Now I’ve lost GMail


This is annoying: I’ve lost access to my email. I was trying to install some software that needed to access my Google account, I mistyped my password, and it then sent me into security hell, with codes sent to various devices that I had to type into various other devices, and somewhere in there I typed the wrong 6 digits into the right device or the right 6 digits into the wrong device, or something, and Google decided to teach me a lesson and locked me out of my account for 48 hours. I guess at that time it’ll allow me to reset my password and go through musical phone-tablet-laptop-desktop games again. I hope I get it right next time.

Anyway, the bad news is that I won’t get any email for two days, and I’m also locked out of my YouTube account. So if you have anything urgent to write to me, be patient.

The good news is that I won’t get any email for two days, except for official email through my university account, so nothing important from students will be missed.

I’m actually finding it kind of hard to complain about taking an email vacation.

Comments

  1. blf says

    Something sort-of like this happened to a gmail account several years ago. For multiple reasons, I used the account via an independent MUA (Mail User Agent, aka e-mail reader) on my Linux workstation. Generalissimo Google™ hates people who do that, and throws up all sorts of often-spurious obstacles. The MUA I was using at the time was cooperating-with, and “accepted” by, the Generalissimo… and then it wasn’t. (No idea who broke the relationship, or who to blame.) Upshot is I couldn’t access teh Generalissimo account from the MUA.

    Annoying, but, I (then) had things configured (this was actually the default, not my deliberate doing) so that every time I logged-into the workstation, it’d auto-check for new e-mail. That auto-check was failing, and the failures were piling up. That appears to have triggered something similar to poopyhead’s lockout.

    After dithering about the problem for awhile, I decided to largely ignore it. The MUA had been carefully configured to download & locally-archive all e-mails (even those I hadn’t actually “read” yet), so I had a mostly-complete Generalissimo-free backup (previously verified as being “usable” even without access to the Internet at all).

    I’ve since switched MUAs (to ClawsMail), and e-mail providers (to ProtonMail), but am still carefully doing the download & locally-archive thing (with periodic tests for problems).

    One thing that did go wrong is I lost my contacts. They were also backed-up, but as it turns out, only to my mobile phone of the time… which was then also lost. The Generalissimo-free backups I had were all very out-of-date. Sadly, Generalissimo-free contacts backups are still a problem.

  2. robro says

    This is why you need the vaccine injected micro-chips…and yes, it is more than one. Once you have that installed, you won’t need any pesky passwords to access your stuff. Everything will be hunky-dory.

  3. brucej says

    I went through this whole craziness a few years ago with my AppleID.

    Changed my password, then was locked out. Since I am an unabashed Apple fanboi this had serious ramifications across my electronic ecosphere.

    Went around and around, then got Apple support roped in and it went up two support levels before we (and I emphasize the WE part…this was also news to the Apple engineer I was working with, by then) The AppleID online password change would quite happily allow you to enter spaces in your passphrase, and accept the change, but it will not work after that.

    I suspect that it’s been fixed since then, but they’re not the only stupid place that won’t let you use spaces…

  4. says

    I seriously recommend using a password manager, whether it’s KeePass, LastPass, 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane or one of the other ones out there.

  5. MadHatter says

    Seconding SQB’s suggestion. We started using one this year after getting one too many emails saying some company had been hacked and all our password info was out there, and at least one spam email that had gotten ahold of one of my passwords. So did it for security, but it has made my online life much much simpler now too.