks but they too need much work. The trouble with email started when free email was included in Windows thus taking the incentive away from development. Same goes for Thunderbird nowadays with free Gmail being available.
amanzi 6y ago
You can keep an offline copy of all your mail by using a mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird and leave it running while it downloads all mail through IMAP.
hilbert42 6y ago
As one who's never trusted my data to Google I really am curious why so many actually do so. Is the convenience truly that great that people are even prepared to gamble the loss of their data? Alternatively, why is it that some of us have always been mistrustful of Big Tech and most others not? They're completely opposite worldviews.
- camillomiller 6y ago
  It grows and compounds. I started using gmail an google a long time ago, when I was not enough of an expert and a big tech enthusiast. The Google cloud ecosystem has been ahead of its time for a long time. Now that alternatives are available and I understand the lock in risk, I am way too entrenched into the ecosystem to consider getting out as an easy and painless option.
- harel 6y ago
  Yes. The convenience is truly that great and the ratio of users to locked out users is large enough that I am prepared to gamble like that. We gamble all the time with any service we use or retailer we buy from.
  - hilbert42 6y ago
    OK, that's fine. But as I said elsewhere you should always be entitled to get your data back if you are locked out and the law should guarantee that entitlement.
    - harel 6y ago
      Absolutely. If we bring the law into it, one should also know why they are being locked out and have a valid human-lead channel to contest it. I'm in no way condoning what's going on sometimes. It's terrible.
      - hilbert42 6y ago
        Fully agree. The law should also enforce an arbitration process onto Big Tech at it's expense (it can afford it as it's selling user's info). Moreover, those arbitrators ought to be independent of Big Tech.
swiley 6y ago
There's surprisingly little you truly need a google account for. Gmail was one of the last things I hadn't moved before I was locked out of my Gmail account because of their bad password reset heuristic. Thankfully I had it set up to forward to my own domain.

by szszrk 6y ago

quickthrower2 6y ago

Do a google takeout ASAP if you haven’t done so already. This mitigates against data loss through being banned. You then just need to change your email in myriad places!

viraptor 6y ago
I went through this recently and... It's not actually as many as I thought. I've got 454 entries in bitwarden, but anything past 20 or so most common entries, I can completely ignore / wouldn't care if they disappeared.
tjoff 6y ago
You often need to have access to your email to be able to change email. And many services will be like, oh, haven't seen you in a while so we sent you this code to your email to verify it really is you. Do it now.
- avh02 6y ago
  ebay's stupid about this. you can reset your password but then they'll still send you an SMS(!) to verify it's you when you try to use your successfully reset password. I no longer have access to that old number, i ditched that particular account cos it didn't mean much to me and opened a new one, wasn't worth the hassle.

grishka 6y ago

> Mail is one of the things I'm most worried about. Use an IMAP client. It would keep all your mail on your device, so at least you don't have to rely on having uninterrupted access to your account for your old conversations. Actually, I'm surprised just how many people use email through web interfaces for some reason.

Tor3 6y ago
Search and find old emails.. that's where gmail works. I guess that's why I keep using it. For work I use Thunderbird (the best of the bad alternatives), and search is horrible and extremely slow (and usually never find what I want to find). If I had something which was as easy as gmail for handling tens of thousands of emails I would switch.
- Xylakant 6y ago
  You can use an imap client as “backup” and continue using the gmail web interface for day-to-day usage. Or the other way round, depending on how much you rely on gmaial search. There’s also a few mail backup tools that effectively let you create a local copy of your mails.
- tjoff 6y ago
  People constantly bash on thunderbird search, when it is actually the opposite. Gmail will often fail on exact-match searches. Unbelievable frustrating and next to useless. Thunderbird is a bit clunky but does what you ask of it and has much better+simpler filtering options. Which makes sense, gmail is in the cloud so it can't perform intensive search queries because that would cost way to much. Thunderbird has a dedicated machine for it, no matter how old and slow it is it will have way more resources at hand than google will ever allocate to you, even if you pay.
  - hilbert42 6y ago
    I use Thunderbird but I only do so as it's the best of a bad lot (before that I used Eudora before Qualcomm dropped it - Eudora users know everything else is a letdown). Thunderbird has forks but they too need much work. The trouble with email started when free email was included in Windows thus taking the incentive away from development. Same goes for Thunderbird nowadays with free Gmail being available.

amanzi 6y ago

You can keep an offline copy of all your mail by using a mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird and leave it running while it downloads all mail through IMAP.

hilbert42 6y ago

As one who's never trusted my data to Google I really am curious why so many actually do so. Is the convenience truly that great that people are even prepared to gamble the loss of their data? Alternatively, why is it that some of us have always been mistrustful of Big Tech and most others not? They're completely opposite worldviews.

camillomiller 6y ago
It grows and compounds. I started using gmail an google a long time ago, when I was not enough of an expert and a big tech enthusiast. The Google cloud ecosystem has been ahead of its time for a long time. Now that alternatives are available and I understand the lock in risk, I am way too entrenched into the ecosystem to consider getting out as an easy and painless option.
harel 6y ago
Yes. The convenience is truly that great and the ratio of users to locked out users is large enough that I am prepared to gamble like that. We gamble all the time with any service we use or retailer we buy from.
- hilbert42 6y ago
  OK, that's fine. But as I said elsewhere you should always be entitled to get your data back if you are locked out and the law should guarantee that entitlement.
  - harel 6y ago
    Absolutely. If we bring the law into it, one should also know why they are being locked out and have a valid human-lead channel to contest it. I'm in no way condoning what's going on sometimes. It's terrible.
    - hilbert42 6y ago
      Fully agree. The law should also enforce an arbitration process onto Big Tech at it's expense (it can afford it as it's selling user's info). Moreover, those arbitrators ought to be independent of Big Tech.

swiley 6y ago

There's surprisingly little you truly need a google account for. Gmail was one of the last things I hadn't moved before I was locked out of my Gmail account because of their bad password reset heuristic. Thankfully I had it set up to forward to my own domain.