What would you do if you lost your Google account? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.viktomas.com/posts/losing-google-account/ <comment><USER4> 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.

<comment><USER5> > 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.

<comment><USER6> > 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.

<comment><USER7> 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.

<comment><USER8> 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.

<comment><USER6> Totally. It's the customer service version of this: [https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13](https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13)

<comment><USER9> One of those fonts is not like the other. Is that something Yahoo did?

<comment><USER6> 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)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 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.

<comment><USER10> I wonder what would happen if Apple would ban my account. My iDevices will become useless bricks?

<comment><USER11> 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.

<comment><USER12> > 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.

<comment><USER13> 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.

<comment><USER14> 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.

<comment><USER15> So are you going to be voting for Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

<comment><USER14> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 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.

<comment><USER17> 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.

<comment><USER18> 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".

<comment><USER19> He cannot change the filter on an account he has no access to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 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.

<comment><USER21> > 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).

<comment><USER22> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 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.

<comment><USER24> What do you use now?

<comment><USER25> 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.

<comment><USER26> +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.

<comment><USER27> OpenSMTPd is much easier to configure, IMO.

<comment><USER23> It's still a pin but yes, _way_ easier than postfix. You can completely and fairly easily understand how to write the confine yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 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?

<comment><USER29> > 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?

<comment><AUTHOR> 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?

<comment><USER29> 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...

<comment><AUTHOR> > 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/)

<comment><USER29> > 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).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 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 ...)

<comment><USER31> 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?

<comment><USER32> 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.

<comment><USER33> So what laws do you want the government to pass and do you trust government politicians to actual make intelligent laws regarding the internet?

<comment><USER34> More than I trust google.

<comment><USER33> The difference between Google and the government is that I can more easily escape the rules that Google imposes than the government.

<comment><USER35> I moved to another country, but Google is still here...

<comment><USER33> It isn't in China....

<comment><USER36> Ah yes, that Libertarian paradise we call China.

You've gone off the rails here, mate.

<comment><USER33> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > 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. :)

<comment><USER38> 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)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> 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.

<comment><USER40> 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

<comment><USER41> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Do my best to get my story to HN front page. That's the only thing that actually works.

<comment><USER43> What's your story?

<comment><USER44> 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.

<comment><USER43> Gotcha, thank you for explaining. Tragically, that makes sense based on what I've seen on here over the years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "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.

<comment><USER46> 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...

<comment><USER45> A really good point! Not really a completely useful backup until it can be restored and tested...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> 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.

\</comment><comment>

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.

\</comment><comment>

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).

\</comment><comment>

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.

<comment><USER48> > 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.

<comment><USER47> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> 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.

</comment><comment><USER50> _" 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.

<comment><USER46> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> 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.

<comment><USER52> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> How is it that backing up your data has become a "one more thing" for "super- paranoid people"? Sigh.

<comment><USER54> Cloud is not a backup. Seems a lot of people tend to forget that.

<comment><USER55> 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).

<comment><USER56> Why isn't Google Drive considered backup?

<comment><USER57> Well, if they nuke your Google account, it would probably be good to have a backup with a different company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> 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.

<comment><USER59> 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/)

<comment><USER37> 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. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> 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.

<comment><USER61> 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.

<comment><USER62> 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

<comment><USER63> If an account is deleted can an account with the sane name be created afterwards ? Because in some ways that would be worse.

<comment><USER64> 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)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> 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.

</comment><comment><USER66> Cry for a while. Then use it as an opportunity to break my dependency on Google.

<comment><USER55> 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 :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> 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.

<comment><USER68> What do you mean? Of course you can use an android phone without a Google account.

<comment><USER69> 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.

<comment><USER70> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> > 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?

<comment><USER72> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> 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.

</comment><comment><USER74> 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.

<comment><USER23> 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.

<comment><USER75> Plenty of youtubers living on sailboats - have a look. It's really nice to watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> 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.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google has an opt-in solution similar to what you describe - <USER2> 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.

<comment><USER64> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> > 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.

</comment><comment><USER77> 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...

<comment><USER19> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> 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.

<comment><USER79> 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.

<comment><USER78> Thanks I'll I've those a try, don't think ipv6 has been configured at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> 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.

</comment><comment><USER81> 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)?

</comment><comment><USER82> "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?

<comment><USER75> 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/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> 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.

<comment><USER84> Same. I deleted my google account about a year ago as well and haven't missed it at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> 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)

</comment><comment><USER55> > 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.

<comment><USER72> 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?

<comment><USER86> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> 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!

</comment><comment><USER88> 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.

<comment><USER89> But if your domain is through GoDaddy you can just change the DNS info there and it won't point to Google anymore.

<comment><USER88> 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....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> 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.

</comment><comment><USER91> 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".

</comment><comment><USER92> 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).

<comment><USER93> Do you have sources for this info? Very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> 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.

</comment><comment><USER95> 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.

</comment><comment><USER96> 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.

<comment><USER97> > 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?

<comment><USER96> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> 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

</comment><comment><USER99> 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.

</comment><comment><USER100> 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

</comment><comment><USER101> 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.

</comment><comment><USER102> 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.

</comment><comment><USER103> 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.

</comment><comment><USER104> 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.

</comment><comment><USER105> 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.

<comment><USER106> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> 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?

</comment><comment><USER108> 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!

</comment><comment><USER109> 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 - <USER3> of your cloud drive, reserve email, locally stored credentials in any offline password manager.

</comment><comment><USER110> 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.

</comment><comment><USER111> 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.

</comment><comment><USER112> 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.

</comment><comment><USER113> 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.

</comment><comment><USER114> 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.

</comment><comment><USER115> 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.

<comment><USER43> 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).

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> 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.

</comment><comment><USER117> 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.

</comment><comment><USER118> 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?

</comment><comment><USER119> 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.

</comment><comment><USER120> 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?

</comment><comment><USER121> 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.

</comment><comment><USER122> 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.

</comment><comment><USER123> 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.

</comment><comment><USER124> 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.

</comment><comment><USER125> 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.

</comment><comment><USER126> 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.

</comment><comment><USER127> 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.

</comment><comment><USER128> 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.

</comment><comment><USER129> 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.

</comment><comment><USER130> I would lose my YouTube history. That's all and it's by design

</comment><comment><USER131> 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 ?

</comment><comment><USER132> 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.

<comment><USER133> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> 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

</comment><comment><USER135> 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

</comment><comment><USER136> 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.

</comment><comment><USER137> 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.

<comment><USER19> Any cloud email provider is going to have the same problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER138> 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.

</comment><comment><USER139> Shrug and say, "well I guess YouTube isn't getting my money any more." I'm exited on all other Google services.

</comment><comment><USER140> Last time one of these topics popped up, I got myself a protonmail account. I guess this time I'll start actually using it.

</comment><comment><USER141> 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.

</comment><comment><USER142> Mail-in-a-Box [https://mailinabox.email/](https://mailinabox.email/)

</comment><comment><USER143> I would continue using my protonmail account.

</comment><comment><USER144> What would I do? Nothing, because I'd lose nothing.

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

</comment><comment><USER145> Use a proper client like Thunderbird with IMAP. You now have a full email backup on each of your devices :)

</comment><comment><USER146> I would pay for a software that could update my email address on all/most web services...

</comment><comment><USER147> Do not care. Anything vital I host myself on premises and on rented standby servers

</comment><comment><USER148> Use my google takeout backup and live on. No issue for me.

</comment><comment><USER149> 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

</comment><comment><USER150> I would stop using google products...

</comment><comment><USER151> Have (at least) more than 1 account!

</comment><comment><USER152> Finally move off of Google products

</comment><comment><USER153> Well, nothing... google-free. :)

</comment><comment><USER154> What if Google locks you out?

</comment><comment><USER155> I recommend multiple Google accounts. One per service or device.

<comment><USER156> Google is known to trace and connect those and applying bans to all of them, so this isn't necessarily helping.

<comment><USER155> 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.

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

</comment><comment><USER157> make another one?

</comment><comment><USER158> create a new one

</comment><comment><USER159> Open a new one, it's empty anyway. I only have it so that Android can track me.

</comment><comment><USER160> probably just shrug and move on with life? same thing as when I deleted my facebook account.</comment>


If You Want to Never Die, Try Augmented Reality - <AUTHOR> http://fundersandfounders.com/if-you-want-to-never-die-try-augmented-reality

<comment><USER2> Just remember that mom episode from Artificial Intelligence movie <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212720/>

</comment><comment><USER3> That's awesome, Life 3.0 is comming

</comment><comment><USER4> Blog spam.</comment>


A Comment in "How to Ruin Your Life (Without Even Noticing That You Are)" - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtcatalog.com/bianca-sparacino/2014/11/how-to-ruin-your-life-without-even-noticing-that-you-are/#comment-2083972665

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite sentence was "Most people are not special, not talented in any valuable way and there are most certainly not Michalangelos sat in every office cubicle in the modern world." :D

</comment><comment><USER2> while the comment is written with as much passion as the article itself, it sadly misses the point of the article.

The commenter interprets the article in a contrived fashion and blames the author of being irresponsible. I don't think that is adequate. People don't leave their jobs because they read an article on the internet. As much as people don't kill other people all the time just because they see it in a movie. Besides the article never once asks people to do so.

Sadly the problem is with the comment, not the article.</comment>


How does this have anything to do with sel4? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwJey_MN74k

<comment><USER2> Flagged for your editorializing title (original youtube title: "NICTA: High Assurance Demo").

If you watched the video, you'll have noticed that they explicitly said that compromised applications ought not be able to cross the sel4 barrier and compromise other (possibly critical) applications running on the same platform.</comment>


Show HN: Minimal Bookmarking Site - <AUTHOR> http://appread.me <comment><USER2> I like the design and the idea, but I also don't find it very minimalistic (only 10 bookmarks on a single page?). I'd also like to see a short description or "about" page. Are all bookmarks public? Can I have private bookmarks, too?

The "let's add a site" input is disabled. From the UX perspective, I'm not sure why I can't add any site. I assume I need to be logged in, but then either change it to "Log in to add a site" or remove the input for logged out users completely.

As other stated, a login without HTTPS is a no-no.

A shameless plug: Personally, I like managing my bookmarks in plain text (via git), so I've built StaticMarks[0]. It generates a static web app with all my bookmarks on every git push.

[0] [https://staticmarks.com](https://staticmarks.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your suggestions. I will review your tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice!

Is it a public bookmark aggregator or do you have private links?

What are the use cases for this?

I like the simplicity of this, ui is minimal and well done, works on mobile also.

Note: Use LetsEncrypt or put it behind Cloudflare CDN+DNS(has free plan) to get temporary SSL cert :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for suggestions. I will add the option to add a private link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No https and I can see 3 links on a 27inch screen. I'd say that's far from minimal. On Pinboard (which I'd call minimal) I can see 10 links at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will improve the interface. Thank you so much for your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I made an an open-source, web-based bookmarking server to host my bookamrks privately.

Currently it uses sqlite, for ease of deployment.

[https://github.com/jonschoning/espial](https://github.com/jonschoning/espial)

Demo: (uname demo, passwd demo)

[http://penrose77.cloudapp.net:3000/u:demo](http://penrose77.cloudapp.net:3000/u:demo)

<comment><USER6> that's pretty nice platz.

Am i right in thinking this is basically a pinboard clone but without the archiving capabilities?

<comment><USER5> It it just mvp currently but plan to add features, as I develop specific needs..

archiving could be one of them, but I found I didn't use it that much myself (There is always archive.is too)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use [https://www.one-tab.com/](https://www.one-tab.com/) to backup bookmarks then i export the urls and save it as a text file in a designated folder for bookmarks.

Its a lot easier for me to query the txt files for whatever bookmark i want.

</comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on the launch, I'm excited to see how this evolves.

Bug report: When I click on "let's add a site" nothing happens (and I can't add a site).

Iphone 7, chrome browser.

</comment><comment><USER9> [Deprecation] Using unescaped '#' characters in a data URI body is deprecated and will be removed in M71, around December 2018. Please use '%23' instead. See [https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5656049583390720](https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5656049583390720) for more details.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/03/anatomy_of_a_crushing/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/03/anatomy_of_a_crushing/)

> We charged money for a good or service

> I know this one is controversial, but there are enormous benefits and you > can immediately reinvest a whole bunch of it in your project _sips > daiquiri_. Your customers will appreciate that you have a long-term plan > that doesn't involve repackaging them as a product.

> If Pinboard were not a paid service, we could not have stayed up on December > 16, and I would have been forced to either seek outside funding or close > signups. Instead, I was immediately able to hire contractors, add hardware, > and put money in the bank against further development.

> I don't claim the paid model is right for all projects that want to stay > small and independent. But given the terrible track record of free > bookmarking sites in particular, the fact that a Pinboard account costs > money actually increases its perceived value. People don't want their > bookmarks to go away, and they hate switching services. A sustainable, > credible business model is a big feature.

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the advantage over Pinboard and Nextcloud bookmarks?

<comment><AUTHOR> separating links with multiple tags?

<comment><USER4> You can add multiple tags on Pinboard too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 404: [http://appread.me/terms.html](http://appread.me/terms.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Application error When trying to access an inexistant tag /tag/ruby for example !

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks fixed

[http://appread.me/tag/ruby](http://appread.me/tag/ruby)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> needs to have a much higher information density on the page. Bookmark sites, rather like HN are all about covering the greatest number of the highest quality of information updates in the smallest amount of time taken to read ("scan")

</comment><comment><USER15> The tags don't seem to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. I've added your site [https://newsblocks.io/](https://newsblocks.io/).

[http://appread.me/content/5baf6ac00d1d960013461ec1](http://appread.me/content/5baf6ac00d1d960013461ec1)

<comment><USER15> Thanks. Good luck with your project!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks hn..

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious...](https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious/)

>Do not attempt to compete with Pinboard.

<comment><USER17> Or alternatively, if you're not opposed to having your company purchased for large amounts of money, _do_ attempt to compete with Pinboard.

<comment><USER9> Keep in mind that delicious had changed hands multiple times by that point. The original founders were paid when they were acquired by Yahoo, not delicious.</comment></comment></comment>


Commodore 64 set for comeback - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2010/03/commodore-64-set-for-comeback.html

<comment><USER2> Of course, this is a Commodore 64 in name only-- it bears little resemblance to the original machine.

Personally, I was more impressed by the "C-One" project (<http://www.c64upgra.de/c-one/>) which attempts to reproduce the C64 in an FPGA.

And, let's not forget Jeri Ellsworth's "C64 in a joystick": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth>

What I'd really like to see is a hardware clone of the C64, that takes an external keyboard and plus into a standard monitor. With today's technology, this should be tiny and cheap-- hell, you could probably give it away in a box of corn flakes. Talk about "one laptop per child"....

<comment><USER3> It's apparently this computer, rebranded:

[http://www.cybernetman.com/en/products/zero-footprint- pc/zpc...](http://www.cybernetman.com/en/products/zero-footprint-pc/zpc- gx31.cfm)

<comment><USER4> Thank you. I knew I'd seen that thing before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not a C64. It's an insult to its heritage.

It's not even beige ;-)

Now, seriously, it's a PC. A keyboard PC, but, still, a PC.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have had a similar idea for a modern version of the C64. This one looks utterly uninspiring, however. It's just a big jumble of parts and features. It looks like a bit of a powerhouse compared to what the original C64 did. The configuration options look staggering (quad core, 4GB of RAM, optical drive, multiple SATA and PCI slots, serial, parallel, PS/2) and it will just run some junky commodity (maybe lightly customized) OS. To sum up what's wrong with it: <http://www.commodoreusa.net/i//9100_rear-1.jpg>

If I were building one, it would have solid-state storage, a few USB ports, WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI out, audio in/out, and that's it, and for software it would have to run something Linux-based, but more in line with the old systems that booted to BASIC. Maybe a Lua prompt instead?

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a rebranded, off the shelf PC targetted for Point Of Sale use from a company called Cybernet Manufacturing.

<comment><USER8> That would explain the RS-232 serial ports, parallel port and PS/2 ports. I remember seeing some other stock photos and was wondering why it had what appeared to be a Track2/Track3 Magnetic Stripe Reader.

I last had worked with developing for POS hardware about 5 years ago, and even then, USB receipt printers and barcode scanners were still very much fringe at the time. Apparently 5 years later they still are rare, but I guess that's to be expected considering the age of most POS suites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a PC, with a terrible video card. Boooring!! Something that would be interesting like this would PPC hardware that would run AmigaOS or MorphOS. So long as it has a decent video card.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't exactly say "boooooring". For us sentimental people who still remember their C64 fondly, it has certain value. I just hope that the price tag does not exceed that value ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are they trying to capitalize on the epic name 'Commodore 64'? Commodore itself calls this new machine the 'Phoenix', but in their ad they do refer to the original C64. About the only thing the original has in common with the Phoenix is its form factor.

It looks nice and handy, but in my view it doesn't have anything that makes it stand apart from conventional PC's. This is in contrast to the original C64, which was kind of disruptive.

 _edit: typos_

</comment><comment><USER12> If it's durable, inexpensive and introduces thousands of children to programming then it's "64-ish" enough for me.

...the deciding factor will be the software, I can see this coupled with Ubuntu and Scratch as being an acceptable descendant; but running Windows and...whatever free and accessible development tools they provide...oh wait...

<comment><USER13> > If it's durable, inexpensive and introduces thousands of children to > programming then it's "64-ish" enough for me.

Amen

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why do I need to buy a new Commodore 64 when my old one still works?

Honestly, the only upgrade I would want in a new Commodore 64 is the ability to play games immediately without having to wait for floppy disk load times. And I'm not talking about using emulators. I want the same software, same hardware, same peripherals, just no floppy disk waits.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's hard not to have fond memories for my good old commodore 64... Wow, if I could have had this new version back then!

</comment><comment><USER16> I just hope they release River Raid, Dig Dug, Spy Hunter, Impossible Mission, Pit Stop, Archon....oh the glory days.

<comment><USER17> Impossible Mission was the best! Unless you were trying to play it on the Atari 7800. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Was everyone else hoping for a 1 Mhz system with 64k of ram or something? Of course it's not a Commodore 64. However, I find the design enticing, and I could totally picture my kids laying down on the floor in front of the TV with one of these in front of them.

</comment><comment><USER19> Some redditors seem to think this is a hoax: [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/bhl3d/the_new_co...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/bhl3d/the_new_commodore_64_set_to_ship_in_june_looks/)

</comment><comment><USER20> My office mate and I were talking about old boxen yesterday. This morning, he gave me his old Commodore 64, in the box.

<Stimpy>Joy!</Stimpy></comment>