Holy hell, not again!

[heidi]

My google account has been locked AGAIN for "unusual activity" and zorb is out of the country! Does anyone have a phone number for anything at Google that I can talk to about this?

This is ridiculous.

Comments

[effervescent.livejournal.com]

I don't have a number or anything, unfortunately, but have you thought about setting up another address that gets all of your email forwarded to it, as well as Gmail's 'mail as' function? That way you could still access all of it, and even reply if you needed to.

Sucks that they're locking you out, though!

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

Whoa, why did they lock you out the first time? That's pretty ridiculous, and I wouldn't want that to happen to me! My google account is my everything. Urgh!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

They never even explained why the first time so I don't know if this is the same reason, or something different. SIGH. And yeah, it is my everything, too.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I think that even if I had a separate account that everything was forwarded to, my gmail account wouldn't forward while I was locked out -plus I still couldn't answer anything sitting in there now. But it might work for things that come to my heidi8.com account....

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Did you try the 650-253-0000 number? I don't know if it's any good for customer support, but that is the main number. I also found 650-623-4000, I guess they're worth a try.

[effervescent.livejournal.com]

I think the forwarding still works, because I was locked out for forgetting my password a little while ago and the email was still forwarded. I would assume that it would still work, because they can hardly cut off functionality...

But yes, not really solving this particular instance, unfortunately :( Just offering potential solutions for the future.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

They said there's no customer support for gmail - even for people with paid accounts (for extra storage) like mine.

I'm so so angry with them right now!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I think it's a terrific idea and I will definitely try it. There's no downside in doing it, so, yeah.

But for now?

Enraged.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Geeze. That's ridiculous.

When it does come back, you really might want to try the backup account idea kerrikins suggested. I can't imagine why they keep shutting you out, but that's crazy.

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

I'll take a guess about this: if your account is accessed by a sufficiently large number of geographically dispersed IP addresses in a relatively short period of time, Google automatically detects this and takes action to protect you.

Your trip to lalaland, in other words, might have been the trigger.

It's possible but...

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

But then why didn't it happen while I was in LA? It happened about 18 hours after I returned home. And they should have a way to differentiate access via an Android phone from other methods of access, shouldn't they?

[benjj.livejournal.com]

www.yahoo.com ?

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

But I hate yahoo's email system - that's why I moved to gmail back in 2004....

[benjj.livejournal.com]

to be fair (he says, replying from gmail) that was a long time ago

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

True, but I have kept the account live ever since, and I just don't like the interface. Plus, one of the reasons I own an Android-based phone is because of its insta-sync with my gmail and other google accounts (when I am not locked out from them). I love my phone and it doesn't work with Yahoo anywhere near as well.