
What would you do if you lost your Google account? - vicek22
https://blog.viktomas.com/posts/losing-google-account/
======
sfgweilr4f
Let's go a bit more general.

I operate on the realization that google will one day arbitrarily destroy my
gmail account for absolutely no reason. At any time. Because. Due to reasons.
Those reasons which include the knowledge I will likely never have anything
clearly explained. Reasons I cannot appeal. At all.

This is what free gmail means to me. Same goes for youtube. Especially
youtube. Videos can be deleted for no reason. Better keep copies.

Famous people have lost content on google and youtube. Blocked emails. Lost
videos. etc etc. I'm a nobody. If famous, "important" people have their
accounts "accidentally" deleted, what hope do I have? None whatsoever.

I have no idea what google would be like for paid accounts of my own but I was
working with a company that did and the support wasn't terribly helpful during
a email migration so I'm unimpressed. At least they responded to my emails
after a few days.

~~~
fbelzile
> I operate on the realization that google will one day arbitrarily destroy my
> gmail account for absolutely no reason.

No! We need to demand more from Google (or, at least our lawmakers). I have a
business that relies on a Chrome extension to be on their web store.

Say I accidentally trip off something in their opaque machine learning
algorithm that determines my extension (or even a YouTube comment!) breaks
their terms of service. They would have the right to completely block my
account and remove the extension. Effectively, wiping out how I make a living
with a single automated bit flip.

It hasn't happened to me, but the people that share horror stories of how it
happened to them scares the $#!7 out of me.

As the Internet gets more privatized and less "open", I just wish there was
something that required a fair "trial" of my account being suspended. The
balance of power online is slowly shifting and I feel there needs to be
something protecting the rights of individuals (the public) online.

~~~
wpietri
> No! We need to demand more from Google (or, at least our lawmakers) [...] a
> fair "trial" of my account being suspended.

I wouldn't hold my breath. I encourage people to put their money where their
mouth is. E.g., I host my email with Fastmail.com. is that free? No, and thank
goodness.

Google's core business is selling your eyeballs to people who want to
influence you. Their relationship to eyeball owners is statistical; as long as
they are providing adequate quantities of wallet-connected eyeballs to the
highest bidder, they do fine. This drives a fundamentally different culture
than businesses that live and die by customer relationships. And culture is
extremely hard to change.

I don't know Google's numbers offhand, but Twitter's revenue is about $1 per
eyeball-pair per month, with per-user profit much lower. Think about your
salary, and then think about how much work you'd be willing to do for a given
account. By my numbers, handling one medium-sized customer service issue could
easily wipe out an entire lifetime of profit.

And that's before we even get into the literal millions of scammers, jerks,
loons, and mafiosi that would a) happily misuse a Google account, and b) will
eagerly waste hours of customer service time lying up a storm. Every extra
inch Google gives an actual well-intentioned user means a few hundred miles
taken up by that lot. Which is expensive indeed.

So I am entirely grateful that I'm paying Fastmail $50/account/year. That
builds a culture of wanting each customer to succeed. Of wanting customers to
say good things to potential customers. Which means if that there's some bump
in the relationship, they're going to at least hear me out. If you too want
that, please pay people money for services.

~~~
dorgo
Google (or Twitter) could offer on demand customer service. To open a ticket
you pay $50. If you don't need customer service, you pay nothing.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Provides a perverse incentive to offer bad products and not solve common
problems. Unless they had a clear policy to refund the support cost if it was
their fault.

~~~
wpietri
Totally. It's the customer service version of this:
[https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13](https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13)

~~~
RandomBacon
One of those fonts is not like the other. Is that something Yahoo did?

~~~
wpietri
Good question! I doubt it. Yahoo launched only 6 months before that comic
strip was penned, and the number of daily internet users at the time was
small. And their 1995 logo was... different:
[https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Yahoo](https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Yahoo)!

------
nor-and-or-not
I lost mine a few years ago, since then Google is an absolute no go for me.

Had it for a few years back then and never did anything bad or oblique with
it, just used it as my secondary email account and also for deploying a small,
harmless Chrome extension to the Chrome store.

So one day my wife bought a tablet and also registered a mandatory account.
1-2 days later my and her Google account was terminated. I mailed support and
they told me they couldn't tell me the reason for terminating both accounts.
No kidding. Tablet suddenly obsolete. All my emails gone.

Since then Google is a big red flag for me.

Addendum to clarify: They said they _won 't_ tell me the reason for
terminating my account. I'm sure they could have told me if they wanted to.

~~~
vbezhenar
I wonder what would happen if Apple would ban my account. My iDevices will
become useless bricks?

~~~
stickydink
Yep. It's near impossible.

Somebody (presumed ex- or current-employee) took handful of iOS devices from
our office a few months ago. Changed the password to the Apple ID, added 2FA
phone number.

The account isn't even deleted, and we can't get back into it.

We have a dozen other devices logged into that Apple ID, all prompting for the
password. You cannot install updates, you cannot roll back, you cannot log
out, you cannot factory reset.

Apple have been no help at all.

The devices we have that are logged into this account are bricks. Apparently
if we have original proof of purchase, we can take them into an Apple store
and have it reset. But a lot of our devices are older or were acquired
refurb/used - they're used as testing devices.

The accounts are locked, they just won't help us get back in, we've tried
several times and channels. We've offered to do anything, sign anything, they
won't do it. I once went through password/2FA recovery with an Amazon AWS
account, and it really wasn't that painless (sign some legal paperwork, show a
bunch of documents).

We are an unknown startup, but we have generated millions of dollars for Apple
over the past decade in App Store cuts. If we can't get back in, I don't know
how it'd go for grandma's iPhone.

~~~
benhurmarcel
> If we can't get back in, I don't know how it'd go for grandma's iPhone.

I can tell you about grandpa's iPad. We couldn't find the proof of purchase
after he locked his iCloud account (memory isn't great at that age). It's now
a paperweight.

The lesson is to keep the receipt.

~~~
asiachick
I would say the lesson is call your congressman and pass some laws.

Landlords in the USA can't kick people out instantly AFAIK. Banks I'm guessing
have regulations that prevent then closing your account and throwing your
money in the trash. I'm pretty sure the electric company can't shut off your
electricity on a whim.

People are dependent on Google and Apple and their devices and services to
similar levels. email and messaging services are similar to phone service
which is regulated. Apple and Google both provide payment services (Apple Pay,
Google Pay) so are providing some of the services a bank offers.

Sure they should be able to close problem accounts at some point but IMO they
can't just walk away from responsibility based on a one sided TOS.

~~~
PKop
Good idea, but the lesson _there_ would likely be that the $ trillion
corporation owns the politicians, or would have more representation than
average person, so recourse through that path is out as well.

~~~
etrabroline
So are you going to be voting for Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

~~~
PKop
Neither... maybe Biden simply to shakeup and push further towards an
"accelerationist" change of the system (because he won't improve things
either).

I voted for Trump in '16 to increase manufacturing, close the trade deficit in
the midwest, and end neocon wars in the middle east (I fought in Iraq and
Afghanistan).

I also support restricting immigration, though I know that's controversial
around here. In any case, Trump has failed miserably on all counts. He's more
concerned with the stock market than almost anything else, and has stacked his
administration with neocon retreads, not pulled troops out etc.

Unless and until some sort of massive restructuring of our political and
monetary system, the whole thing will continue to be controlled by banking and
finance. No party serves my interests (a more nationalistic economic and
industrial policy, and a more socialistic yet conservative social/cultural
policy). We have left wing social culture, and market/finance dominated
economic policy. Worst combination in my opinion.

------
jknz
A funny one: I am locked out of a former Gmail that forwards every email to my
currently active address. This "forward everything" is not throughout IMAP/Pop
but some Gmail feature.

One day I couldn't login anymore to the old account (maybe I typed the wrong
password 3 times or maybe it was deemed inactive because I would never login?)

I try the recovery process once in a while with everything (code by SMS, code
by recovery email, etc). Never works.

But I still receive every email sent to that account through the "forward
everything" setup from XX years ago.

~~~
emanuensis
NB forwarding does NOT include "spam" email... i have all my Gmail accounts
funnel into one and i check the spam buckets of all, every 4 weeks (otherwise
Google turfs em). i usually find a few (rather important) false positives in
that monthly sweep.

Further note that gMail filters at every step, eg this includes a downstream
"archive" account. So there are false positives coming from a "known" [single
source] good account and of already vetted emails...

i do wish there was a way to forward everything ... where everything meant
everything ... filtering optional.

~~~
lukebyear
You can do this by setting up a filter that matches all messages that don’t
contain something like “thisrandomstringwillneveroccurinthewild”. You can have
the filter forward the message AND day “never send to spam”.

~~~
koheripbal
He cannot change the filter on an account he has no access to.

------
freeflight
What troubles me about this is how casually we've moved everything to e-mail,
on the assumption that everybody can get a "free" e-mail account, even tho the
account isn't actually "free" and can be taken away from you without you doing
much of anything wrong.

Very similar to how a phone-sim has kinda become the de-facto digital ID of
most people.

In the long term, where does that leave people who can't afford a mobile
phone/a paid e-mail account?

This is already somewhat of an issue with certain digital services that won't
accept e-mail accounts from free providers that are too abused for spam.

What happens to the people who can't afford a paid e-mail account when billing
and so many other services are moving to digital heavily depending on the
availability of e-mail?

In contrast to that, I don't have to pay a monthly fee to have a physical
mailbox at my door, but that won't get me far with most digital services.

~~~
icebraining
> In contrast to that, I don't have to pay a monthly fee to have a physical
> mailbox at my door

Sure you do: it's either rent or city taxes. The fact that the mailbox comes
bundled shouldn't blind you to the reality that you (1) do pay for it, and (2)
many people lose access to that address due to inability to keep paying, and
it heavily harms them.

An email address is comparatively way more easy to maintain, even with the
occasional Gmail account closure (which are rare).

~~~
arkades
This is the correct answer.

My patient base includes a fairly large homeless cohort. They maintain email
addresses; some of them maintain phones. But a physical mailing address is
basically unattainable.

------
swiley
This happened to me. I managed to log in to my childhood Email account (or
rather, have it recreated since my dad owned the domain) and open the link
from a password recovery email and google _still_ refused to let me in even
though I had been logged in _on the same computer_ just minutes ago.

So because their authentication used some stupid heuristic combined with the
“no reusing old passwords” thing I was forcibly deplatformed. I’m not making
another account, I already wasn’t happy with google and that was enough to
make me give them up.

~~~
k4lle
What do you use now?

~~~
ZWoz
You can self-host. Don't use cheap VPS providers, spammers like cheap VPS too.
I can't give US specific advice, but in EU business Internet connection with
static IP is good enough. If your finances allow, reputable colocation
provider is good way to go. Now you can make your own little digital home;
file storage, mail, homepage and so on. That is worked for me over 15 years,
over 5 ISP-s. Additional bonus: instead well known "+" trick in gmail address
you can make real throwaway addresses.

~~~
lqet
+1 for self-hosting. Doing that for nearly 10 years now, by far the most
difficult part is setting up a mail server, but after that you can put on your
resume that you know how to configure Postfix (which I am quite certain is one
of the most difficult Linux server applications to configure). Backups,
webmail, file storage, calendar etc. are quite easy to set up.

~~~
ori_b
OpenSMTPd is much easier to configure, IMO.

~~~
swiley
It’s still a pin but yes, _way_ easier than postfix. You can completely and
fairly easily understand how to write the confine yourself.

------
mxschumacher
The problem this article touches on is huge, because everybody who has a
computer is affected and almost nobody takes the necessary precautions.
Especially non-technical computer users can easily lose years worth of
important data.

I've tried to set up contingency plans for the cases that I lose access to my:

\- phone (which contains Google Authenticator with plenty of important logins;
unfortunately some of my 2FA is still based on SMS)

\- my laptop

\- my Yubikey

\- my wallet (with ids and a credit card)

due to theft, damage (house burns down) or simply loss.

Another under-appreciated risk: losing my memory (my master passwords are only
in my mind - what happens if suffer a head injury and forget?)

Redundancy is one countermeasure: Have more than one bank account + stock
portfolio, more than one credit card (servers might go down if a credit card
is blocked) and physical devices (phone, laptop) in store to stay operational
in case of an emergency.

Full machine backups + regular uploads "to the cloud" for raw data; occasional
transfers to (multiple) external hard drives.

I don't think there is a way around a safe physical space with printed backup
codes on it. Ideally not in the same house - maybe with a bank?

A list of instructions for numbers to call for account recovery or blocking.
Which information will I have to provide?

In a similar vein: what happens to my data after I die? How would my (non-
technical) family be able to access my pictures and writings? A digital
inheritance would be prevented in my security set if I don't prepare.

This space is fascinating to explore, the zeros and ones people have stored on
their devices are incredibly valuable to them and this treasure is poorly
protected. Generally speaking: No backups, weak passwords, outdated software,
old hard drives ... risks abound

Google surely has very capable security people, but right now my account there
is the central vector of attack, most of my passwords can be reset through my
email, a huge portion of my communication runs through Gmail, Whatsapp is
backed up to my Drive, most of my pictures are on Google. It's probably a good
idea to disentangle the situation a bit to be prepared for the case that
Google's fortress gets breached one day.

Without compromising your security - I'd love to know how others approach
their personal IT security challenges?

~~~
Leace
> Without compromising your security - I'd love to know how others approach
> their personal IT security challenges?

Most of my security is based on OpenPGP keys stored on a Yubikey. In case the
first one is broken/lost I've got another one. If both are lost there is a
master copy on an offline computer that can be used to provision more
Yubikeys.

The key unlocks access to passwords stored in pass. Because pass is based on
git and gpg can be used to access SSH then the same yubikey is used to
pull/push changes to pass and read encrypted passwords. On both the laptop and
the phone (Password Store).

Data on the computer is LUKS-encrypted, unlocked by the Yubikey. Full backup
of my laptop's SSD is done via btrfs send/receive to a raid1 array of 3 disks
(raid1c3) on a regular intervals. A small subset if very important data
(documents) is also backed up via restic to S3 and Backblaze.

I try to "backup" as much of my work as possible by releasing it as open-
source (where it's preserved by the Github etc.) or publishing it on a web-
site (where it's preserved by archive.org).

> In a similar vein: what happens to my data after I die? How would my (non-
> technical) family be able to access my pictures and writings? A digital
> inheritance would be prevented in my security set if I don't prepare.

I've been thinking about this lately and maybe it's not a popular opinion
but... would people really need your data when you die? I get access to photos
(my SO has the PIN code) but everything else? Maybe this is just digital junk?
Who would enjoy browsing terabytes of my data looking for... what exactly?

~~~
vicek22
This sounds like my dream setup. Have you written about it somewhere in more
detail or could you recommend some resources that you've used for implementing
the solution?

~~~
Leace
Err, nope, this is a work-in-progress.

What are you especially interested in? Then I can provide you with details.

Some random links I used:

\-
[https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Incremental_Backup](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Incremental_Backup)

\- [https://blog.eleven-labs.com/en/openpgp-secret-keys-
yubikey-...](https://blog.eleven-labs.com/en/openpgp-secret-keys-yubikey-
part-2/)

\- enable touch-to-use so even malicious software cannot access your
passwords:
[https://developers.yubico.com/PGP/Card_edit.html#_yubikey_4_...](https://developers.yubico.com/PGP/Card_edit.html#_yubikey_4_touch)

\- [https://www.passwordstore.org/](https://www.passwordstore.org/)

\-
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.msfjarvis....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.msfjarvis.aps)

\- [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mkinitcpio-
gnupg/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mkinitcpio-gnupg/) (I'm thinking on
replacing this with PKCS#11, more keys to manage but PKCS#11 is supported
natively with systemd so one less dependency).

Hmm... maybe I should really document that...

~~~
vicek22
> Most of my security is based on OpenPGP keys stored on a Yubikey. In case
> the first one is broken/lost I've got another one. If both are lost there is
> a master copy on an offline computer that can be used to provision more
> Yubikeys.

\- [https://blog.eleven-labs.com/en/openpgp-secret-keys-
yubikey-...](https://blog.eleven-labs.com/en/openpgp-secret-keys-yubikey-
part-2/)

Sounds like a good start, I'm going to have to do much more reading on this, I
use my YubiKey just as a browser 2nd factor for a few 2FA apps.

In general I'm not sure how the YubiKey stores keys and till now I had no idea
you can backup YubiKey

> The key unlocks access to passwords stored in pass. Because pass is based on
> git and gpg can be used to access SSH then the same yubikey is used to
> pull/push changes to pass and read encrypted passwords. On both the laptop
> and the phone (Password Store).

I'm not sure about storing the master keychein file in Git, but the workflow
sounds interesting (I didn't fully understand the paragraph though).

> Data on the computer is LUKS-encrypted, unlocked by the Yubikey. Full backup
> of my laptop's SSD is done via btrfs send/receive to a raid1 array of 3
> disks (raid1c3) on a regular intervals. A small subset if very important
> data (documents) is also backed up via restic to S3 and Backblaze.

This is next level and not of immediate interest to me. I was looking at
something simpler like: [https://cryptomator.org/](https://cryptomator.org/)

~~~
Leace
> In general I'm not sure how the YubiKey stores keys and till now I had no
> idea you can backup YubiKey

Well, actually you can't. You can backup keys if you create them in software
and then just copy then to YubiKeys instead of moving them there. If you do
that in an offline computer there is no risk of any malware stealing your keys
in mid-process:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21701488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21701488)

Setting up Yubikey and OpenPGP took me some time reading all resources on the
net but once done this is just working without any hiccups.

> I'm not sure about storing the master keychein file in Git, but the workflow
> sounds interesting (I didn't fully understand the paragraph though).

If it's encrypted there is no much harm to be done here. The only leaking info
is that by default pass uses filenames based on domain names so if you have
credentials for news.ycombinator.com they'd be in "news.ycombinator.com.gpg"
file. For me a private repo for this use case is OK.

Oh, there is a browser extension too:
[https://github.com/browserpass/browserpass-
extension#browser...](https://github.com/browserpass/browserpass-
extension#browserpass---browser-extension)

> This is next level and not of immediate interest to me. I was looking at
> something simpler like: [https://cryptomator.org/](https://cryptomator.org/)

Yep, I do store external disk passwords in pass too. Udiskie can use a
decryption command so when I put something like this in the config:
`password_prompt: ["pass", "devices/{id_uuid}"]` it will grab the password
from password store. This has an added benefit that I won't forget the
password (it's stored alongside all others) and it's always valid (it's
checked on each boot by udiskie).

------
tsbinz
The article seems only to focus on what happens if you lose your ways to
authenticate, but another possibility is getting caught in some weird ban wave
like spamming emotes on a youtube stream when the streamer asks you to
([https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-
youtub...](https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtube-
emote-spam-markiplier/)) (most of these bans seem to have been reversed, but I
don't know if that would have happened without the publicity that came from a
popular youtuber calling out google for banning his fans ...)

~~~
grenoire
It's still absurd to me that you can get a full account ban for _anything_ ,
no matter how big or small. Why aren't these bans more fine-grained? Is it so
difficult?

~~~
101404
And why aren't they regulated by laws? This isn't a ban on some small forum.
It's basically revoking your passport for the internet.

~~~
scarface74
So what laws do you want the government to pass and do you trust government
politicians to actual make intelligent laws regarding the internet?

~~~
Applejinx
More than I trust google.

~~~
scarface74
The difference between Google and the government is that I can more easily
escape the rules that Google imposes than the government.

~~~
fsflover
I moved to another country, but Google is still here...

~~~
scarface74
It isn’t in China....

~~~
brewdad
Ah yes, that Libertarian paradise we call China.

You've gone off the rails here, mate.

~~~
scarface74
Yeah that was snarky. But are you actually saying there is no alternative in
your country besides Google? Yes you can get to google.com from almost
anywhere in the world. That’s kind of how the internet works.

You can also get to another website just as easily.

------
justinclift
> Tip 1: Store your backup keys in your password manager so if you don’t have
> your phone on you, you can still log in.

Tip 1b: Make sure your password manager isn't using your Google account for
authentication. :)

~~~
chapium
Google can at any time decide to require you to provide additional
authentication. What year and month did you create your account? What previous
addresses have you logged with google. There are about a dozen prompts to
prove yourself to them.

Finally, spinning busy icon and... red text says you are denied. You are
properly screwed.

(My experience a few years ago)

------
faebi
I assume all ways of recovery by google failed. I would go the physical route.
Take a megaphone, a big sign and go to one of the google offices in Zürich.
First stand there and then slowly ramp up to attract more attention. At one
point one googler must be willing to help or must be annoyed enough by me. It
sounds extreme but it is my Plan B. My personal data includes all my pictures
which are extremly valueable to me. I do pay for many google services
including Google Drive and I expect them to support me.

~~~
dvcrn
Not working at google but we are frequently getting security warnings to not
leave the office building with swag that shows our company name because some
customers weren’t happy with cs and stand angrily in front of our office ready
to confront anyone.

Don’t do this. It won’t do anything good and I also doubt some random googler
has the privileges to restore your account. There are likely policies in place
similar to how I am not allowed (or able) to touch our customers accounts

~~~
jdm2212
Random Googler can't restore your account, but can file a ticket that might
actually get looked at.

Source: firsthand experience. I had problems with Google Fi when it was pretty
new. I tried to work through the issue with their normal support,
unsuccessfully. I worked at Google back then, and eventually point filed a
ticket with (or maybe emailed? I don't remember) the Project Fi team. Lo and
behold, my issue got resolved almost immediately.

------
nikanj
Do my best to get my story to HN front page. That's the only thing that
actually works.

~~~
oarsinsync
What’s your story?

~~~
AnssiH
They mean that in case they would lose their Google account, they'd try to get
the story of losing it on the HN front page so that someone from Google sees
it.

~~~
oarsinsync
Gotcha, thank you for explaining. Tragically, that makes sense based on what
I've seen on here over the years.

------
chrisma0
"There is one more option for super paranoid people. Backup all your data." I
would argue that this should apply to everyone, not just the paranoid! The
fact that most companies make this easier nowadays, like the linked Google
Takeout, is actually a real, useful improvement.

~~~
londons_explore
There is no "Google Takein"...

If you backup regularly, you should also restore to test it works properly,
and the reality is there is no decent way to restore a google takeout archive
to another google account, or any competing service. The closest you'll find
is a hodgepodge of scripts to incompletely restore some data...

~~~
chrisma0
A really good point! Not really a completely useful backup until it can be
restored and tested...

------
znpy
For me it would be an annoyance for sure, but I've been not-using Google stuff
long enough that I wouldn't really care.

This is how I did that:

1\. I self-host my email and most of my emails are exchanged via my self-
hosted domain.

2\. I use nextcloud for cloud storage with automatic upload of pictures,
videos and call recordings from my phone.

3\. I use ZFS for snapshotting and replication.

\------

Regarding my google account... I took the habit of taking notes of my previous
password when I change it with a new one. I also took note of my backup codes.

\------

Regarding self-hosting email... It's surprisingly low-maintenance. My current
mailserver was set up in 2014 and I've touched very little since then
(considering it's been on for six years).

It _does_ require some learning in the beginning, but a) email is so old
that's very, very, very well documented and b) time spent learning is never
wasted.

Nextcloud is just awesome. It does have its quirks and an SSD would definitely
help, but I've been running it off a cheap machine (~115€ dell optiplex 7010,
2nd gen i5, 8gb ram, 250gb HDD system disk + 2TB HDD data disk) and only had
occasional problems (don't try and push too much stuff at the same time or
postgress will basically kill itself if it can't keep up -- upload files to
the data folder instead and let nextcloud rescan such folder).

ZFS is the real game changer. Hourly snapshots are extremely fast and cheap
and make it easy to sync your precious data to another location (in case
something goes wrong).

\------

Sometimes I stop and think about how exploitative and predatory modern
internet services providers are.

Most TOSes clearly state that they can terminate your service for any reason.
Which is generally understandable but also mean that all of your data could be
gone so fast...

The cloud isn't really the safest thing to put your stuff into.

~~~
superkuh
> 1\. I self-host my email and most of my emails are exchanged via my self-
> hosted domain.

>Regarding self-hosting email... It's surprisingly low-maintenance. My current
mailserver was set up in 2014 and I've touched very little since then
(considering it's been on for six years).

What will you do when you're email server's OS goes out of support? (or if
VPS, they upgrade from ovz6 to 7, or worse) Or if you can upgrade but the
packages for your original install are slightly changed or not available on
the new version? How did you store the email? Virtual users on disk with
dovecot or the like? How will you port to a new OS environment when required?

It's isn't trivial. I'm in the same position having set up my personal
mailserver in 2013 with very little maintenance since. But now the bill has
come due with the need to upgrade OSes.

~~~
znpy
Not a big deal, a full reinstall every 5-6 years is okay.

I'm planning full OS update and mailserver reinstall (I'll probably be
switching to CentOS 8).

Regarding the downtime... Not a big deal either. I already have an mx backup
host in place, along with (semi-automated) procedures to imports mails
delivered to the mx-backup host into the mx-primary.

> It isn't trivial.

Well, it isn't super complicated either. It really depends on the
degree/detail of your configuration. For the most parts you should be able to
copy the old configuration files into the new postfix/dovecot installation and
fix errors as they come up.

Problems may arise if you have non standard features and/or if you interface
with other services.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
When I set up my corporation, a couple of years ago, I set up a Google account
for it.

For some reason, it won't let me in. I am pretty sure that I have the correct
password (I use a very well-known wallet app), but it's entirely possible that
I borked the process.

Google won't help me to unlock it. I have to use a gmail account (the one I
set up) to get reminder links, and I can't figure out why it isn't honoring my
secondary email account (my corporate email, which works fine).

It really isn't a big deal (to me). It prevents someone else from registering
as my company. It does mean that I won't be doing any corporate business with
Google, but that's fine. I don't write the kind of software that uses their
services.

------
Animats
_" One of my other Google accounts actually have been inactive for so long
that Google doesn’t trust me when I enter the password and there’s no way to
recover."_

Hm. That probably means I have lost my Google account. The last time I logged
in was in 2013.

~~~
londons_explore
As long as the password you used isn't in popular password dumps, you'll still
be able to log in fine.

Check your password here:
[https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords](https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords)

For very old accounts, they'll normally force you to add a phone number or
recovery email address though.

------
etaioinshrdlu
The funny thing about giant tech companies and your personal data is they do
their best to convince you they are a great place to store your intimate
details and secrets. They can be trusted.

But on the flip side, these companies are incredibly paranoid and secretive
with their own data. They all run their own mail internally and do not (in
general) store sensitive data on each other's clouds.

I think this is super important for companies like, for example, Facebook and
Uber, to maintain utter secrecy of their internal data, because they know they
have a lot to hide.

Anyways, the vibe is "Trust us, but we won't trust you". Yuck.

~~~
joshuamorton
I'm not sure what your point is. Most big companies use gsuite or Ms office
suite, or don't because they consider Google or Ms a competitor and don't want
to pay them money.

There's very few big companies that are concerned about MS or Google stealing
their data. That's a concern held mostly by random hackernews commenters.

------
robin_reala
How is it that backing up your data has become a “one more thing” for “super-
paranoid people”? Sigh.

~~~
chrisandchris
Cloud is not a backup. Seems a lot of people tend to forget that.

~~~
HenryBemis
Depends on the "Cloud".. cloud is and will always be "someone else's computer,
somewhere else". Google Drive is not a backup. Carbonite (or Crashplan) is a
backup solution.

Of course a successful backup needs to be at least "3-2-1". Not "1" (Google
Drive).

~~~
deathtrader666
Why isn't Google Drive considered backup?

~~~
protomyth
Well, if they nuke your Google account, it would probably be good to have a
backup with a different company.

------
ggm
It's reached the point where five or so agencies have a de-facto oligopoly
over our digital life and the t&c are written almost totally in their favour.
I took a .zip of my digital life last year, and I intend renewing it
periodically.

~~~
asadhaider
If you don't already, you can set Google Takeout [0] to create an export of
all your Google data every two months for 1 year and it'll email you when it's
ready. I download my data and move it to an archive drive, it would be cool if
there was a way to automate the process of downloading and storing _x_ latest
archives but I haven't looked into it.

[0] [https://takeout.google.com/](https://takeout.google.com/)

~~~
justinclift
Note that Google Takeout apparently crashes/doesn't work for some people, and
there doesn't seem to be a help point for people to get it fixed. :(

------
brnt
Not much, since I have successfully degoogled myself. Even deleted my mail
address created with an invite back in 2004.

The only use I occasionally get out of it is a shared document with somebody.

~~~
adamhearn
What's the point of removing old addresses? I mean I'm all for privacy, but
forward all your old accounts to one funnel account and ensure you never lose
that data.

~~~
jbverschoor
Not keeeping your account is a security hazard. If someone else would be able
to use it, he now has access to some password resets. Or just call a support
agent to restore the old email address.

Same with getting a new phone number

~~~
cbzbc
If an account is deleted can an account with the sane name be created
afterwards ? Because in some ways that would be worse.

~~~
input_sh
Not on Gmail, but there certainly are email providers that allow a username to
be recycled after a certain period of time. Notable example is Yahoo, which
recycles usernames that haven't been active for a year:
[https://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/52805929240/yournameyahoocom-c...](https://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/52805929240/yournameyahoocom-
can-be-yours)

------
renaudg
Google has an interesting "inactive account manager" feature, which is
basically a dead man's switch :
[https://myaccount.google.com/inactive](https://myaccount.google.com/inactive)

Unfortunately, it's not available for GSuite accounts. I suppose the rationale
is that organizations don't have the same requirements as individuals, but
that's not the only use case for GSuite : any individual (like me) who set up
legacy GSuite to use GMail with a custom domain is out of luck.

------
askvictor
Cry for a while. Then use it as an opportunity to break my dependency on
Google.

~~~
HenryBemis
And HN is a very good resource on "how to divorce with Google". I remember
reading many articles/discussions on this topic.

Thankfully I rejected the opportunity to "date" Google when all my friends
were jumping on that train many many years ago :)

------
rcMgD2BwE72F
Do you guys all only use iOS? AFAIK, 99% of non-Chinese mobile users are
required to have an active Google account simply to use their smartphone.

One simply cannot not have a Google account when on Android.

~~~
gambiting
What do you mean? Of course you can use an android phone without a Google
account.

~~~
blahedo
Serious question: how? I had been a google avoider for years already when I
upgraded to a smartphone, and a mandatory part of the setup was creating an
@gmail for it, that I couldn't steer around or find an alternative to. I only
use that account to "forward stuff to my phone" but I did still need to create
it, afaik.

~~~
iforgotpassword
At least a while ago you could skip setting up an account. But that means you
need to use an alternate app store.

Or you get a device that is supported by lineage. Then you're even freed from
all the Google related services that would otherwise still run in the
background and do who knows what. You'd still need an alternate way of getting
apps, and even if you sideload them, some might not work since they rely on
Google play services.

Or you get a Chinese phone, since Google is banned there they all have
alternate app stores, plus a crap load of shovelware that spams your
notifications with ads and you share all your personal data with a different
government agency than you would with the Google variant.

------
mehrdadn
> One of my other Google accounts actually have been inactive for so long that
> Google doesn’t trust me when I enter the password and there’s no way to
> recover.

Is there genuinely no solution to this?

~~~
jotm
Oh yeah, they won't even let you access Recovery if you haven't logged in for
a long time and all of your devices are new to Google. Pretty funny.

------
TravisHeeter
What you should really worry about is leaving your phone in an Uber. I did it
once, and had no way of contacting Uber or the driver. I tried logging into
Uber from a computer, but they sent a code to my phone - which of course I
didn't have. The only thing that saved me - after trying to talk to someone at
Uber for 4 hours - was the driver found my phone and brought it back to me
after his shift ended. I had resigned to buying a new phone, I thought it'd be
gone forever.

------
withinboredom
When I lived and traveled on a boat, I'd often be within wifi range but have
no cell service. This was back when SMS 2fa was the only option. It was really
annoying to be logged out of Google.

These days, I doubt it would be as big of an issue to lack cell phone service,
for me anyway. I can imagine lots of scenarios where cell service would stop
working, and imagining those people effectively locked out of their account
until the towers could be rebuilt or repaired makes me sad for them.

~~~
swiley
I’d love to hear more about the boat, living like that is a personal dream of
mine. I know I’m romanticizing it but that’s they way dreams work I guess.

~~~
xfitm3
Plenty of youtubers living on sailboats - have a look. It's really nice to
watch.

------
jotm
Their account recovery (which only needs answers to one or two of their
questions, not all) seems to be used for account highjacking. I lost one that
way, and searching around I found many people with a similar story.

If they just stuck to requiring a _very_ strong password and not letting
anyone in without it, no exceptions, no ifs, no buts, I would still have that
account.

Fortunately it was an old account I wasn't using anymore.

Just use one Google account per Google service, it's the safest way haha.

~~~
vicek22
Google has an opt-in solution similar to what you describe - Advanced
Protection Program -
[https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/](https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/)

The drawback is that they only allow you to use "safe" (read Google made)
apps.

~~~
input_sh
There's some third-party apps that can be used now. Apple Mail, Calendar, and
Contacts, Firefox and Thunderbird.

Wasn't the case at the beginning, when you couldn't open your email in
anything but Chrome on Desktop and Gmail app on a phone.

------
johnchristopher
> One of my other Google accounts actually have been inactive for so long that
> Google doesn’t trust me when I enter the password and there’s no way to
> recover.

This is problematic if a system relies on your using it enough to be a proof
of authentication.

------
laurentdc
I've been planning to ditch Google for a long time. Besides mail, the only
other service I use is Drive. 200 GB, 2.99€/mo.

I don't need desktop sync. I only use cloud storage to archive old files that
I like to have around but never really access, such as rare CDs or records
that I've ripped.

Any suggestions for an alternative? Hetzner storage box? Glacier? rsync.net?
If only Dropbox had an intermediate tier...

~~~
koheripbal
Does it have to be cloud based? I have a FreeNAS machine (they sell them pre-
configured) that I bought which I use for holding tons of data - including old
photos/videos, important documents, Movies/TV shows, and a few VMs for fun.

------
Bnshsysjab
To derail, I want to know what to do if google marks emails from my mail
server as spam. I honestly cannot figure out how to get them to not do that
and I’ve sent a total of 20 emails from my otherwise virgin domain.

~~~
eythian
For me it was:

* make sure that SPF is set on my DNS

* make sure that all my IP addresses (including IPv6) have correct reverse lookups

* enable opportunistic TLS support on postfix ("smtp_tls_security_level=may")

That last one made the difference for me, but I'd done the previous steps
already so it could well require all of them.

~~~
Bnshsysjab
Thanks I’ll I’ve those a try, don’t think ipv6 has been configured at all.

------
nanidin
I lost my Google account about 12 years ago, right in the middle of college.
Instant loss of all email, calendar, and todo items. Zero recourse.

I never got closure on why, but I suspect it’s because I used my invitation
links to create more accounts for myself.

What did I do? Tried to get an explanation, then tried to appeal, then set up
my own mail server and have self hosted my own email ever since.

------
justsomedude11
Just out of curiosity, does anyone have similar experience or have seen
reports from people being banned from outlook.com in a similar fashion (random
bans for no reason)?

------
LilBytes
"I’ve been using the same Google account for the last 12 years. And to be
honest, I’ve never changed the password and never turned on the 2-Step
Verification because I was afraid that I’ll lose my phone or forget my
password and I won’t be able to access my account any more."

Should I even bother to keep reading?

~~~
xfitm3
It's a decision I'm sure the author deeply regrets. The author has another
post on their blog promoting security practices[1]. Just going to the settings
pane to enable 2FA shows your backup options: backup codes, sms, webauthn,
etc.

I only remember one password, and that's the password to my password manager.
The rest are arbitrary random strings. Always use MFA. I employ efforts to
make it difficult for an attacker to port my phone number, too.

At this point in the maturity of the internet these measures should be a no
brainer, but it's a good reminder of how far we have to go.

[1] [https://blog.viktomas.com/posts/security-is-like-
ogres/](https://blog.viktomas.com/posts/security-is-like-ogres/)

------
brenden2
I'm glad I made the choice to migrate off of Google's products about a year
ago. Having control of your own domain and identity is super important in a
world where one company can effectively delete you from the internet when they
want and there's no legal recourse.

~~~
miked85
Same. I deleted my google account about a year ago as well and haven't missed
it at all.

------
milo_im
Gmvault is a tool for backing up your gmail account and never lose email
correspondence:
[https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault](https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault)

------
HenryBemis
> But if I lose my phone my number is gone too since I always use prepaid.

Writee is obviously NOT in Europe, where even to get a prepaid you need
ID/passport. That way you can keep the same number forever (if you abide to
the "add funds even X months). I have phone numbers in 4 countries (that I
tend to visit 'often' and all I need to do is add €$£10 every six months to
keep them alive.

So one solution for that is to go to that ISP of yours and ask them to bind
your number with your ID. And if you lose the SIM one way or another, you show
up with your ID/passport and in 10mins you walk out with the same number.

~~~
jotm
That's not really true. Every SIM I ever got, no one ever asked me for actual
ID. Yeah, some required me to fill in a page with my info, I could've written
anything there.

Doesn't that cause the opposite problem - for example, someone with access to
your prepaid account could change that data and go clone your SIM?

~~~
diffeomorphism
That is definitely true in Germany. You can buy a sim at Aldi without ID, but
you still need to activate it before using it. For that you need an ID.

------
erdos4d
I'd switch over to a proper email provider like
[https://cock.li/](https://cock.li/) I'd even use Tor when I did it. Take
that, surveillance state!

------
acomjean
I have a domain name that I can’t get too through google. I don’t use it but
would like to start again. The registrar is go daddy and i tried to access it
through them the told me to go through google. It’s part of their g-suite now
which I can’t seem to access, since I have an individual account.

The help pages are Ridiculously obtuse.

We use google maps for a non profit and they require a credit card. It’s was
near impossible to figure out where to update. (Why not send a link in the
email to where I needed to go?)

They really could Be so much more profitable If they could get there ui ducks
in a row.

~~~
notechback
But if your domain is through GoDaddy you can just change the DNS info there
and it won't point to Google anymore.

~~~
acomjean
I registered it through google and it ended up "administered by" go daddy
which I didn't realize when I signed up. I can't access it through goDaddy
directly. I was hoping to move it to where I register my other domains....

------
isoprophlex
I would cackle in hexadecimal and cherish my Rube Goldberg-esque setup of
cross-cloud syncs and backups.

Also, for anyone thinking about giving up gmail: check out fastmail. I never
regretted switching my email over to them.

------
apexalpha
In 2016 I was in the middle of China when my phone got stolen. Obviously I had
backup codes saved in a text file so I was good.

Then my moment of dread came: the codes didn't work. I still don't know why
but from that moment on the laptop I brought with me that had Google logged in
was my only gateway to my personal info.

I mailed account support and after explaining the situation and providing
proof they reset my 2FA, after which I could set it up again on my new phone.

Even though Google support was pretty quick and helped me out (in my own
language, mailing from China) I have since moved to GMail with my own domain
for more control, have printed out backup codes that I test every 3 months,
have multiple phones with Google logged in for 2FA and periodically use the
GDPR method to download stuff Google has on me, just to be safe.

It was an eye opener how vulnerable I was using Google's "one account to rule
them all".

------
drivebycomment
This is a relevant issue but I haven't seen this discuss here so:

If you want to minimize or practically eliminate the Google account lock-out
risk and also eliminate any hijacking risks, register multiple hardware
security keys (FIDO keys), remove all phone-based 2nd factor or backup, and
make sure your password is something you won't forget (it doesn't have to be
very strong - as long as it's unique), and register for Google's Advanced
Protection.

Because there is no known attack against hardware security keys, there has
been no broad attack - which means heuristic-based defense is not necessary.
The heuristic based defense is a necessary evil - it's the source of false
positive lockouts, but necessary since otherwise credential stuffing attacks
can't be controlled / reduced.

You want at least two security keys, preferably 3 (one with your primary
device like laptop, one personally with you e.g. in your key ring, and one
stored at home, preferably in a fire-proof safe - alternatively you can leave
your security key at work if you're ok with that exposure). You really want
redundancy - as much as you fear lock-out, you should never lose access to at
least one of your security keys. If any of the security keys get stolen, you
can immediately de-register and get a new one to replace it.

You want to get rid of SMS or phone-based 2nd factor, since phone hijacking is
a realistic threat. You also don't want OTP as it's phishable, and is more
difficult to maintain high availability (you lose one device you registered as
OTP and you're doomed).

~~~
pragmatic
Do you have sources for this info? Very interesting.

------
fosco
related...I had an old google account stolen from me a few weeks ago.

this happened on April 8th while I was sleeping (I received recovery emails
etc -- everything was changed by the time I woke up)

this old account had an auto-forward for all emails to another email so for
the first week whomever stole it was not aware everything was copied to my
other account. I tried going through googles account recovery and
unfortunately it appears that I will not be receiving this account back, I am
sad because I did not copy all email locally and have lost some very old
emails -- trhis account was made when gmail was still beta with an actual
'invite'.

what is surprising is how obviously it is fraud based on the emails I received
over the next few days the owner had different names for a handful of people
i.e. 'Hi Chinh' or 'hello Hau' (many others as well)

I kept these because apparently google is investigating and I've been told to
be patient due to covid-19 delays but I suspect I got lost in the pile of
other work. it is not a big deal in the long run just makes me sad that
clearly I did not do enough to protect this account and there is not a human
on my behalf looking... any person looking at this (if google admins can)
would come to the very quick conclusion it is clear that it was stolen.

------
taneq
Be glad that I started distancing myself from their services years ago. All
I’d lose is the spam that my old account has been hit with since then.

------
Tade0
A while ago I switched to creating an email account tied to my domain for
every new service.

Of course now I need to not lose control of the domain, but that's something
that can be solved with a calendar app or... _a_ calendar.

I think this is a reliable approach, because if I ever lose control over the
hosting service account, I can prove my identity through invoices that were
generated along the way.

~~~
celeritascelery
> if I ever lose control over the hosting service account, I can prove my
> identity through invoices that were generated along the way.

Is this a common approach if you loose access to your hosting?

~~~
Tade0
I wouldn't know as I never lost it, but this is one way I heard of - a proven
history of paying for the service.

------
kungato
Imagine backing up those 50-100 gigabites of actually essential data you have
and using google normally. They even allow you to backup your email via
outlook or whatever and just download your photos and drive. You don't really
need RAW images of your birthday from 15 years ago. Google's Photos
compression seems perfect to me for all "memories" photos

------
andrelgomes
The ripples are bigger than just losing your Google account, but all the third
party services you use that use Google authentication. That convenience just
locked you out of X amount of accounts - I recorded I used 15+ accounts before
switching out. That is why I advise my coworkers and myself to always sign up
with an email and password stored in a password manager.

------
syshum
I have a grandfathered free Google apps for Domains account that is use for
all my google things, if I lose it then i move my custom domain to another
provider and move on with my life

All data on Google is backed up, and can easily be transitioned to another
provider

I learned long ago to avoid vendor lockin, I go to great pains to ensure that
in all aspects of my life

------
vz8
Late to this conversation, but I (and many co-workers) use a number of SAAS
tools from Asana to Trello and everything between.

Has anyone reading HN developed a process/policy to cover disaster recovery in
the event of SAAS (insolvency|malfeasance|ransomware|data center
breach|corrupt backups|identity theft|ad nauseum)?

Even if there were a one-size-fits-all export automation platform (maybe there
is, or there's Zapier ... please weigh in if there's a quality one stop shop),
the format you get from most providers (IME) bears little resemblance to the
ecosystem you exported it from.

You can't get back there from here, so to speak: a csv (or series of csvs) are
missing the relationships needed to reconstruct complex data on the platform,
assuming you'd risk returning.

Thanks for any thoughts.

------
bad_user
Nothing would happen to me.

My personal email is not on Gmail. My documents are not in Google Docs, my
data is not in Google Drive. I upload my videos elsewhere. My browser history
isn't in Chrome, etc.

While I understand the individual value of some of these services, personally
I don't understand how people can put all of their eggs in one basket.

If you're afraid of Google banning you for no reason, and you should be, move
to alternatives and I don't mean moving to another monopoly that can as easily
disallow access to all of your data and online persona.

And make backups, for sure, but I don't think backups are sufficient, because
it's costly and recovery from backups often fails, being a last resort hail
marry solution.

------
simonblack
Google -schmoogle.

What if you lost your 'XXXXX' account? In my very humble opinion, anything
stored on the 'cloud' is lost already.

I got burned very early on, back in 2011, with 'cloud storage' while using a
DropBox account. I then proceeded to be my own on-line storage server. I use
my server (that's already running 24/7 anyway) to serve SSHFS, SSH, SHTML and
FTP to myself and just SHTML to anybody else who may chance along. The server
is UPS-protected.

And I don't have to pay out those everlasting monthly fees to some faceless
company who doesn't care at all whether or not they happen to lose my stuff.

------
darrmit
I do a few things to try to mitigate this definite risk:

* utilize a known unique password + non-SMS based MFA and document the password and backup codes in my password manager

* pay for G Suite instead of free. I have been through “lost credential” scenarios with other Google customers and, though painful, you can regain access via proof of domain ownership

 _perhaps most importantly, I use my own domain_

* I sync my photos with both iCloud and Google

* my files in Google Drive are backed up locally

There’s no way I’d rely on a free account or domain with anyone at this point
for the majority of my digital life. There’s just too much pain involved with
losing it and it’s too easy to prevent.

------
zoom6628
This is one area where diversification is a good risk strategy. I was forced
to think about this carefully when moving to China. After 12 years I was
happily and safely a mixed user of yahoo and Outlook for email.

I'm interested in tech, software and, making things so an awful lot of the
Google-prison is as uninviting as the Apple-prison. I only use the tools that
give me the choice to use for no other reason than fit for purpose. So I had
no YouTube, instagram, tumble, Facebook and a whole lot more. No loss and
nothing missed whatsoever.

My advice is for all free services assume random removal. Prepare for that.

~~~
nyuszika7h
Outlook is known for silently discarding emails it considers "spam" and
returning a 200 OK to the sender, assuring them that their email was
delivered, but it won't show up even in the spam folder.

------
pmontra
If I lose my account I open another one and tell my customers to revoke every
permission to the old account and grant them to the new one. I don't keep
anything valuable in Google because I don't trust them: I'm not paying so I'm
not a customer and I'm disposable, then there is too much automation going on
and I could be banned for reasons no human being will ever understand.

I wonder what happens with my Android devices. Reset to factory settings or is
it possible to switch accounts? And what if they ban my phone number, is that
even possible?

------
cosmojg
I would make a new one and carry on as if nothing ever happened.

I have my email at my own domain for which I pay about $10/year, my phone runs
LineageOS, and I back up all my important data between my various devices with
Syncthing. I try my best to avoid giving up too much control over my life,
especially when it's as easy as purchasing a domain, installing an operating
system, or setting up an application. Altogether, these actions took about an
hour or two to complete, and they'll likely save me so much more in the long
run.

If I can do it, you can too!

------
strategarius
Answer is simple - do not trust all your digital life to Google. I would say,
trust them as few as possible. Most of the content you created and saved under
their account - your documents, spreadsheets, and photos can be accessed,
modified and redistributed according to Terms Of Service.

Apply common sense and diversification. Use different services for your email,
cloud storage, photos and videos. Have a backup of your every service - mirror
of your cloud drive, reserve email, locally stored credentials in any offline
password manager.

------
joshlittle
For me, iCloud would be worse.

While I’d be sad to lose my Google Voice number in use since 2010; I’ve been
using my iCloud account since the day it was launched as iTools. I have had my
@mac.com email for 20 years.

------
PakG1
Contemplating this question is what caused me to switch to Fastmail. Next step
would be operating my own mail server, but I would be too lazy to maintain it,
keep it patched, up-to-date LTS OS, etc. Easier to outsource to a company that
actually has customer service and would care about losing the revenue I bring
as a customer if they did me wrong. The custom domain is great for reducing
spam too, though I suppose you can get that with Google Docs.

------
rurban
I would not be able to login to my phones, I guess. And then losing my
contacts and calendar entries. Bug most of them are synced to my Mac, so I'm
OK. On Linux I'm using evolution for this, but never cared to use it much.

Email is not much of a problem. The various email aliases all point to gmail,
but this can be changed easily. sync's are done to thunderbird on Linux and
Mac email. POP, not IMAP. IMAP alone would be a problem.

------
8bitsrule
I dumped my Google 'account' long ago, when I signed up for Plus and they
wouldn't let me back into my (4-year-old) Blogspot blog without verifying my
name.

What I did then was to block most _everything_ Google (less Youtube) and find
working substitutes. It didn't hurt me for long, I routed-around it. After
that, I was never hurt by any of their service-shutdowns, and they've earned
my scorn in many new ways.

------
mikl
I moved everything important off Google years ago. I figure trusting the
world’s largest advertising company with private data was sub-optimal.

The cases we’ve seen since, where people get their Google accounts terminated
without reason or appeal options, have only made me more adamant in my
position of not entrusting Google with anything important.

So the only thing I’d lose that would bother me would be my YouTube
subscriptions and watch-later list.

------
sahoo
I have moved to enterprise email. As long as I can prove the ownership of my
domain I believe Google will try to restore my access as a paying customer.

~~~
oarsinsync
Unfortunately, there are stories on this very forum of organisations having
their entire GSuite accounts locked because of a user committing a TOS
violation on their personal account. Google proceeded to lock all linked
accounts too. Including the entire org (the users employer).

------
dkersten
Nothing. I only use it for YouTube, so all I would lose is my video
subscriptions, but I mainly watch a small handful of channels so no big deal.

------
Cf1hpOtECK
So, at least for phone numbers, Canada has a Wireless Number Portability
policy. Would a similar policy for email addresses be completely unreasonable?
I understand that there would be significant technical difficulties, but it
would at least prevent folks from getting locked out of their lives because of
an arbitrary decision by Google or other large email providers.

------
anonytrary
Not much. I guess at some point you realize how much you depend on things and
how a single point of failure could greatly perturb your life. Unfortunately
diversifying your identity is not as easy as diversifying, say, your stock
portfolio. Are people willing to lose parts of their identity in the same way
they're willing to lose parts of their assets?

------
troyandabed
To the people who talk about devices becoming bricks: why do you pay more than
a small fee if you effectively only rent them?

if you "buy" something you are not root on or cannot change the bootloader
(and everything) on, you must expect it to stop working from day 1. To me, it
would not make sense to pay for that.

lack of knowledge doesn't save you, after all.

------
dabeeeenster
Tip 1: Store your backup keys in your password manager so if you don’t have
your phone on you, you can still log in.

Then its not 2 factor, is it?

------
gpvos
Maybe create a new one.

I have several Google accounts, all for different purposes, but I don't use
any of them much, and not for anything that is really important. Google can
probably all trace them back to me if they want, but I like to separate the
identities. I don't check the email for any of them.

My previous job had all its accounts via Google. It felt icky.

------
LinuxBender
I only use my Google login for Youtube. Without it and assuming I could not
make another, it just means I can't leave any comments or view anything
flagged as mature. I could do without it really. It's just as easy to bookmark
the channels I find interesting and very rarely do youtubers respond to my
comments.

------
Bayart
I moved to a paid email provider two years ago and keep local backups. At this
point the only Google service I'd be remiss to lose is my list of Youtube
subscribed channels. I never really got into the ecosystem. I've been wanting
to try Google Calendar but I could never stick to it.

------
INTPenis
In my case the most important thing would be to backup all my photos. But also
every single account I have is registered to my gmail.com address.

I could probably still login and change the e-mail. Luckily I have AndOTP
which supports backing up your OTP keys. I have over 22 keys atm.

------
bit_logic
It seems there's a simple solution for this, paid customer support. Why
doesn't Google have an option where someone can pay $50 (or some other set
amount) to get assistance? This would immediately filter it to only legitimate
and serious cases.

------
bsenftner
Why do people trust anything with untrustworthy organizations? Sure I have a
google account. Is anything I value maintained there? Absolutely not. They are
untrustworthy, and have demonstrated as such numerous times. Mom didn't raise
no fool.

------
at_a_remove
Personally?

I would have to make a new one if you wanted to look at some age-rated YouTube
videos. That's all. I never did go near the Google ecosystem, having had a
taste of them early only for support on a real, "we paid for it" product.

------
IAmGraydon
I would lose access to analytics - the only Google service I use. I don’t use
chrome, I don’t “sign in with Google” on any sites, I’ve never used Gmail, and
I’ve been generally very cautious about anything they have their hands in.

------
lydzb123
It'd be a headache at first for logins and losing things in my Drive, but I
would honestly feel a whole lot more freed up without it as I'm not v good at
maintaining all my accounts, history, files, etc.

------
jimnotgym
I would lose my YouTube history. That's all and it's by design

------
saadalem
Google wave made us happy, it was all-in-one : wiki, email, chat, social
media, closed environnement that can't be spammed, stuff of dreams.

Does anyone have an idea why they stopped developing it ?

------
4weekoldroses
While we're on it, what's the best way to back up all my google photos? I'm on
a paid plan, but nonetheless, that has some important memories I'd like
redundancy on.

~~~
mceachen
Get an external hard drive or NAS (Synology makes well-supported devices), go
to takeout.google.com, request an archive of your photos, wait a couple days,
and then download the archive.

Note that the takeout archive will most likely not contain your original
images. Google photos deletes, and in some cases rewrites, the metadata in
your files. It's much better to back up your photos and videos directly from
your devices. I use Resilio Sync or SyncThing to do this automatically, and
then use PhotoStructure to manage and view my photo and video library on my
own hardware.

------
aloer
I wonder if we will eventually have laws regarding the most essential online
services and Service guarantees in the same way we eventually got gdpr

Right now I can think of email and password managers, although email could be
further split into the mailing service and the mailing address

If your bank collapses your money is insured to an amount of X.

If your password manager or mailing service collapses you are relying on their
goodwill to announce early.

I don’t know but is there a legal basis to inherit email addresses? I doubt it
except if you also own the domain

I would also appreciate some kind of officially vetted recommendation for what
to do to keep risk low. Something easy to read that can be forwarded to
friends and Family.

Internet Service Access has become such an important part of the economy and
yet we rely on blogs or the occasional newspaper article telling us what to
do.

One day something big might break and it will hurt the unprepared

------
Markoff
not much, since I don't use Google account at all

but if I lost my Outlook account which I use for exchange calendar, contacts
and email sync, calendar and contacts would be no problem since they are at
any time offline in phone, so just need to be backed up and moved elsewhere,
email would be bigger issue, I would need to notify my client company about
using my new address and then somehow try to change email address and many
services I used this email

------
bstar77
This is why I point my gmail account to my own domain. If google does pull
this, at least I'm still in control of my address which is my top concern.

------
sandgiant
Nothing much.

I'd have to find a replacement for Google Maps and YouTube, but I guess I
could just create a new account for that.

I use ProtonMail and iCloud for email and calendar respectively. DockDuckGo
for search, Firefox for rendering web content.

I backup everything to multiple locations/services, so I'm not too worried
about loosing access to things in general.

Guess the most annoying thing to loose access to would be Facebook as I have a
few contacts on there that I wouldn't immediately know how else to contact,
but I'm sure I'd find a way if I really had to.

~~~
koheripbal
Any cloud email provider is going to have the same problem.

------
BadThink6655321
Not a darn thing. Don’t like them, don’t need them, don’t want to need them. I
understand this (luxury) might not apply to everyone.

------
astrostl
Shrug and say, "well I guess YouTube isn't getting my money any more." I'm
exited on all other Google services.

------
thejackgoode
Last time one of these topics popped up, I got myself a protonmail account. I
guess this time I'll start actually using it.

------
treebornfrog
I am actively considering switching my main personal email to protonmail with
a custom domain.

Google has too many of its tentacles in my life.

------
kunkurus
Mail-in-a-Box [https://mailinabox.email/](https://mailinabox.email/)

------
zanethomas
I would continue using my protonmail account.

------
hans_castorp
What would I do? Nothing, because I'd lose nothing.

I am not storing any data of mine with Google (or Apple or Microsoft).

------
fxtentacle
Use a proper client like Thunderbird with IMAP. You now have a full email
backup on each of your devices :)

------
OrgNet
I would pay for a software that could update my email address on all/most web
services...

------
FpUser
Do not care. Anything vital I host myself on premises and on rented standby
servers

------
rabboRubble
Use my google takeout backup and live on. No issue for me.

------
dudus
I'd create a new one right away. And be more mindful of backups and following
a ToS. Sure it's popular to hate on Google here. But the value they provide
undeniable

------
cannedslime
I would stop using google products...

------
quijoteuniv
Have (at least) more than 1 account!

------
vcryan
Finally move off of Google products

------
poidos
Well, nothing... google-free. :)

------
unixhero
What if Google locks you out?

------
g8oz
I recommend multiple Google accounts. One per service or device.

~~~
detaro
Google is known to trace and connect those and applying bans to all of them,
so this isn't necessarily helping.

~~~
g8oz
This my method: one account for the phone, one for Google Drive/Google Docs
only used in a special purpose Firefox container. Email and calendar are with
Outlook.com - they are good enough, work fine with Android, and are worth the
reduction of entanglement with Google in my life.

------
senior-intern
purelymail.com is good and cheap solution for gmail. I used 2 months already
and its very good.

------
aszantu
make another one?

------
0x006A
create a new one

------
lower
Open a new one, it's empty anyway. I only have it so that Android can track
me.

------
holler
probably just shrug and move on with life? same thing as when I deleted my
facebook account.

