12 ms·

Inactive Google Account Policy

99 points by geostyx 3y ago

cobertos 3y ago
Wish you could check your inactivity status more closely than their suggested "if you're not sure, just sign in to the Google account". I have a couple Google accounts that are just pulling email to a separate mailbox and who knows if that's active or not. Maybe I'll have to buy something on one of those accounts just to get it exempt? Also reading this closely there's separate timers per product? This is worse than making sure my domains aren't going to expire...
- dataflow 3y ago
  > I have a couple Google accounts that are just pulling email to a separate mailbox and who knows if that's active or not. Probably not. I think the point is to ensure there's human interaction. Don't expect any automated activity to affect the timer.
  - mcny 3y ago
    I didn't realize that. So if I have Mozilla Thunderbird running on a computer fetching emails from an account, it isn't good enough? > Reading or sending an email I would need to actually mark incoming emails as read?
    - dataflow 3y ago
      I mean, this is just my guess; I could be wrong. But the vibe I get is that you basically have to do something non-trivial via the web (log in, create something, delete something, whatever) to show that a human is paying attention to the account and not just an automated system. Don't rely on automated means like IMAP, regardless of what actions you're performing with those.
      - zarzavat 3y ago
        I assume it’s tied to logging in or using the account while logged in. Email is a separate system, it’s possible they linked up the email system to the accounts system, but the easiest way to implement this would just be to update a timestamp every time someone logs in or makes an authenticated browser request.
        mcny 3y ago
        Welp, back to Firefox containers it is then. For those who don't know, you can have multiple Google sessions in different Firefox containers in a single Firefox profile/window. This is an official Firefox adding as far as I know. It works with Firefox sync for me (not enabled by default). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
        dataflow 3y ago
        > but the easiest way to implement this would just be to update a timestamp every time someone logs in You don't have to speculate here. They clearly say "Activity might include these actions you take when you sign in or while you’re signed: Reading or sending an email, Using Google Search, etc." So it's not just "did they log in".
  - zuccs 3y ago
    > Probably not. 100% not. I have a bunch of Google Accounts (not even with a Gmail inbox attached) that just forward on email alerts from Google Ads, etc. And have been getting these update emails since July 14th.
- pnw 3y ago
  Exactly. You can buy a $1.99 movie on your Google account and that stops expiry indefinitely.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    As much as I hate to feed the machine, having a financial transaction on the record definitely feels like the most approachable way to stay flagged as active. Solid suggestion. Of course, capricious Google could always change their mind tomorrow, but it is something actionable.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
habibur 3y ago
Back then, maybe two decades back, Google was seen as evil as it declined to acknowledge that it will delete user data after the user has closed its account. Time changes.
- taftster 3y ago
  No one said anything about Google absolutely deleting data. They specifically state, "reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data" ... and further below "and all of its content and data may be deleted" Call me suspicious, but reserves the right and may be deleted to me says that they may not actually have plans of deleting the account data outright. Maybe they just can't even guarantee being able to completely wipe all the associated account data. I think they could have the external appearance of having deleted the account with no real internal change. Oh and here's a question. If they delete an account, and then someone goes in and registers the same name, then what? Talk about an opportunity for further account hijacking (for example, password recovery from old logins). To prevent this, presumably they would still at least maintain a record that the account previously existed and cannot be registered again.
  - dgoldstein0 3y ago
    Didn't they say they weren't going to allow email address reuse?
    - dgoldstein0 3y ago
      Found it > After a Google Account is deleted, the Gmail address for the deleted account cannot be used again when creating a new Google Account. In an email they sent
      - taftster 3y ago
        Thanks for the find. That's at least good news and good to know.
tedunangst 3y ago
I think this is the end of my Gmail account, which has been locked for some time due to suspicious activity. All it does is forward email, but no more.
ggm 3y ago
I don't work for google. I use Google, I have multiple Gmail as well as hosted by Google workspace domains. Overall I think this is reasonable. I can't see why people are upset, when the general burden to make it "live" is low. There are specific corner case problems: people who cannot login for various reasons, can't get Google humans to help, and who get mail forwarded so are limping along. And, there are a surprisingly high number of people who seem to trip up over account recovery. If I had one criticism of google here, it's that they're judge, jury and executioner. There's no appeal mechanism for ordinary mortal. It's capricious, sometimes squeaky wheels get oiled, sometimes not. I pay for google 1 and I takeout periodically. Don't depend on "free" for critical functions.
- srik 3y ago
  > Google also reserves the right to delete data in a product if you are inactive in that product for at least two years. This part is unreasonable no? I sometimes don't use a product for a while, like google drive for instance, and the prospect of coming back to it and discovering that all my data has been deleted is a bit on the dreadful side. I don't want to have to keep track of which product Ive been using and how long since I last signed into all the time.
  - ggm 3y ago
    Yes. I think it's pretty Awful. "Reserves the right" isn't "will" but it becomes clear it could be "at will"
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    If you care about having your data stored permanently, I think it is fair to say you should pay for it (eg: Google One subscription) or buy something on the Google Play Store as listed under the inactivity exceptions policy. If you expect to get something served to you for free forever, Google has a bridge to sell you.
    - flangola7 3y ago
      We already pay with our data. None of these services are free and you know it.
koolba 3y ago
> Before this happens, Google will give you an opportunity to take an action in your account by: > Sending email notifications to your Google Account > Sending notifications to your recovery email, if any exists Further up it says that reading an email counts as being active. So if you have IMAP access does that count when you simply read that email?! I have gmail accounts with IMAP that haven’t logged into the web interface in years. I can’t be the only one in this boat. This is very ambiguous and troubling.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  If you read your Google account's emails, you had to log in (POP3 and IMAP both require authentication). If you logged in, that means the account is active. Sounds simple enough to me.
the_third_wave 3y ago
Given that G states that "doing a search" is considered to be "activity" it shouldn't be too hard to rig up an automated account shaker which at large but not too large intervals - something between 16 and 22 months - logs in on some headless browser, searches Google for a random thing and logs out again.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  Why
- Centrino 3y ago
  > logs in on some headless browser What if the account is secured by 2FA? Are you advocating to disable 2FA for the sake of your automated continuity of the account?
  - userbinator 3y ago
    You can automate 2FA too.
believ3 3y ago
> Exceptions to this policy: > Your Google Account contains a gift card with a monetary balance. So, all I need to do to keep a Google Account active indefinitely is just link an unspent $10 gift card to the account? Sweet!
- hackernewds 3y ago
  Why would you do that though? You can always open new accounts for free, than "pay" $10 for one..
  - waithuh 3y ago
    The whole ruse is because people store so much data with Google and dont want to bother with backing it up/cant back it up easily (i dont know, i never used G that much) Plus, email is your everything now. Its your login, its your invoice book.
- drewda 3y ago
  This could be an effect of California law that doesn't allow businesses to expire gift certificates. They have to honor it as long as they're still in business.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
Imagine all the normal people who can not run their own mail server and do not have the paranoia or the time to set up 3 of everything and never miss the periodic chores to keep them all alive just to guard against one of them being cancelled. You certainly don't want anything important like your retirement account to rely on something transient like your isp email, or even a paid email from some smaller company that you might forget to pay on time one year, or they just decide they don't like you for not even necessarily anything you did. So you use gmail or hotmail etc, not because they are free, because they arre presumed to outlive everything else, and be safer because of that. And that much is completely true and not a mistake. There are a few really bad things on a collision course here that hasn't been properly dealt with at a society/regulation level yet: * gmail, and email in general, is not an inconsequential thing like a Spotify account, or like email when it was new and nothing important in life depended on it yet. Life-critical things depend on it now. There are many things now where your email is the ultimate way a service provider knows you. There is no office you can go to to clear up any kind of account error as an ultimate option. * Yet, providers are allowed to TREAT it as a trivial inconsequintial thing. * google absolutely is responsible for actively drawing people to use gmail and become dependant on gmail and other google services. It isn't good enough to say they don't make anyone, they do actively pursue it. Same goes for others not just google. * too many consequential things are allowed accept mere email and login credentials as the only form of proof of identity without an equivalent for the ultimate option you always used to have for any possible thing: "Go down town to the credit union office and present myself and my drivers license and my birth certificate, or 20 other people from the community who all simply say "yeah that's her, I'm even the doctor who delivered her, and she's even your own siter in law so you know she was married to the house owner, so give her her house deed even though the husband died in the war last year and the town clerks office burned down and no one can produce the piece of paper now" I don't know what I would do if betterment.com decided not to honor my login or I couldn't repond via either of the two email addresses on file. It's 2 different addresses from two different providers, but even 2 is still only 2. If one can break, two can break. So much of my life's resources all hinging on something so flimsy. This is not robust. Now multiply that by x billion other people, most of whom are not aware how fragile their access to these important things is, and how little they can do about it if they are unlucky and have a problem.
numpad0 3y ago
I think of likely reasons this happens is username exhaustion. >100 million people are born every year, it won’t take centuries for us to fill up every namespaces with dead accounts. Before that inevitably happens, there will probably be a point we all have to switch over to identification not by user selected username but random alphanumeric ID string, with display names only for search, free from uniqueness requirements and somehow impersonation resistant. A lot of social media actually uses such ID in the backend/for internal uses(variable length primary key!? Of course not!), maybe it’s time frontend experiences think about that, too.
- yftsui 3y ago
  Here is my ICQ number and I promise it is better than MSN
  - dustymcp 3y ago
    haha that is funny thay solution was already there but wasnt that modelled on the idea of everyone having a phonenumber ?
- spc476 3y ago
  I have a Gmail account [1] and I regularly get email for other people who share my name (at least three others). I find it amazing they think that's their email address (or other people think that they'll reach the right person by just <firstname><lastname>@gmail.com). [1] Not my primary account but I got it to give Gmail a try when it was first opened to the public. I personally found it 'meh' but kept the account for testing purposes with my own email server.
  - Baeocystin 3y ago
    I was very happy to get the non-numbered version of my very common name back when gmail was new and invite-only. It has turned out to be a monkey's paw wish, though. I get medical records, legal filings, private and personal correspondence, bills, everything. Trying to contact anyone involved to let them know that I'm not the me they think I am barely works. It's both maddening, and bizarre to me that so many people don't know their own email address, for genuinely important stuff.
Dalewyn 3y ago
The listed exceptions in short mean that any account which has conducted monetary transactions on Google Play are exempted from inactivity. Sounds simple, fair, and easy to me. Just buy a book, movie, game, or a subscription of some sort and it won't go inactive ever.
haglin 3y ago
Two years it too short. The reason I now use gmail and not hotmail is because Microsoft did a similar thing 20 years ago. When I lost my hotmail account, I thought I might as well use gmail from now on. Reason I didn't log into my hotmail account was because I used the mail address I got from the university.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
chaostheory 3y ago
This is totally fair, since the service isn't paid with money. I can't help but feel that they're slowly turning into a Yahoo though, given this policy and their now terrible search results.
blehn 3y ago
I forward multiple gmail accounts to a single account and use the "Send mail as" feature to also send mail from those other accounts. Will either of those actions trigger the "Reading or sending an email" activity that Google referred to?
qingcharles 3y ago
Now if only I could get the data out of my account. I've spent far too long arguing with people at Google, but I can't get into my account because I lost the phone number attached to it, even though I have the password, and a recovery email address and all the mail from my Gmail gets forwarded to that address as it comes in. They say I have no right to my data since I can't log into the account, but I don't think the law works that way. I have a right to my data, they are entitled to give it to me if I can prove I am who I say I am, which I can.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
  I had a scenario where the reset flow to my account wasn’t working - it would send the code, but the code would not work. Google had no ability to speak to a human, and don’t care about me or you in the slightest.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    There is officially no way to speak to a human. I'm in the same reset flow trap. I wanted to get my data out, and there are various laws in various jurisdictions that require this ability. Because of this Google was forced to provide tech support via phone to help you get your data out. Believe me, I've spent a lot of time arguing with those folks. They do have access to some sort of internal email/phone directory though with lots of interesting contacts they are willing to give you to get you off the phone, but I've not had success yet with any of them.
    - hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
      For what it’s worth, i obtained the number associated with the account by requesting it from a phone provider (it was decommissioned/unused)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
This isn't new and there are numerous posts about this and discussions.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35963093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35963093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36791895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36791895
fruitreunion1 3y ago
How does this affect old YouTube videos (and possibly other historical public content)? (obviously, save everything you love while you still can in case things get removed or difficult to archive due to attestation/DRM)

99 points by geostyx 3y ago

Wish you could check your inactivity status more closely than their suggested "if you're not sure, just sign in to the Google account". I have a couple Google accounts that are just pulling email to a separate mailbox and who knows if that's active or not. Maybe I'll have to buy something on one of those accounts just to get it exempt? Also reading this closely there's separate timers per product? This is worse than making sure my domains aren't going to expire...

dataflow 3y ago
> I have a couple Google accounts that are just pulling email to a separate mailbox and who knows if that's active or not. Probably not. I think the point is to ensure there's human interaction. Don't expect any automated activity to affect the timer.
- mcny 3y ago
  I didn't realize that. So if I have Mozilla Thunderbird running on a computer fetching emails from an account, it isn't good enough? > Reading or sending an email I would need to actually mark incoming emails as read?
  - dataflow 3y ago
    I mean, this is just my guess; I could be wrong. But the vibe I get is that you basically have to do something non-trivial via the web (log in, create something, delete something, whatever) to show that a human is paying attention to the account and not just an automated system. Don't rely on automated means like IMAP, regardless of what actions you're performing with those.
    - zarzavat 3y ago
      I assume it’s tied to logging in or using the account while logged in. Email is a separate system, it’s possible they linked up the email system to the accounts system, but the easiest way to implement this would just be to update a timestamp every time someone logs in or makes an authenticated browser request.
      - mcny 3y ago
        Welp, back to Firefox containers it is then. For those who don't know, you can have multiple Google sessions in different Firefox containers in a single Firefox profile/window. This is an official Firefox adding as far as I know. It works with Firefox sync for me (not enabled by default). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
      - dataflow 3y ago
        > but the easiest way to implement this would just be to update a timestamp every time someone logs in You don't have to speculate here. They clearly say "Activity might include these actions you take when you sign in or while you’re signed: Reading or sending an email, Using Google Search, etc." So it's not just "did they log in".
- zuccs 3y ago
  > Probably not. 100% not. I have a bunch of Google Accounts (not even with a Gmail inbox attached) that just forward on email alerts from Google Ads, etc. And have been getting these update emails since July 14th.
pnw 3y ago
Exactly. You can buy a $1.99 movie on your Google account and that stops expiry indefinitely.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  As much as I hate to feed the machine, having a financial transaction on the record definitely feels like the most approachable way to stay flagged as active. Solid suggestion. Of course, capricious Google could always change their mind tomorrow, but it is something actionable.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

habibur 3y ago

Back then, maybe two decades back, Google was seen as evil as it declined to acknowledge that it will delete user data after the user has closed its account. Time changes.

taftster 3y ago
No one said anything about Google absolutely deleting data. They specifically state, "reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data" ... and further below "and all of its content and data may be deleted" Call me suspicious, but reserves the right and may be deleted to me says that they may not actually have plans of deleting the account data outright. Maybe they just can't even guarantee being able to completely wipe all the associated account data. I think they could have the external appearance of having deleted the account with no real internal change. Oh and here's a question. If they delete an account, and then someone goes in and registers the same name, then what? Talk about an opportunity for further account hijacking (for example, password recovery from old logins). To prevent this, presumably they would still at least maintain a record that the account previously existed and cannot be registered again.
- dgoldstein0 3y ago
  Didn't they say they weren't going to allow email address reuse?
  - dgoldstein0 3y ago
    Found it > After a Google Account is deleted, the Gmail address for the deleted account cannot be used again when creating a new Google Account. In an email they sent
    - taftster 3y ago
      Thanks for the find. That's at least good news and good to know.

tedunangst 3y ago

I think this is the end of my Gmail account, which has been locked for some time due to suspicious activity. All it does is forward email, but no more.

ggm 3y ago

I don't work for google. I use Google, I have multiple Gmail as well as hosted by Google workspace domains. Overall I think this is reasonable. I can't see why people are upset, when the general burden to make it "live" is low. There are specific corner case problems: people who cannot login for various reasons, can't get Google humans to help, and who get mail forwarded so are limping along. And, there are a surprisingly high number of people who seem to trip up over account recovery. If I had one criticism of google here, it's that they're judge, jury and executioner. There's no appeal mechanism for ordinary mortal. It's capricious, sometimes squeaky wheels get oiled, sometimes not. I pay for google 1 and I takeout periodically. Don't depend on "free" for critical functions.

srik 3y ago
> Google also reserves the right to delete data in a product if you are inactive in that product for at least two years. This part is unreasonable no? I sometimes don't use a product for a while, like google drive for instance, and the prospect of coming back to it and discovering that all my data has been deleted is a bit on the dreadful side. I don't want to have to keep track of which product Ive been using and how long since I last signed into all the time.
- ggm 3y ago
  Yes. I think it's pretty Awful. "Reserves the right" isn't "will" but it becomes clear it could be "at will"
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  If you care about having your data stored permanently, I think it is fair to say you should pay for it (eg: Google One subscription) or buy something on the Google Play Store as listed under the inactivity exceptions policy. If you expect to get something served to you for free forever, Google has a bridge to sell you.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    We already pay with our data. None of these services are free and you know it.

koolba 3y ago

> Before this happens, Google will give you an opportunity to take an action in your account by: > Sending email notifications to your Google Account > Sending notifications to your recovery email, if any exists Further up it says that reading an email counts as being active. So if you have IMAP access does that count when you simply read that email?! I have gmail accounts with IMAP that haven’t logged into the web interface in years. I can’t be the only one in this boat. This is very ambiguous and troubling.

Dalewyn 3y ago
If you read your Google account's emails, you had to log in (POP3 and IMAP both require authentication). If you logged in, that means the account is active. Sounds simple enough to me.

the_third_wave 3y ago

Given that G states that "doing a search" is considered to be "activity" it shouldn't be too hard to rig up an automated account shaker which at large but not too large intervals - something between 16 and 22 months - logs in on some headless browser, searches Google for a random thing and logs out again.

hackernewds 3y ago
Why
Centrino 3y ago
> logs in on some headless browser What if the account is secured by 2FA? Are you advocating to disable 2FA for the sake of your automated continuity of the account?
- userbinator 3y ago
  You can automate 2FA too.

believ3 3y ago

> Exceptions to this policy: > Your Google Account contains a gift card with a monetary balance. So, all I need to do to keep a Google Account active indefinitely is just link an unspent $10 gift card to the account? Sweet!

hackernewds 3y ago
Why would you do that though? You can always open new accounts for free, than "pay" $10 for one..
- waithuh 3y ago
  The whole ruse is because people store so much data with Google and dont want to bother with backing it up/cant back it up easily (i dont know, i never used G that much) Plus, email is your everything now. Its your login, its your invoice book.
drewda 3y ago
This could be an effect of California law that doesn't allow businesses to expire gift certificates. They have to honor it as long as they're still in business.

Brian_K_White 3y ago

Imagine all the normal people who can not run their own mail server and do not have the paranoia or the time to set up 3 of everything and never miss the periodic chores to keep them all alive just to guard against one of them being cancelled. You certainly don't want anything important like your retirement account to rely on something transient like your isp email, or even a paid email from some smaller company that you might forget to pay on time one year, or they just decide they don't like you for not even necessarily anything you did. So you use gmail or hotmail etc, not because they are free, because they arre presumed to outlive everything else, and be safer because of that. And that much is completely true and not a mistake. There are a few really bad things on a collision course here that hasn't been properly dealt with at a society/regulation level yet: * gmail, and email in general, is not an inconsequential thing like a Spotify account, or like email when it was new and nothing important in life depended on it yet. Life-critical things depend on it now. There are many things now where your email is the ultimate way a service provider knows you. There is no office you can go to to clear up any kind of account error as an ultimate option. * Yet, providers are allowed to TREAT it as a trivial inconsequintial thing. * google absolutely is responsible for actively drawing people to use gmail and become dependant on gmail and other google services. It isn't good enough to say they don't make anyone, they do actively pursue it. Same goes for others not just google. * too many consequential things are allowed accept mere email and login credentials as the only form of proof of identity without an equivalent for the ultimate option you always used to have for any possible thing: "Go down town to the credit union office and present myself and my drivers license and my birth certificate, or 20 other people from the community who all simply say "yeah that's her, I'm even the doctor who delivered her, and she's even your own siter in law so you know she was married to the house owner, so give her her house deed even though the husband died in the war last year and the town clerks office burned down and no one can produce the piece of paper now" I don't know what I would do if betterment.com decided not to honor my login or I couldn't repond via either of the two email addresses on file. It's 2 different addresses from two different providers, but even 2 is still only 2. If one can break, two can break. So much of my life's resources all hinging on something so flimsy. This is not robust. Now multiply that by x billion other people, most of whom are not aware how fragile their access to these important things is, and how little they can do about it if they are unlucky and have a problem.

numpad0 3y ago

I think of likely reasons this happens is username exhaustion. >100 million people are born every year, it won’t take centuries for us to fill up every namespaces with dead accounts. Before that inevitably happens, there will probably be a point we all have to switch over to identification not by user selected username but random alphanumeric ID string, with display names only for search, free from uniqueness requirements and somehow impersonation resistant. A lot of social media actually uses such ID in the backend/for internal uses(variable length primary key!? Of course not!), maybe it’s time frontend experiences think about that, too.

yftsui 3y ago
Here is my ICQ number and I promise it is better than MSN
- dustymcp 3y ago
  haha that is funny thay solution was already there but wasnt that modelled on the idea of everyone having a phonenumber ?
spc476 3y ago
I have a Gmail account [1] and I regularly get email for other people who share my name (at least three others). I find it amazing they think that's their email address (or other people think that they'll reach the right person by just <firstname><lastname>@gmail.com). [1] Not my primary account but I got it to give Gmail a try when it was first opened to the public. I personally found it 'meh' but kept the account for testing purposes with my own email server.
- Baeocystin 3y ago
  I was very happy to get the non-numbered version of my very common name back when gmail was new and invite-only. It has turned out to be a monkey's paw wish, though. I get medical records, legal filings, private and personal correspondence, bills, everything. Trying to contact anyone involved to let them know that I'm not the me they think I am barely works. It's both maddening, and bizarre to me that so many people don't know their own email address, for genuinely important stuff.

Dalewyn 3y ago

The listed exceptions in short mean that any account which has conducted monetary transactions on Google Play are exempted from inactivity. Sounds simple, fair, and easy to me. Just buy a book, movie, game, or a subscription of some sort and it won't go inactive ever.

haglin 3y ago

Two years it too short. The reason I now use gmail and not hotmail is because Microsoft did a similar thing 20 years ago. When I lost my hotmail account, I thought I might as well use gmail from now on. Reason I didn't log into my hotmail account was because I used the mail address I got from the university.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

chaostheory 3y ago

This is totally fair, since the service isn't paid with money. I can't help but feel that they're slowly turning into a Yahoo though, given this policy and their now terrible search results.

blehn 3y ago

I forward multiple gmail accounts to a single account and use the "Send mail as" feature to also send mail from those other accounts. Will either of those actions trigger the "Reading or sending an email" activity that Google referred to?

qingcharles 3y ago

Now if only I could get the data out of my account. I've spent far too long arguing with people at Google, but I can't get into my account because I lost the phone number attached to it, even though I have the password, and a recovery email address and all the mail from my Gmail gets forwarded to that address as it comes in. They say I have no right to my data since I can't log into the account, but I don't think the law works that way. I have a right to my data, they are entitled to give it to me if I can prove I am who I say I am, which I can.

hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
I had a scenario where the reset flow to my account wasn’t working - it would send the code, but the code would not work. Google had no ability to speak to a human, and don’t care about me or you in the slightest.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  There is officially no way to speak to a human. I'm in the same reset flow trap. I wanted to get my data out, and there are various laws in various jurisdictions that require this ability. Because of this Google was forced to provide tech support via phone to help you get your data out. Believe me, I've spent a lot of time arguing with those folks. They do have access to some sort of internal email/phone directory though with lots of interesting contacts they are willing to give you to get you off the phone, but I've not had success yet with any of them.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
    For what it’s worth, i obtained the number associated with the account by requesting it from a phone provider (it was decommissioned/unused)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

This isn't new and there are numerous posts about this and discussions.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35963093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35963093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36791895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36791895

fruitreunion1 3y ago

How does this affect old YouTube videos (and possibly other historical public content)? (obviously, save everything you love while you still can in case things get removed or difficult to archive due to attestation/DRM)