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A comment on Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data. Parent comment

Re:Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 ... by klabb3 on Saturday December 07, 2024 @11:46AM (#42350929)
The issue is an @gmail.com address is owned by Google, not you. Not only do you lose your contacts’ ability to reach you, but accounts tend to use email as a last-resort primary identifier. If you lose your ability to receive verification codes, you’re often screwed.

While the crowd here can maintain a domain, that’s not a realistic option for most average people. In practice, most people’s digital lives can be lost or reset simply by messing up their primary email account. With extremely limited recovery options, after a certain point at least.

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Re:Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 ... by eminent101 on Saturday December 07, 2024 @11:56AM (#42350992)
> While the crowd here can maintain a domain

And domains can be lost too. Missed payments, error in administrating the domain, government takedowns. Many failure modes exist for domains too. Nothing in the digital world is permanent! That's why I find it disturbing that so much of our digital identities are tied to our email addresses.

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Re:Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 ... by GoblinSlayer on Saturday December 07, 2024 @03:35PM (#42352690)
Maybe with a paid email service like sneakemail.com you can restore access just by paying later?
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Re:Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 ... by GoblinSlayer on Saturday December 07, 2024 @03:24PM (#42352606)
They can use a forwarder like simplelogin, where they can change the target address.
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