What's amazing is he's been "trying to recover it for months", without any success. IMO this is one of those cases where a public post-mortem would be appropriate, Google.
This is why I challenge people when they say that "just use your google account" is a viable approach to access control. I like GMail, but I can't really trust anyone to do my email for me.
With the current state of Internet, there’s bunch of other entities you end up trusting. Like domain registrar and hosting companies.
People rolling their own email should not forget that these come with their own security risks. For example somebody social engineering their way through the registrar to steal your domain.
I've been backing up everything in my google account and preparing for something just like this. When I first started making sure my backup was complete I realized that I had sent gmail invites out to a few friends. Now I guess I have to tell those same friends that it's time to start preparing for the day that Google decides to wipe out 14 years of their emails.
It was just a day ago I wrote a short scathing remark about Google not doing what it ought to be doing for paid services. And now we have another case of resorting to social media for the right attention and help?
Google really needs to start thinking and acting like a product company, and it needs to own up that its support system needs a big investment and improvement. These incidents (and other anecdotes) make it look like support has been an afterthought in the company and considered a burden that must be avoided at all costs. Product managers at Google should cringe in shame every time something like this happens.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 50.8 ms ] threadIf you need support for Google products, it really does not exist.
Future mail.
Unless you’re constantly mirroring somewhere. Most home NAS have an array of ‘mirror cloud stuff to local’ apps.
People rolling their own email should not forget that these come with their own security risks. For example somebody social engineering their way through the registrar to steal your domain.
For the rest of us... Good luck!
Don't put your important stuff on other people's servers without a good contract and a working backup system.
Google really needs to start thinking and acting like a product company, and it needs to own up that its support system needs a big investment and improvement. These incidents (and other anecdotes) make it look like support has been an afterthought in the company and considered a burden that must be avoided at all costs. Product managers at Google should cringe in shame every time something like this happens.