Gmail ‘verification’

Gmail ‘verification’

Earlier this week I did something which I hadn’t done for a while: I used my laptop to check mail using MS Outlook while at a remote site. I had several accounts set up in Outlook, including the (rarely used) account I use to infest El Reg, which was (note past tense) set up in Gmail. I got an error message... two error messages, the same one twice, for two different Gmail accounts, the one used for El Reg _and the one I had set up as the recovery account for when Gmail played silly buggers_. Oh-oh... Apparently, in the time since the last time I’d used Outlook on my laptop, Google had ‘enhanced’ security. The error message read ‘Google could not verify that this account belongs to you’; my possession of the password, _saved into the settings in Outlook_, was not enough. And the recovery account was also locked out. When I got back to base, I attempted recovery procedures, giving the date I set up the account, answering the security questions... no joy. That was Wednesday, the account, both accounts, is/are still locked out. Because I had set up IMAP in Outlook on my laptop and, more importantly, on my desktop, all mail up to and including Gmail’s ‘security alert’ messages was echoed to my systems but I can’t send or recieve any new mail. I have set up new accounts using Zoho for now, and will finally get around to generating my own domain and email service.

I am currently moving the mail in the Gmail accounts, a few hundred MB worth, to Zoho. Or, rather, copying it, as I can’t delete it as Google can’t verify that I own those accounts.