Gmail Beauracracy
So...after six months of trying to get my two *other* Gmail addresses back after my HD and my cellphone died a few months after I enabled two-step authentication via phone on my gmail accounts, I think I might be giving up.
I'm *pissed.* I've had my lj-username at gmail since after graduating college, and I have a *lot* of very personal emails I'll never be able to get to now, as well as years' worth of recipes, and a whole host of email addresses that I simply don't have elsewhere. And as for my other gmail, well, I just have to remember to change my email address for everywhere I've ever used money on the internet.
They say that they don't keep a lot of information about your account on file when they make you input a lot of data to try and regain access. But, gmail--if you keep the exact date I started my email address in your system, not to mention my top five most-mailed emails, five of my email labels, and the exact month I started using, say, gchat, and use that to verify my identity, then here's news for you: you've got a lot more data on my account than I ever had. You've got a lot more data on my account than you ever asked me to know or keep track of.
I suggest that before you let people turn on two-step authentication, you present them with, say, the actual date they started using gmail, and the actual date they started using, say, gchat or google groups, and ask them to write down five contacts and five labels along with the special secret codes. Because if they lose those special secret codes--if their computer with the codes dies at the same time as their google-enabled cellphone dies, for instance--knowing the account-date information that you have and you have not provided to your customers is going to be the only thing that will let your customers prove their identity to you.
Your customers won't even know they needed to think have that information until the time comes that you tell them you have it, and they don't, and providing it is the only way they can access their own personal data. That's your fault, Google. It wasn't mine for not thinking to write, "dear diary: signed up for gmail today; so dreamy!" more than four years ago.
Knowing that somebody else holds the secret information you need to give them to verify your identity, but knowing that you don't have that secret information because they kept their need for it a secret until it was necessary to verify? Kafka-esque in the exteme, gmail.
I'm *pissed.* I've had my lj-username at gmail since after graduating college, and I have a *lot* of very personal emails I'll never be able to get to now, as well as years' worth of recipes, and a whole host of email addresses that I simply don't have elsewhere. And as for my other gmail, well, I just have to remember to change my email address for everywhere I've ever used money on the internet.
They say that they don't keep a lot of information about your account on file when they make you input a lot of data to try and regain access. But, gmail--if you keep the exact date I started my email address in your system, not to mention my top five most-mailed emails, five of my email labels, and the exact month I started using, say, gchat, and use that to verify my identity, then here's news for you: you've got a lot more data on my account than I ever had. You've got a lot more data on my account than you ever asked me to know or keep track of.
I suggest that before you let people turn on two-step authentication, you present them with, say, the actual date they started using gmail, and the actual date they started using, say, gchat or google groups, and ask them to write down five contacts and five labels along with the special secret codes. Because if they lose those special secret codes--if their computer with the codes dies at the same time as their google-enabled cellphone dies, for instance--knowing the account-date information that you have and you have not provided to your customers is going to be the only thing that will let your customers prove their identity to you.
Your customers won't even know they needed to think have that information until the time comes that you tell them you have it, and they don't, and providing it is the only way they can access their own personal data. That's your fault, Google. It wasn't mine for not thinking to write, "dear diary: signed up for gmail today; so dreamy!" more than four years ago.
Knowing that somebody else holds the secret information you need to give them to verify your identity, but knowing that you don't have that secret information because they kept their need for it a secret until it was necessary to verify? Kafka-esque in the exteme, gmail.