I wish they'd let me recover my original -- I lost my TOTP generator, and the codes I'd written down in a paper notebook were rejected. I even hunted down the electronic copy in case there was a transcription error -- seemed like some failure in their systems was causing me to lose access despite having followed proper procedures.

Lost a decade and a half of correspondence dating back to my teenage years. I had imported my phone number I'd had since I was 16 into voice, and it doubled as my Signal number. I even had a Gsuite subscription so I could use their (admittedly decently) UI to power my firstname @ lastname dot com email address.

I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure.

I had something kinda similar happen to my hotmail account. While I didn't lose access to it, I lost more than a decade of correspondence dating back to my teenage years. The reason was that Microsoft at some point required you to "login" once every 30 days. It seems they only counted logins through their web interface or something like that, so even though I was receiving emails daily, I didn't trigger a "login" in their system. They then deleted all my emails, but I could still login.

I had the same issue with my Hotmail address. I know the address and password, but Microsoft won’t let me login. And they ask ridiculous things like, what emails are in the inbox. I haven’t used this address for 20 years, I just want to access the Hotmail address from when I was a teenager.

I still think about my lost address that I obtained when Gmail was invite only. My family still occasionally CCs it and it drives me nuts, I would pay money to at least have it shutdown so they don’t think I received an email. I had email forwarding to another address when stolen and immediately after it was stolen it had the weirdest messages, I tried multiple ways reaching out to google and it still bugs me I was unsuccessful. I’d love the their of my account to at least have it shutdown

Gmail is a throwaway email. I lost my SIM and hence can't log in anymore.

Never ever rely on Gmail.

Wait a second - if you have gsuite it isn't a regular gmail account. Did you talk to gsuite team? If you even paid there is real support.

I had this issue with my alternative account. Despite my main account being associated (not by recovery, I think this predates that feature), and most messages being forwaded to my main I was never able to successfully recover the credentials.

> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure

Isn’t this inherent to not choosing an (EDIT: external) account-recovery method?

The flip side to allowing account recovery at Google’s discretion is lessened security for everyone. (Obviously not black and white. And I agree Google should have flexibility for old accounts. But it’s an odd thing to reject a major provider over.)

> seemed like some failure in their systems was causing me to lose access despite having followed proper procedures.

I had the same problem with GitHub's backup codes not working: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35735996

Whoa, I noticed something similar. I was updating my password or something a few years back and decided to test the backup codes too. They didn't work. I don't know what went wrong but that got me worried a bit.

This is exactly what happened to me on Dropbox, where even the backup codes did not work.

Back up your seeds! Aegis for Android lets you do encrypted exports.

Yikes. This post is an unsettling reminder that gmail is a single point of failure in my personal and financial security.

> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure

Was there ever really an agreement that they'd be storing your cherished memories for decades? I still treat email the same way I've done since the 90s. Your email provider is just a cache but you download and backup the messages yourself.

Hopefully this has been a wake up call for you. If you care about data then you need a copy that you control and have a good backup plan.

You think that sucks, my childhood angelfire is gone.

I'm paranoid and print off my TOTP key for each account I make that might matter in any way.

Save a picture of the TOTP QR code and print it out.

> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure.

Without such measure anyone with your password could "reset" your 2FA.

The solution to "I may lose my 2FA" is not to make GMail a 1FA: it is to configure beforehand your GMail so that if your account is inactive for 6 months, access to your account is given to a person of your choice. It's so that a death spouse (for example) can eventually access the account.

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