A warning to the community: back up your Google account information

[jsummersphd]

It may be too late for me, but if you haven't already taken steps to back up everything (yeah, EVERYTHING) associated with your Google account, I highly recommend doing so as soon as you can.

At precisely 2:50am EST August 10, 2010, my Google account was compromised and deleted, severely affecting my ability to access the internet and hamstringing the functionality of my Droid. Exceptionally cruel of the hacker to delete my account completely since I was invited to Gmail in 2006 and have absolutely no means of finding the necessary information to fill out the Account Recovery Form.

If you're lucky enough to have never seen it before, go ahead and take a gander at what is currently the ONLY way to recover your Google account:

https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?ara=1&hl=en&contact_type=ara&ctx=ara

I've submitted that form at least 2 dozen times with a myriad of different combinations of best guesses to no avail.

This just plain sucks, so do yourselves a favor and take measures to secure your account against attack and keep a back up record of the information you will need to recover your account in the event you end up as lucky as I did... hah... heh... hm... *cry*

 

[hookbill]

It may be too late for me, but if you haven't already taken steps to back up everything (yeah, EVERYTHING) associated with your Google account, I highly recommend doing so as soon as you can.

At precisely 2:50am EST August 10, 2010, my Google account was compromised and deleted, severely affecting my ability to access the internet and hamstringing the functionality of my Droid. Exceptionally cruel of the hacker to delete my account completely since I was invited to Gmail in 2006 and have absolutely no means of finding the necessary information to fill out the Account Recovery Form.

If you're lucky enough to have never seen it before, go ahead and take a gander at what is currently the ONLY way to recover your Google account:

https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?ara=1&hl=en&contact_type=ara&ctx=ara

I've submitted that form at least 2 dozen times with a myriad of different combinations of best guesses to no avail.

This just plain sucks, so do yourselves a favor and take measures to secure your account against attack and keep a back up record of the information you will need to recover your account in the event you end up as lucky as I did... hah... heh... hm... *cry*

What specifically could you not answer to get your gmail account back? I didn't go beyond my email because I didn't want to set anything in motion but I understand there are security questions. Could you not answer those? I've seen that happen to a number of people.

If you're going to have a Google phone the best thing you can do is to use a password that is complicated and only used for Google. Then make sure you pick the proper security questions. The problem is people don't think it's important to remember their gmail stuff, and it is.

 

[iPirate]

Can you sync multiple accounts now? Having two accounts might be good for temporary down time

 

[mozicodo]

You can sync multiple accounts but they data doesn't cross over between the two. It will match up contacts in both accounts but it won't copy them into both accounts.

 

[jimnutt]

It's always helpful to use something like KeePass to record your security questions and answers along with your password. And always use a good RANDOM password that's site specific for something like google.