Why can't they offer identity verification as an option? It's not exactly difficult to do technically.
How to do this exactly? Do you want Google to be proving who people are by fingerprints, irises? Google has never gotten into this business. There would be so many issues. And is collecting biometric info an absolute bulletproof way to verify identity? And doesn't have pitfalls compared to current system?
Then how about just ID documents? Who would provide the locations to verify these documents? How many hundreds of types of documents would be suitable to prove identity? And thousands of locations would be necessary to serve everyone. Would they be honest / absolutely trustworthy?
Do you know how many people out there are waiting to try impersonating people by forging documents, given the money at stake, and how many outlets (that you'd have to employ as verification agents) would be susceptible to corruption to defraud people who'd relied on these documents as proof of their identity (and keys to their online accounts)? If you register with an identity document, and that becomes your method of proof, what if someone located in another country asserts that they're you with some different form of a document that says your name on it?
It's extremely complicated.
If banks can do it I don't see why Google can't. For many people, getting locked out of a Google account where they hold all their photos, connect to people via email, have their purchased Android apps, etc. is not much better than getting locked out of a bank account (depends on how much money on the account, I guess, but in many cases this is so).
Whereas your google email is known to many. What happens if some one photoshops a ID and says it is you?
Further more how should the ID prove I am the owner for john.doe@gmail?
The fact is that Google is already in the business of authenticating identities and actually does so in circumstances where the law compels them to, but they have deemed it too expensive to do so in the context of recovering accounts, where they remain uncompelled.
As it stands, the GDPR compels Google to make a meaningful attempt to authenticate whether you are the legitimate account holder when you submit an SAR or Data Deletion Request. But, Google, under no circumstances will attempt to identify you if you fail or are deemed ineligible for their automated account recovery process, unless you are eligible for their "In cases of nepotism or media pressure" emergency account recovery procedure.
Your email is not your identity, and your particular email address is not a right. If Google has made available options to secure your email address, what exactly are you entitled to compel Google to do that does not conflict with the security decisions they've also made to protect your account from fraud?
Google seems to disagree https://developers.google.com/identity/gsi/web
The fact is that these corporations are not innocently providing simple little services that users might occasion to use for a bit of time and then freely put down; they provide services that grant them at times more power than nation states over the lives of individuals who are completely powerless to respond. Given that they wield power over a service which is not optional for most of their "clients", whether or not they meant to (they meant to), they are providing a public good. And if they are unwilling to do so in a way that aligns with the values of the citizens of ostensibly democratic nations, then the citizens of those nations should vote to either compel them to offer their services in alignment with the public good or have their property and right to conduct business in that nation seized.
And whether or not many are aware of it, this would not represent a sea-change in policy for any Western government that I know of. This would simply be the very late, but reasonable extension of more than a century of well-established legal precedent that already exists. For example, in the United States, we call corporations that are regulated in such a manner "Public Utilities", in Germany they are called "Öffentliches Versorgungsunternehmen" and in France they are called "Entreprises de Services Publics" and in Spanish they are called "Empresas de Servicios Públicos"
I have a google account made in 2004 (it is nearly 18 years old) and some time ago youtube started to ask me to verify my age by sending my ID or using a credit card.
I think it was a "bug" on their side, since a google search showed a lot of other people complaining about this -> verify your age.. on a 15+ year old youtube account.
Solutions like yubikeys and passkeys theoretically solve this problem, but open other problems: not least what if you lose the key or the device that the passkey is stored on? Then you're no longer you as far as the authenticating party (Google in this case) is concerned. What's more, whoever stole your phone is you as far as they care, because that's all they have to say who is who.
Your devices should require further authentication (password/biometrics) but is that a guarantee? Could Google or anyone else really guarantee that any client device connecting to their service is unhackable, bearing in mind that many of their users may be on cheaply made and fully out-of-support Android devices or Windows XP?
It's a really hard problem to solve.
Google at least have your past IP addresses which should allow law enforcment to identify you (at least narrow the question down to a handful of people who could all be asked if they have a claim to the account unless you only ever accessed it from public networks). Doing all that detective work is not going to be cheap but right now you don't even have the option to pay for it if your online account is worth a lot to you.
Once it will be understood, losing xx-years accounts wouldn't be a problem.
I know this is controversial idea, but the more I see cases like that, the more I am sure about it
Problem is the "society" around us (for lack of a better word) treats IT services as something reliable, see how more and more countries go digital/electronic only when it comes to payments or relationship with the government.
Until everyone can agree on a better system, your e-mail is your online identity across countless websites. This makes losing your e-mail (with no customer support to regain access) a huge vulnerability in everyone's personal life.
I would go even further and demand regulators to define standards to enable migration or self hosting.
Right now Google is not asking information that would allow them to really verify my identity. Not sure if people would like Google to start demanding that kind of information, like personal identity code (for countries where it is available), passport numbers, home addresses etc.
Without strong identity checks, the system is prone to fraud. Black hats can either social e engineer their way around the support agents or use leaked personal data to impersonate people to gain access to their accounts.