What would you do if you lost your Google account?

Re:What would you do if you lost your Google account? by lonelappde on Sunday May 03, 2020 @01:45PM (#23060591)

Has anyone done a social science research study to estimate the chances of losing a Google account?

This is an important number. 1% annual chance? bad deal. 0.01% annual chance? Maybe worth the risk. 0.0001%? Sure, I'm more likely to get hit by lightning.

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Re:What would you do if you lost your Google account? by downerending on Sunday May 03, 2020 @03:36PM (#23061272)

I lost one of my (two) Google accounts. Still had username/password, but IIRC, they demanded text confirmation from a phone I no longer had. Tried absolutely everything, but they wouldn't budge.

Not sure how to judge the annual risk, but there seem to be a lot of other stories like this.

I prefer to think of it in terms of "nines" of reliability. My account was "up" pretty continuously for maybe eight years. It's been "down" continuously for four years plus the next thirty-plus that I might need it. So, a total downtime of 0.81. Being charitable, I'll call that one "nine".

Nowhere in tech would that be considered acceptable.

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