Grr.. Google/Gmail *shake fists*

[TooNice]

Yes Google, I travel a lot. And I have several devices I use to go online. Now would you kindly stop locking me out of my own accounts? That's two accounts already.

I am sure the password is right. Well, unless someone broke into it and changed the password I suppose, but I find it unlikely. The value of the two accounts is pretty low. For the most part, I've used them to register forums and services. Not a lot of sentimental value in them even though I had those accounts for a while by now, I just don't want the hassle having to make a new account, especially as I am travelling now and it's probably going to spazz out again the next time I try to log in from somewhere else. It does suck a little bit that I am not sure which forum/service I've registered on that account and I am not sure if it's going to become an issue in the future. But really, you just make sure that no one can break into the system / decode the password, and I'll just make sure that my passwords are strong and safe. Deal?

(As part of keeping my password safe, I usually put nonsense in the password recovery fields that I am unlikely to remember years later on the basis that real answers can be guessed so only in instance where I forget my password would I expect having to forfeit my account. Not because ooh, hey, Google doesn't recognise the computer and where it is being accessed from).

/Rant over

[Tumble]

My accounts both stopped working on my PC that they've been on for YEARS the other day. Outlook just wouldn't accept the passwords. In the end, I created an "App Password" for both accounts, and used that - both accounts connected straight away in Outlook. Weird.

[Dashers]

Cough up the few quid for proper mail hosting. All these issues go away.

[watercooled]

Wait, so you've been permanently locked out of the accounts? Don't you have any linked recovery email addresses or phone numbers to try?

[BobF64]

Google locks your account if you access it from a country you haven't been to before.

It's worse from mobile devices or apps as it looks like you have the password wrong.

Oddly its a security feature to prevent stolen details or hacking attempts from outside your normal domicile.

[TooNice]

I can see why they would have such feature, but I wish it had a say as to whether or not I want this "enhanced security" applied to my account.

As I viewed those accounts as "low value" (especially at the beginning), in the sense that I felt that it contains things that had relatively low value to me, and no value to anyone who might break into the account.

If I was to link all my Google accounts together, it might provide more information to Google than I ideally like, which is why I avoided linking some of those emails.

(In practice, I guess that if I repeatedly sign into account A, log out and sign into account B a minute later, Google could probably figure out that there is a pretty good chance that both accounts belongs to me)

[watercooled]

Google locks your account if you access it from a country you haven't been to before.

It's worse from mobile devices or apps as it looks like you have the password wrong.

Oddly its a security feature to prevent stolen details or hacking attempts from outside your normal domicile.

Surely there's a way of unlocking it though? It's not like people never travel to other countries!

I could understand them invalidating session cookies and/or requiring re-authentication though.

[TooNice]

Surely there's a way of unlocking it though? It's not like people never travel to other countries!

Quite commonly, but not always (it didn't for the other account I lost), it will ask the city you most often log from. I have been pretty busy in the last two years, moving around a lot, so I am not sure what is the "correct answer" (I tried a few but it seems like it isn't the answer it is looking for) for the other account I lost.

Under that circumstances, it will ask several questions, and I guess that you need to get at least three or four out of four right before it will let you in (I got two and it's not enough).

Can't deny that it's pretty secure, but for my secondary accounts (which aren't linked to one another), it is probably a bigger threat to me than would be hackers.

[watercooled]

Ah, I see what you mean. So I take it you don't have any valid/non-Google recovery options to use, e.g. mobile phone number, alternate email address, etc?

I suppose it's good they're looking for suspicious patterns, but it's interesting to see the problems it can cause when someone travels a lot for example and triggers a false positive.

I remember helping someone to unlock a Hotmail account they'd forgotten the password for. I can't remember the exact steps we had to go through, but I know it involved placing the account in a sort of dormant state for something like 30 days before access would be granted, as a fail-safe in case someone had maliciously made it through the checks. If it wasn't the proper user, then they would get plenty of notice that someone was trying to gain access to their account and could put a stop to it. It was a bit of a pain as they couldn't sync emails on their new phone for that long, but it struck me as a fairly good idea.