It’s probably not what you think.
Over the years I’ve been asked many, many questions. As I close in on 20 years of Ask Leo!, it is fascinating to reflect on the fact that some things never change.
My most common question today and 18 years ago differ only in one detail.
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My most frequently asked question
My most common questions are variations on “How do I get back into my account?” The sad part is that preparation beforehand almost always removes the need to ever ask. Prepare by securing your account, setting up recovery information, and keeping it up to date.
Eighteen years ago
In a podcast episode I recorded in 2005, two years after I started Ask Leo!, I began:
I field tons of questions every day on Ask Leo! and they run the range from detailed hardware oriented issues to questions around spyware and virus problems, windows applications behavior, networking, email and much more. Right now there are over 500 questions and answers up on the site, with more being added daily.1
So what’s #1? What’s the most frequent question I get these days?
The question I get asked most often is this: “Can you recover my Hotmail password for me?”
This was such a common question at the time that it became a running joke among my friends.
Today
What’s my #1 question today?
Well, people aren’t asking it quite as directly because they’re finding the answer on the site and on YouTube, but it boils down to this:
“Can you recover my Gmail/Facebook password for me?”
The answer today, much like it was nearly 18 years ago, is still no.
I’ve addressed many variations that boil down to the same thing:
- How Do I Access Gmail Without Phone Verification?
- Lost Gmail Account Recovery With No Phone or Alternate Email
- How Do I Recover My Gmail Account Without My Recovery Email or Phone?
- How Do I Access Gmail Without Phone Verification? Nine things to try.
The modern twist, as you can see, is that apparently folks aren’t setting up or are losing their account recovery information.
My takeaways
Services like Google need to invest in customer support. There’s simply no way around this. People lose their Google (and Facebook, and Microsoft, and, and, and…) accounts constantly. And when I say lose, I mean forever. Gone with no hope of recovery. This is particularly devastating given how much we’ve come to rely on these accounts.
I get that ensuring you’re not accidentally turning over an account to a hacker is hard (because you know they’re trying — just ask the mobile providers trying to prevent SIM swapping), but the fact remains there needs to be a better recovery mechanism other than “It’s your fault for not setting up multiple different recovery phones, addresses, and whatever elses.”
You and I need to be better prepared. This is the flip side: knowing that there is no customer support, and knowing that account hacking is such a problem, and knowing that people are losing their accounts permanently every day, it’s clear that we as customers need to take responsibility. And yes, that means setting up multiple different recovery phones, addresses, and whatever elses.
Honestly, as much as we might want them to, the services are unlikely to improve. The only thing under our control is how we prepare. That means keeping our accounts secure, setting up recovery information, backing up our important information, and staying alert for phishing and other hack attempts.
Ultimately, passwords and authentication need a major revamp. They’re simply too error and loss prone, especially without support from the services we’re using. Several alternatives are in the works, but that’s been true for years. Hopefully, we’ll see some progress soon.
Do this
Take responsibility for setting up your account security. Do everything you can to avoid being the person who needs to ask me, or anyone else, how to get back into your account.
As I said, preparation is the only thing in our control.
It shouldn’t be this way, but it is.
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Footnotes & References
1: Currently over 5,500.
Funny coincidence, today we had a question about that, but it’s not really a coincidence, because it’s more unlikely to go a day without getting an account recovery question :-)
Indeed. In fact I just used the stock answer in response to a comment on the YouTube video accompanying this article asking exactly that. SIGH.
When I see a comment like that, I just say read the #@*& article. I leave out the expletive, but there’s a strong temptation to include it.
You actually keep count? That means that 6% of all AskLeo! questions are asking to retrieve accounts. That Retrieve My Account question also comes up a lot in the comments on Retrieve My Account articles.
In my Personal Vault on OneDrive, I keep an encrypted, password protected archive containing a document that stores all my account recovery information, alphabetically organized by the name of the service (gmail, outlook, Facebook, etc.). Twice a year I take the time to verify that my account recovery data file contains complete recovery information for every account listed in my password manager.
When I set up a new account, one of the things I look for is account recovery options. If there are none (or I consider them inadequate), I question whether I really want/need that account, and I often close it making sure to explain why when the option is available (usually in an exit survey). If the account is something I must have (medical, government, etc.), I try to find a way to ask why there are no recovery options (or why they are so inadequate). For such accounts, I add an entry for the account, with the comment “NONE Available” (or something similar) under the name.
I use sixteen character passwords and 2FA to make it as difficult as possible for crackers to steal my accounts, and as the functionality becomes available I’ll switch to passkeys, however, keeping my account recovery information securely stored and as up to date as possible is a very important line of defense in my not so humble opinion.
Ernie