How much of your digital life would you lose if you lost just one password? Without it, you’re locked down, and the cold reality of using free cloud services like Google is that you don’t have a human referee to help you. If you think back to earlier times when, say, you lost your bank book, your local banker probably knew who you were and could help you navigate the replacement process. when you lose your password, it’s not that simple, as I discovered.
Imagine that you have spent much of your digital life for the past 12 years at Google. trust your mail and calendar, google drive for storage, and google photos for your photo archive. then imagine that one day you get locked out after forgetting your password.
that’s what happened to me.
who are you?
About a month ago, I went to login to google. i use different passwords all the time and forgot which one i used most recently for google. I clicked “forgot password” like I always did. They asked me to send a confirmation to my phone that they had on file. I did. I replied and was asked to send a confirmation code to my email. I did that and entered the code. I was asked to answer a security question. I answered.
At that point, you’d think he’d done more than enough to prove he was who he said he was. I had provided not one, not two, but three identifying factors, but this was not enough for google for some reason.
I was asked to enter the most recent password I remembered. I did. I was asked when I first opened my account. To be honest I have no idea and it’s a bit of a weird security requirement because seriously who will remember when they opened their google account a month if it was over a decade ago? it is not information that people usually keep.
I got to the end of the process expecting to be prompted for a new password. I was told that it was locked and that I would have to make a request to google to get in. I followed the procedure, waited several days (a lifetime without access to my email, calendar, documents) and was told that I was rejected. .
I’m not sure how many ways you have to identify yourself to satisfy google, but apparently all the ways I provided weren’t enough. there was nothing in the email about any resources. they just blocked me.
there’s nowhere to run, baby
I was at a dead end and not sure what to do, but I used my contacts as a journalist. If I hadn’t been a journalist with such contacts, I’m not sure what I would have done, but I did have them and used them in hopes of getting this resolved quickly. it turned out it wouldn’t be fast at all.
On December 5th, I sent a note to a PR contact I work with on google-related news and told him about my problem. he said that he had escalated my case and i should hear him within 24 hours.
December 7th after not hearing from google, I contacted him again and he gave me this procedure to try, which was more or less the same procedure I had tried before:
- visit https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery
- enter username
- click “try a different question” on each step until they reach the question “when did you create this google account?”
- select the approximate date the account was created and click “next”
- enter any address contact email address you have access to and finish the entire verification process.
- make sure that regardless of whether the user knows the answer to the questions or not, fill in the answers to the end. Completing the account recovery process will create a case that we will work on.
I obediently did this and once again got a message that google couldn’t verify the account.
Five days later I still hadn’t heard anything, so on December 12 I contacted my PR friend again, who by that time must have been pretty tired of being my go-between. he did his thing and told me that the reset link was being sent to an alternate address of mine.
I received an email from google later that day, which I shared with my PR contact:
hello,
Here at google, we’re constantly trying to give you the best customer service experience.
You recently contacted our support team to regain access to your google account. Since then, have you been able to successfully log back into your account?
options were yes/no. I chose no and asked for a new reboot command.
reboot command never came.
help me if you can, I feel bad
On December 13th I tried to contact google on twitter, posting my case number and asking for help. none came.
hey @google, my case # is [7-4240000018376]. I haven’t been able to log into my google account for a couple of weeks despite following the forgotten password protocol, responding to a confirmation on my phone, in my email, and answering security questions. I need this resolved.
— ron miller (@ron_miller) December 13, 2017
That same day I opened a second gmail account so I could access services like an email account if needed, even if I didn’t have any of my previous data there.
Two days later, on December 15, it still hadn’t received the reboot command and it turned out that it never would. he had a case number, but it was like it didn’t exist.
Three more days passed. On Dec 18th I contacted the poor beleaguered PR contact once again and he got back to me. they wanted me to go through the process again, except use my techcrunch email instead of my other alternative. I refused that I already had an open case, but he suggested that I do it and see what happens.
reunited and it feels so good
I started the process, entered my techcrunch email and was simply prompted to enter a new password and re-entered. after all that, that was all it took. I was ecstatic to get my digital life back, but it still amazes me a) how easy it was to lose access and b) how few resources there were to get it back.
once you’ve gone through the recovery protocol, what is a person supposed to do to get google’s attention? They don’t have customer service, but I’m paying for storage. they don’t have a reasonable system for handling this type of problem and they don’t have a sensible appeals process.
This shows how tenuous our control over our digital lives really is. if you lose access and have no one to talk to, you find yourself out in the cold with little or no chance of getting any kind of reasonable help, especially without special contacts like I had because of my job. if so much of our lives depends on that one password, three identifying factors should surely be more than enough proof to get back in.
The only thing I can suggest, and I think I will do in the future, is to use a password manager and not leave it to chance. one day you might click “forgot password” and that might be the last time you access your google account. your digital life could be hanging on that thin thread called a password, and if you can’t remember it at some point, it’s as if you don’t exist and are isolated.
Editor’s note: We’ve reached out to google for comment, but haven’t heard back at time of publication. if we do, we’ll update the story.
Writer’s Note: Since writing this story, I’ve discovered a faster way to get your account back.