Need help on recovering access to an email account

Renegade

Renegade

Staff member
Luminary
Someone I know lost their mobile phone yesterday. Hardly a surprise, it being new years eve.

They naturally dont remember their password. Phone number is updated on that account and on trying the forgot password option, they get OTP option which they thankfully have access to as the SIM was on another phone. After entering the OTP it is asking for recovery email which is an old email and inactive.

How can the account be recovered without this another step of verification. Anyway to contact google support for help?
 
inactive means deleted or don't have password? email accounts are never deleted by the company. try logging into that email account. maybe they might put in the password by muscle memory.
I always keep a copy of all my past and current accounts in keepassxc database on my laptop, phone and gdrive. Old deleted accounts are moved to trash in that database. Maybe going forward ask them to keep such a handy password file as backup.
google support is just bots and even if you get a hold of a person they wont help you for privacy reasons. Such cases are a dime a dozen and lot of scammers have access to stolen phones & sims etc.
 

And follow along. It has multiple options. Hopefully you get through one way. I have multiple recovery emails, passkeys, and multiple phones linked to my main. Which makes recovery pretty easy.

Google customer care is hopeless. I had to dig around for hours one to find a way to contact customer care for international billing related issue. But was not able to resolve.
 
6pack said:
inactive means deleted or don't have password? email accounts are never deleted by the company. try logging into that email account. maybe they might put in the password by muscle memory.
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Its an old Yahoo email ID which has been deactivated due to no use. Now I dont think its recoverable.

Unfortunate for non-tech savvy people who cant keep up with tech loops to jump through to get access to their account.
ronnie_gogs said:

And follow along. It has multiple options. Hopefully you get through one way. I have multiple recovery emails, passkeys, and multiple phones linked to my main. Which makes recovery pretty easy.

Google customer care is hopeless. I had to dig around for hours one to find a way to contact customer care for international billing related issue. But was not able to resolve.
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Yes they tried it, but unfortunately after entering OTP it just asks for recovery email access.
 
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Then only option is to rack those brain cells and try to remember their password. Maybe it's their DOB or something. Non tech savvy people use something close to them as passwords so they don't forget it.
Edit: I'm guessing no phone backups anywhere too?
 
Renegade said:
Its an old Yahoo email ID which has been deactivated due to no use. Now I dont think its recoverable.

Unfortunate for non-tech savvy people who cant keep up with tech loops to jump through to get access to their account.

Yes they tried it, but unfortunately after entering OTP it just asks for recovery email access.
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I don't think that mail might have been deleted. As I myself recovered a 15yr old rediffmail account after non-use, and it was still active.
 
Afxal said:
I don't think that mail might have been deleted. As I myself recovered a 15yr old rediffmail account after non-use, and it was still active.
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No yahoo ownership changed hands 2-3 times between different companies and they prune old accounts a lot. I had 2-3 yahoo accounts and none are available now. They probably allow others to reuse old account names after deleting all the data.
 
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