Member-only story
Weaning Off The Google
Or, How I’m Continuing to use Google’s Products Without A Sense of Existential Dread
My First Brush With Account Recovery Tyranny
Just over five years ago, my wife and I decided to leave Canada for South Africa, and with all the madness of the migration (after six months of being new parents with no support, we left in a big rush to be close to our family) it never occurred to me to ensure that our email accounts were all configured correctly for where we were going. When we finally arrived after two weeks of frenzied selling and packing (and deciding which half of our lives to leave behind) and two days of hard travelling, I thought I’d log in to check my emails.
Google detected that we were logging in from a different country, and wanted us to authenticate using our mobile numbers. Which had been disconnected the day before we left. As some of you may have had the misfortune of discovering, there are no human beings to speak to when attempting to recover access to a Google account, the entire process is automated and even knowing everything about your account (including your personal information, who you last communicated with, previous passwords, etc.) is no guarantee that you’re going to get it back.
