13 ms·

When you get locked out of your Google account, what do you do? (2021)

194 points by cube00 5y ago

metalforever 5y ago
I had this happen before and I was asked a bunch of obscure questions such as the month the acct was opened. They restored access but it took a few months.
abbabon 5y ago
Soooooo the main take here is to not put all your eggs in Google One basket?
frfl 5y ago
Post on Hacker News or Twitter for customer support.
- djbusby 5y ago
  Looks like LinkedIn is in the mix. Hat-Trick!
  - taneq 5y ago
    Step 1: Be important enough that your causing a stink gets attention.
- kurthr 5y ago
  Nope. As the article says... contact the FTC to port the phone number since they (or their supplier) are in violation of law... get response within a day and number ported within 30 days.
taneq 5y ago
Think hard about this question now and start working on reducing your reliance on any such freely registered online account. That goes a hundredfold for the email account you use as a recovery address.
rolph 5y ago
TLDR: associate a VIOP number with your google sphere, so when it happens, file an FCC complaint re undue termination of telephonic service. it seems this was the only thing that elicited a proper response. reading the article and google response to FCC complaint makes it evident, that google is full of it as far as "we cant do anything about it" is concerned. the only problem i see is that it seems the complaint was dropped or left orphan, rather than followed up on. thats why google keeps on doing it because there are no real consequences other than being told to Give it Back. it reminds me of when one kid swipes a toy out of anothers hands and keeps doing it because there is no real deterrent in play. dont drop your FCC complaint, follow up on it.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  I would completely unsurprised if Google kills off Voice specifically because there's a regulator who makes them provide customer support and they'd rather not.
  - usrn 5y ago
    jmp.chat is better anyway and doesn't randomly kill your account.
- woliveirajr 5y ago
  (2021) After the response, the best thing would be to sue Google, of course. Not once, Not for big values. One small cause for each small annoyance. Not at the same time nor the same jurisdiction. Then read all the defences they make and mix then among the causes. If their system is so fragmented that they can't deal with your original problem of losing acess to your account, so they'll have trouble finding the pieces to defend themselves. And if they can find, even better, use it as a proof that they can connect the dots when they want to. IANALITUSOA
- borgbean 5y ago
  It sounds like they responded to the complaint by unlocking the number, allowing her to port it out. Not by restoring her access. Not much of a deterrent.
bbkane 5y ago
What a nightmare. I really should start migrating from GMail to something else (or at least use my own domain in front of it).
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  Just do it! You'll have to choose anyway if you are one of the many folk here who use(d) a grandfathered free Google workspace plan with your own domain: it ends on June 1st, or thereabouts, and you'll be shunted into a paid plan (although there seems to be a waiting list for a free plan). I did it last week. I signed up for Fastmail, followed their excellent documentation, and now only have a mandatory (new) Google account for a few apps in the Play Store that are not available anywhere else (but nothing paid). If I lose access to my Google account, I lose nothing. My Fastmail migration basically went like this: * Clean up mailbox, truncate mailing list folders. * Copy mail to Fastmail using their importer. * Change domain settings at your domain host (changing MX-records and a bunch of others); mail now goes to Fastmail. * Set up mail and calendars in Thunderbird on Ubuntu and K-9 Mail on GrapheneOS.
  - stuff4ben 5y ago
    The setting up part is easy. It's migrating user logins, subscriptions, and everything else tied to your GMail account that takes time and energy. Someone really aught to create a migrator app to get people off GMail and do the hard stuff.
    - ComradePhil 5y ago
      I dedicated most part of a day to migrate most of the subscription to a new email. Iirc, it took me more than 8+ hours.
    - hyperman1 5y ago
      This might actually be a great service for fastmail et al to provide: after you import old mailboxes, they should scan them for signup mails and show you a list with to migrate accounts i.e. red marks. After migrating an account, they know it, as they can scan your mail. Slowly, each red mark on your dashboard gets replaced with a green mark.
everyone 5y ago
Make a new one.
- rolph 5y ago
  before you make a new one you probably need to reinstal, or scrub the OS for google bugs, replace the NIC, and get a new router, new modem, new ISP with a new, pseudonymous/business account. you might be able to evade google fingerprinting if you do all these things. it would not surprise me if google pays to be allowed to crawl everything that touches google for even one tick, so they may still connect the dots when the AI sees a browser activity graph just like your last one. Who knows how well a VPN my hide your breadcrumbs, i just avoid making accounts with google or letting any overt analytics through my browser.
wereHamster 5y ago
Google's response… «We are disappointed that […] experienced […] difficulties […]»… ah stfu, you are lying, you are not at all disappointed. They also show no intention at all to find out what happened so they can improve their internal processes. Working as intended…
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
_fat_santa 5y ago
After reading stories like this, I've moved to "single purpose" accounts with Google. I have a youtube account, firebase account and a google analytics account, and all of them are seperate from one another. My hope here is if google shuts down a single account, I only loose access to what that account did.
- taneq 5y ago
  Hope you're running all the up-to-the-minute anti-fingerprinting you can find. For a long while any time I went to YouTube even in a private window they'd ask me to log in under my old Google account that I hadn't used on that computer for years. It was creepy as hell and I'm still not sure if they've stopped because they can no longer associate that account with that computer or if they're just confident enough now not to ask.
- kazinator 5y ago
  "Google containers"
- bovermyer 5y ago
  I read somewhere on HN in the last couple months that Google is prone to banning/deleting accounts that it thinks are associated with accounts it bans, so I would not do this.
  - favourable 5y ago
    I think Google allows 3-4 accounts since it's common for families to all use Gmail, so they're lenient in that regard. Obviously, creating 10 accounts with 10 Twilio numbers would arouse suspicion and those accounts would be swiftly banned.
    - bovermyer 5y ago
      Multiple accounts are allowed, sure. That's not the issue. The issue is trying to use multiple accounts as a kind of loss mitigation strategy. If Google knows about your multiple accounts, and one of them gets banned, they're _all_ at risk of getting banned just for being associated with the one.
kazinator 5y ago
> She said that the recovery team is allusive Accidentally apt malapropism/typo? They keep alluding to the idea that there may be something that can be done, but it remains illusive. :)
- breischl 5y ago
  I assumed that she meant "elusive", but it could also be "illusive" in the sense that it's merely an illusion. :P
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    allusive (adj): 1. Containing or characterized by indirect references. 2. Figurative; symbolical. 3. Having reference to something not fully expressed; containing an allusion. 4. Containing or making use of indirect references or hints. 5. characterized by indirect references Sounds about right for Google tech support really. I'll allow it.
waynesonfire 5y ago
create a business account so you have support.
tempnow987 5y ago
Hahah. Some stories like these. My elderly parents were on google forever. Forgot password because they'd just stayed logged in. What was weird is even though they had a recovery email (mine) that we were able to get a code too google had a second check - a requirement to TEXT a code to the phone number on the account. Unfortunately my elderly parents had put a landline phone down - which doesn't accept text messages. I gave google the benefit of the doubt on that, because they'd actually forgotten the password. More seriously, I was doing an apps setup (way way back) for a nonprofit. They give you a weird temp email domain, then you port in your domain etc etc. Some issue (no fault of ours) got the state stuck in a doomloop. Even though it was a paid service, there was no support. I contrast that with AWS. Fine support on store side and on compute side in my experience.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  In this case I'd consider Google Workspace. It costs, but it gives you ironclad control over the accounts, and your parents won't lose access to their accounts no matter what they do. As a bonus, Workspace is sold by partners, so you contact actual humans if Google does anything weird.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    Yeah I agree - this is the real comparison to AWS. You have to pay for AWS which is mostly a professional service (even if there are free aspects) vs Google services that are mostly all free. In my professional experience the support for Workspace has been excellent. Luckily I have never had to contact their support for my personal stuff.
favourable 5y ago
I propose Google Human™, a new service that gets you in contact with a Google support person, where you pay a rate of $5.00/mo to get premium Human™ support services, so you can get back into your account without having to yell over social media in an outrage and 'escalate' your issue to Google employees over Hackernews or Twitter.
- stuff4ben 5y ago
  To be deprecated and sunset within 2 years for no apparent reason.
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    And partially replaced by a new product, Sapiens™, which includes some of the same features but not all of them.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      And, in particular, not the ones you relied on.
- nosianu 5y ago
  Too bad low-level support workers cannot do anything. All they will be able to do is read the AI-auto-generated text to you and answer your questions by reading from the prepared responses. You pay for having a human read to you what the computer system produced. For supporters to be cheap and exchangeable (for the business) they are bound to executing the prepared algorithm and script without option to deviate. Often they cannot even access relevant information about you, never mind updating anything in the database. To get someone able to actually make decisions, especially when they are against a measure the system automatically put in place following its programmed or AI-.derived rules, you need to go at least two levels higher. Even "managers" often - usually? - only have digression within pre-determined possibilities and scenarios. It's going to be like this: https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430 https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430
jeroenhd 5y ago
Putting any Google service connected to your account as a recovery method for your Google account seems like a problem to me. I don't know why the author didn't get any alternative recovery options if they had those configured like they said, but this is a good reason to only enter external services as any kind of contact or recovery mechanism. Worryingly, after the whole ordeal the author still seems to choose to rely on their Google account now as much as before this all happened. It's kind of a miracle they got through to Google in the first place and it definitely won't happen again; it worries me that this post doesn't end with "and that's why I split my life across separate dedicated services". It feels like the author learned This One Cool Trick instead of the underlying lesson, which is that Google (or Apple, or Microsoft, or any big provider) cannot be trusted to not randomly cut you off without warning.
- jmuguy 5y ago
  I kind of hope she reached that conclusion but just didn't include that in the post. In particular having your primary phone and email tied to Google is just a bad idea, period. They do not care. They do not have the capacity to care, by design.
- user3939382 5y ago
  Unfortunately even doing everything right is no guarantee. I have Google accounts that Google will not let me into even though I have the correct password because it requires a connection from the same network as past logins, which are in places I no longer live. I've read accounts from others in the identical situation. My answer to this is that I've completely moved off of Google except for an account I use for YouTube/Maps access that I could painlessly lose.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    Yup, I'm in the same boat. I have no "past logins" because VPN, so haven't been able to access my Google accounts for years.
    - guessmyname 5y ago
rdl 5y ago
I think for most people on HN the answer is "contact a friend who works at Google"; I don't know the general solution.
- yreg 5y ago
  And hope the ai didn’t ban your account with one of the reasons no one wants to touch.
adamc 5y ago
Good reminder that I need to migrate my data away from Google. They are notorious for terrible customer support. I'd rather pay someone competent.
Melatonic 5y ago
I have considered paying for a personal GSuite account partially because of this - I use my Google account for a lot of MFA stuff so it is fairly critical to things I do. At work we have a corporate account and their support is pretty solid (especially the chat support - I seem to get someone very quickly and they are way better than your typical tier 1 drone). I get that people are upset over this but are we REALLY surprised that we get shit support for a FREE service? They also have a separate site / login / forum for proposing new ideas, bugs, etc etc that you can use if you have an actual corporate account (strangely it requires creating a separate login and password). I have found that using this forum you can also get some decent support for weird issues or bugs or suggestions (sometimes from other users as well).
wrren 5y ago
This is one reason why I decided to switch to ProtonMail a couple of years ago as the account backing most of my internet services. Given that I pay them money, I figure they’re at least somewhat invested in keeping me happy as a customer. Google clearly don’t give a shit.
- niuzeta 5y ago
  I'm thinking of doing this and I haven't yet figured out how to migrate all the accounts I have associated with my GMail account. Do you have any suggestion/tips for a fellow potential immigratnt? :)
  - peepop6 5y ago
    I moved to Tutanota and what I did is forward all my Gmail emails to my Tutanota email. It made it much easier to switch because I could immediately start using Tutanota and then migrate my accounts overtime to eventually delete Google completely.
steveylang 5y ago
I got locked out of my Gmail over a decade ago when it was just another webmail service (but with 1GB of free storage.) I believe there was some sort of unauthorized log in attempt, I couldn't find any answers or get any help from Google until I started googling for random Google employees and found a phone number for one. He was a bit put off by getting my rando phone call, but I explained my predicament and he took the time to look into it and helped get my account restored. Thanks Google engineer guy! This probably doesn't work in 2022 though. ;-)
aliceryhl 5y ago
Have anyone actually tried to file a lawsuit to get Google's attention in a case like this?
sayhello 5y ago
When I was a Google employee, I helped a friend go through their account lockout issue. It was because they used MFA to a phone number, but later changed their phone number, which made them unable to login. He tried so many times that some velocity threshold was hit, further limiting the possibilities. My friend needed to respond to some interview scheduling, so, it was a stressful situation. Part of the problem was that it was hard for my friend to find a way to create a support ticket. He did in the end and got in a line of communication via an alternate email. There were many miscommunications from both my friend and the support agent. While Account Recovery or even basic identification are hard to navigate for technically-minded folks, it's even more challenging for non-technical folks, including the support agent. In the end, I got in touch with the support person, helped translate what they wanted to know to my friend, and likewise, translated what my friend was saying in a way that the support person could understand. I don't think I was able to see the support ticket itself, because of PII restrictions. In the end, my friend was able to restore service. I doubt he'd have been able to without my support in time to respond to the interview scheduling. It still took a couple of days.
- muh_gradle 5y ago
  This was more or less my exact same scenario as well. MFA with an old phone number makes account recovery from Google about close to impossible. I had a friend who worked at Google that was able to create a support ticket for me. Before talking to my friend, every single customer service support rep more or less confirmed that I was completely SOL. It is the reason why I have transitioned from Google.
  - arubania2 5y ago
    But if you’re changing phone numbers, why don’t you just set the new one in your Google account while you still have access to the old one? Also wouldn’t backup codes help in this scenario?
    - muh_gradle 5y ago
      I moved countries and lost access to my old phone number. I didn't account for my Google MFA during the move.
psanford 5y ago
I wonder what happens if you have no recovery methods enabled on your account?
DarkSucker 5y ago
> I'm not the type to get bitchy with customer service reps. I've managed teams that do that job, and I know how scripted their support has to be. "has to be" burns. It could be different. Why is a script essential? These support scripts drive me crazy. I would probably melt down in the OP's case. Answers like "they allow less skilled first line workers" don't count because one could hire skillful people to solve problems on first contact.
- Justsignedup 5y ago
  Recently we had to deal with amazon. And we try not to Karen when we call any customer support. But man does the getting audibly angry and asking for a manager actually get the ball rolling. There's a reason people do this, and the reason is because companies don't care until you show some anger.
guru4consulting 5y ago
May be Google can have trusted contacts to help the account recovery. If I set-up 5 trusted contacts, all of them would receive different temp passwords and the temp passwords from at least 3 would be necessary to recover. The only risk is 3 out of 5 trusted contacts getting compromised at the same time or 3 of them colluding which again is unlikely with trusted contacts.
Tozen 5y ago
Google is a monster that people should know not to trust. Better to not use a Google account for anything serious or unless you really have to. Even then, expect and prepare for the worse. Way too many, "Google locked me out.", stories.
gigglesupstairs 5y ago
Considering how much our digital lives are interwoven with our real lives, who will be held responsible if someone takes their life in shear helplessness basis Google’s absolutely thoughtless and inhuman actions and unresponsiveness in the wake of them? It might seem hyperbole but it isn’t. Who is to say it hasn’t already happened?
johnklos 5y ago
Google is just one of many companies that are too big to actually communicate (like Verizon, AT&T, Amazon, Microsoft) and have to be forced to do anything if you're not paying them tons of $$$. They do what they want. If your livelihood is tied to your email / phone, then you really should consider a company with which you can communicate.
amf12 5y ago
> And since Google Voice is my main phone number, There are enough comments about Google supports, so I won't comment on that. OP however has worked in tech for 20 years, yet made a very naive mistake - circular dependency, so to speak. They used a VOIP number from the same account as the recovery phone number.
jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
The real lesson to me is don't use a Google Voice (or probably any carrier) number as a recovery for anything too important. An attacker can just contact the FCC to threaten your carrier into releasing the number to be ported without you authorizing it.
jesprenj 5y ago
I'm going to be 18 this week and I'm concerned of Google having more power over my personal data et cetera. I've already migrated everything (mail, chat, storage, ...) to a self hosted server at home, but I can't delete my Google account because I paid 25 $ for the Google Play developer account, and I don't want to lose access to that. Is there any way to use the developer account without a Google account?
slowhand09 5y ago
"We've been trying to reach you about your Google Account Extended Access Warranty". To unlock your account, please enter the code in the email we sent you.

194 points by cube00 5y ago

I had this happen before and I was asked a bunch of obscure questions such as the month the acct was opened. They restored access but it took a few months.

abbabon 5y ago

Soooooo the main take here is to not put all your eggs in Google One basket?

frfl 5y ago

Post on Hacker News or Twitter for customer support.

djbusby 5y ago
Looks like LinkedIn is in the mix. Hat-Trick!
- taneq 5y ago
  Step 1: Be important enough that your causing a stink gets attention.
kurthr 5y ago
Nope. As the article says... contact the FTC to port the phone number since they (or their supplier) are in violation of law... get response within a day and number ported within 30 days.

taneq 5y ago

Think hard about this question now and start working on reducing your reliance on any such freely registered online account. That goes a hundredfold for the email account you use as a recovery address.

rolph 5y ago

TLDR: associate a VIOP number with your google sphere, so when it happens, file an FCC complaint re undue termination of telephonic service. it seems this was the only thing that elicited a proper response. reading the article and google response to FCC complaint makes it evident, that google is full of it as far as "we cant do anything about it" is concerned. the only problem i see is that it seems the complaint was dropped or left orphan, rather than followed up on. thats why google keeps on doing it because there are no real consequences other than being told to Give it Back. it reminds me of when one kid swipes a toy out of anothers hands and keeps doing it because there is no real deterrent in play. dont drop your FCC complaint, follow up on it.

wlesieutre 5y ago
I would completely unsurprised if Google kills off Voice specifically because there's a regulator who makes them provide customer support and they'd rather not.
- usrn 5y ago
  jmp.chat is better anyway and doesn't randomly kill your account.
woliveirajr 5y ago
(2021) After the response, the best thing would be to sue Google, of course. Not once, Not for big values. One small cause for each small annoyance. Not at the same time nor the same jurisdiction. Then read all the defences they make and mix then among the causes. If their system is so fragmented that they can't deal with your original problem of losing acess to your account, so they'll have trouble finding the pieces to defend themselves. And if they can find, even better, use it as a proof that they can connect the dots when they want to. IANALITUSOA
borgbean 5y ago
It sounds like they responded to the complaint by unlocking the number, allowing her to port it out. Not by restoring her access. Not much of a deterrent.

bbkane 5y ago

What a nightmare. I really should start migrating from GMail to something else (or at least use my own domain in front of it).

Freak_NL 5y ago
Just do it! You'll have to choose anyway if you are one of the many folk here who use(d) a grandfathered free Google workspace plan with your own domain: it ends on June 1st, or thereabouts, and you'll be shunted into a paid plan (although there seems to be a waiting list for a free plan). I did it last week. I signed up for Fastmail, followed their excellent documentation, and now only have a mandatory (new) Google account for a few apps in the Play Store that are not available anywhere else (but nothing paid). If I lose access to my Google account, I lose nothing. My Fastmail migration basically went like this: * Clean up mailbox, truncate mailing list folders. * Copy mail to Fastmail using their importer. * Change domain settings at your domain host (changing MX-records and a bunch of others); mail now goes to Fastmail. * Set up mail and calendars in Thunderbird on Ubuntu and K-9 Mail on GrapheneOS.
- stuff4ben 5y ago
  The setting up part is easy. It's migrating user logins, subscriptions, and everything else tied to your GMail account that takes time and energy. Someone really aught to create a migrator app to get people off GMail and do the hard stuff.
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    I dedicated most part of a day to migrate most of the subscription to a new email. Iirc, it took me more than 8+ hours.
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    This might actually be a great service for fastmail et al to provide: after you import old mailboxes, they should scan them for signup mails and show you a list with to migrate accounts i.e. red marks. After migrating an account, they know it, as they can scan your mail. Slowly, each red mark on your dashboard gets replaced with a green mark.

everyone 5y ago

Make a new one.

rolph 5y ago
before you make a new one you probably need to reinstal, or scrub the OS for google bugs, replace the NIC, and get a new router, new modem, new ISP with a new, pseudonymous/business account. you might be able to evade google fingerprinting if you do all these things. it would not surprise me if google pays to be allowed to crawl everything that touches google for even one tick, so they may still connect the dots when the AI sees a browser activity graph just like your last one. Who knows how well a VPN my hide your breadcrumbs, i just avoid making accounts with google or letting any overt analytics through my browser.

wereHamster 5y ago

Google's response… «We are disappointed that […] experienced […] difficulties […]»… ah stfu, you are lying, you are not at all disappointed. They also show no intention at all to find out what happened so they can improve their internal processes. Working as intended…

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

_fat_santa 5y ago

After reading stories like this, I've moved to "single purpose" accounts with Google. I have a youtube account, firebase account and a google analytics account, and all of them are seperate from one another. My hope here is if google shuts down a single account, I only loose access to what that account did.

taneq 5y ago
Hope you're running all the up-to-the-minute anti-fingerprinting you can find. For a long while any time I went to YouTube even in a private window they'd ask me to log in under my old Google account that I hadn't used on that computer for years. It was creepy as hell and I'm still not sure if they've stopped because they can no longer associate that account with that computer or if they're just confident enough now not to ask.
kazinator 5y ago
"Google containers"
bovermyer 5y ago
I read somewhere on HN in the last couple months that Google is prone to banning/deleting accounts that it thinks are associated with accounts it bans, so I would not do this.
- favourable 5y ago
  I think Google allows 3-4 accounts since it's common for families to all use Gmail, so they're lenient in that regard. Obviously, creating 10 accounts with 10 Twilio numbers would arouse suspicion and those accounts would be swiftly banned.
  - bovermyer 5y ago
    Multiple accounts are allowed, sure. That's not the issue. The issue is trying to use multiple accounts as a kind of loss mitigation strategy. If Google knows about your multiple accounts, and one of them gets banned, they're _all_ at risk of getting banned just for being associated with the one.

kazinator 5y ago

> She said that the recovery team is allusive Accidentally apt malapropism/typo? They keep alluding to the idea that there may be something that can be done, but it remains illusive. :)

breischl 5y ago
I assumed that she meant "elusive", but it could also be "illusive" in the sense that it's merely an illusion. :P
- lamontcg 5y ago
  allusive (adj): 1. Containing or characterized by indirect references. 2. Figurative; symbolical. 3. Having reference to something not fully expressed; containing an allusion. 4. Containing or making use of indirect references or hints. 5. characterized by indirect references Sounds about right for Google tech support really. I'll allow it.

waynesonfire 5y ago

create a business account so you have support.

tempnow987 5y ago

Hahah. Some stories like these. My elderly parents were on google forever. Forgot password because they'd just stayed logged in. What was weird is even though they had a recovery email (mine) that we were able to get a code too google had a second check - a requirement to TEXT a code to the phone number on the account. Unfortunately my elderly parents had put a landline phone down - which doesn't accept text messages. I gave google the benefit of the doubt on that, because they'd actually forgotten the password. More seriously, I was doing an apps setup (way way back) for a nonprofit. They give you a weird temp email domain, then you port in your domain etc etc. Some issue (no fault of ours) got the state stuck in a doomloop. Even though it was a paid service, there was no support. I contrast that with AWS. Fine support on store side and on compute side in my experience.

ASalazarMX 5y ago
In this case I'd consider Google Workspace. It costs, but it gives you ironclad control over the accounts, and your parents won't lose access to their accounts no matter what they do. As a bonus, Workspace is sold by partners, so you contact actual humans if Google does anything weird.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  Yeah I agree - this is the real comparison to AWS. You have to pay for AWS which is mostly a professional service (even if there are free aspects) vs Google services that are mostly all free. In my professional experience the support for Workspace has been excellent. Luckily I have never had to contact their support for my personal stuff.

favourable 5y ago

I propose Google Human™, a new service that gets you in contact with a Google support person, where you pay a rate of $5.00/mo to get premium Human™ support services, so you can get back into your account without having to yell over social media in an outrage and 'escalate' your issue to Google employees over Hackernews or Twitter.

stuff4ben 5y ago
To be deprecated and sunset within 2 years for no apparent reason.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  And partially replaced by a new product, Sapiens™, which includes some of the same features but not all of them.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    And, in particular, not the ones you relied on.
nosianu 5y ago
Too bad low-level support workers cannot do anything. All they will be able to do is read the AI-auto-generated text to you and answer your questions by reading from the prepared responses. You pay for having a human read to you what the computer system produced. For supporters to be cheap and exchangeable (for the business) they are bound to executing the prepared algorithm and script without option to deviate. Often they cannot even access relevant information about you, never mind updating anything in the database. To get someone able to actually make decisions, especially when they are against a measure the system automatically put in place following its programmed or AI-.derived rules, you need to go at least two levels higher. Even "managers" often - usually? - only have digression within pre-determined possibilities and scenarios. It's going to be like this: https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430 https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430

jeroenhd 5y ago

Putting any Google service connected to your account as a recovery method for your Google account seems like a problem to me. I don't know why the author didn't get any alternative recovery options if they had those configured like they said, but this is a good reason to only enter external services as any kind of contact or recovery mechanism. Worryingly, after the whole ordeal the author still seems to choose to rely on their Google account now as much as before this all happened. It's kind of a miracle they got through to Google in the first place and it definitely won't happen again; it worries me that this post doesn't end with "and that's why I split my life across separate dedicated services". It feels like the author learned This One Cool Trick instead of the underlying lesson, which is that Google (or Apple, or Microsoft, or any big provider) cannot be trusted to not randomly cut you off without warning.

jmuguy 5y ago
I kind of hope she reached that conclusion but just didn't include that in the post. In particular having your primary phone and email tied to Google is just a bad idea, period. They do not care. They do not have the capacity to care, by design.
user3939382 5y ago
Unfortunately even doing everything right is no guarantee. I have Google accounts that Google will not let me into even though I have the correct password because it requires a connection from the same network as past logins, which are in places I no longer live. I've read accounts from others in the identical situation. My answer to this is that I've completely moved off of Google except for an account I use for YouTube/Maps access that I could painlessly lose.
- medstrom 5y ago
  Yup, I'm in the same boat. I have no "past logins" because VPN, so haven't been able to access my Google accounts for years.
  - guessmyname 5y ago

rdl 5y ago

I think for most people on HN the answer is "contact a friend who works at Google"; I don't know the general solution.

yreg 5y ago
And hope the ai didn’t ban your account with one of the reasons no one wants to touch.

adamc 5y ago

Good reminder that I need to migrate my data away from Google. They are notorious for terrible customer support. I'd rather pay someone competent.

Melatonic 5y ago

I have considered paying for a personal GSuite account partially because of this - I use my Google account for a lot of MFA stuff so it is fairly critical to things I do. At work we have a corporate account and their support is pretty solid (especially the chat support - I seem to get someone very quickly and they are way better than your typical tier 1 drone). I get that people are upset over this but are we REALLY surprised that we get shit support for a FREE service? They also have a separate site / login / forum for proposing new ideas, bugs, etc etc that you can use if you have an actual corporate account (strangely it requires creating a separate login and password). I have found that using this forum you can also get some decent support for weird issues or bugs or suggestions (sometimes from other users as well).

wrren 5y ago

This is one reason why I decided to switch to ProtonMail a couple of years ago as the account backing most of my internet services. Given that I pay them money, I figure they’re at least somewhat invested in keeping me happy as a customer. Google clearly don’t give a shit.

niuzeta 5y ago
I'm thinking of doing this and I haven't yet figured out how to migrate all the accounts I have associated with my GMail account. Do you have any suggestion/tips for a fellow potential immigratnt? :)
- peepop6 5y ago
  I moved to Tutanota and what I did is forward all my Gmail emails to my Tutanota email. It made it much easier to switch because I could immediately start using Tutanota and then migrate my accounts overtime to eventually delete Google completely.

steveylang 5y ago

I got locked out of my Gmail over a decade ago when it was just another webmail service (but with 1GB of free storage.) I believe there was some sort of unauthorized log in attempt, I couldn't find any answers or get any help from Google until I started googling for random Google employees and found a phone number for one. He was a bit put off by getting my rando phone call, but I explained my predicament and he took the time to look into it and helped get my account restored. Thanks Google engineer guy! This probably doesn't work in 2022 though. ;-)

aliceryhl 5y ago

Have anyone actually tried to file a lawsuit to get Google's attention in a case like this?

sayhello 5y ago

When I was a Google employee, I helped a friend go through their account lockout issue. It was because they used MFA to a phone number, but later changed their phone number, which made them unable to login. He tried so many times that some velocity threshold was hit, further limiting the possibilities. My friend needed to respond to some interview scheduling, so, it was a stressful situation. Part of the problem was that it was hard for my friend to find a way to create a support ticket. He did in the end and got in a line of communication via an alternate email. There were many miscommunications from both my friend and the support agent. While Account Recovery or even basic identification are hard to navigate for technically-minded folks, it's even more challenging for non-technical folks, including the support agent. In the end, I got in touch with the support person, helped translate what they wanted to know to my friend, and likewise, translated what my friend was saying in a way that the support person could understand. I don't think I was able to see the support ticket itself, because of PII restrictions. In the end, my friend was able to restore service. I doubt he'd have been able to without my support in time to respond to the interview scheduling. It still took a couple of days.

muh_gradle 5y ago
This was more or less my exact same scenario as well. MFA with an old phone number makes account recovery from Google about close to impossible. I had a friend who worked at Google that was able to create a support ticket for me. Before talking to my friend, every single customer service support rep more or less confirmed that I was completely SOL. It is the reason why I have transitioned from Google.
- arubania2 5y ago
  But if you’re changing phone numbers, why don’t you just set the new one in your Google account while you still have access to the old one? Also wouldn’t backup codes help in this scenario?
  - muh_gradle 5y ago
    I moved countries and lost access to my old phone number. I didn't account for my Google MFA during the move.

psanford 5y ago

I wonder what happens if you have no recovery methods enabled on your account?

DarkSucker 5y ago

> I'm not the type to get bitchy with customer service reps. I've managed teams that do that job, and I know how scripted their support has to be. "has to be" burns. It could be different. Why is a script essential? These support scripts drive me crazy. I would probably melt down in the OP's case. Answers like "they allow less skilled first line workers" don't count because one could hire skillful people to solve problems on first contact.

Justsignedup 5y ago
Recently we had to deal with amazon. And we try not to Karen when we call any customer support. But man does the getting audibly angry and asking for a manager actually get the ball rolling. There's a reason people do this, and the reason is because companies don't care until you show some anger.

guru4consulting 5y ago

May be Google can have trusted contacts to help the account recovery. If I set-up 5 trusted contacts, all of them would receive different temp passwords and the temp passwords from at least 3 would be necessary to recover. The only risk is 3 out of 5 trusted contacts getting compromised at the same time or 3 of them colluding which again is unlikely with trusted contacts.

Tozen 5y ago

Google is a monster that people should know not to trust. Better to not use a Google account for anything serious or unless you really have to. Even then, expect and prepare for the worse. Way too many, "Google locked me out.", stories.

gigglesupstairs 5y ago

Considering how much our digital lives are interwoven with our real lives, who will be held responsible if someone takes their life in shear helplessness basis Google’s absolutely thoughtless and inhuman actions and unresponsiveness in the wake of them? It might seem hyperbole but it isn’t. Who is to say it hasn’t already happened?

johnklos 5y ago

Google is just one of many companies that are too big to actually communicate (like Verizon, AT&T, Amazon, Microsoft) and have to be forced to do anything if you're not paying them tons of $$$. They do what they want. If your livelihood is tied to your email / phone, then you really should consider a company with which you can communicate.

amf12 5y ago

> And since Google Voice is my main phone number, There are enough comments about Google supports, so I won't comment on that. OP however has worked in tech for 20 years, yet made a very naive mistake - circular dependency, so to speak. They used a VOIP number from the same account as the recovery phone number.

jallen_dot_dev 5y ago

The real lesson to me is don't use a Google Voice (or probably any carrier) number as a recovery for anything too important. An attacker can just contact the FCC to threaten your carrier into releasing the number to be ported without you authorizing it.

jesprenj 5y ago

I'm going to be 18 this week and I'm concerned of Google having more power over my personal data et cetera. I've already migrated everything (mail, chat, storage, ...) to a self hosted server at home, but I can't delete my Google account because I paid 25 $ for the Google Play developer account, and I don't want to lose access to that. Is there any way to use the developer account without a Google account?

slowhand09 5y ago

"We've been trying to reach you about your Google Account Extended Access Warranty". To unlock your account, please enter the code in the email we sent you.