[Discuss] bios upgrade appears to have broken access to my google account and gmail

[Barbara Ellen Irwin]

Arther wrote:

> Personally I avoid using Google.

Hi Arthur:

I don't like google's constant attempts to extend their monopolies,
and their cavalier (to put the best face on it as possible) attitude
to privacy.

So I also avoid them (but with the important exceptions of google
search and gmail).

With regard to searching, I don't know of alternative searching
technology that is even in the same ballpark as google searching.
Thus, I think they have an effective monopoly there so I am stuck (and
let's be honest you are probably stuck as well) even though google is
memorizing every one of our searches with all that means with regard
to our privacy.

With regard to mail servers, at least one alternative to gmail has
deliberately introduced severe issues with mailing list posts in 2014,
see
<https://www.pcworld.com/article/2141120/yahoo-email-antispoofing-policy-breaks-mailing-lists.html>.
One of my development colleagues was subject to this issue (he kept
being arbitrary unsubscribed from the SourceForge PLplot mailing lists
because of it) so he finally reluctantly moved from yahoo to gmail
several months later, and that solved that issue.

Also, last year when I was shopping around for a mail server, one of
the shaw.ca mail server software support team suggested to me that I
should not use their mail server for anything serious, and I should
try gmail instead (!).  I was a bit surprised by that, but his
superior backed him up so that is fundamentally why I adopted the
gmail mail server for receiving my email last year.  And I will likely
stick with gmail (albeit with a new account that is confirmed to be
recoverable for multiple computers and browsers).  However, I would
still be generally interested (in terms of keeping up to date on what
is going on with this particular google monopoly) if it turns out
there really is a good alternative to gmail.  For example, the article
at
<https://www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/apps-wearables/best-gmail-alternatives-3665005/>
is a start in that direction although it did not mention the mailing-list
software compatibility issue that is of most importance for my needs.

Alan

On 8/3/19 8:01 PM, Barbara Ellen Irwin wrote:
> (This is Alan, and I am using Barbara's access to the vlug discuss
> list (which she kindly shared with me) rather than my own because I
> currently cannot access email that accumulates in my gmail account.)
> 
> The necessary background information for this issue is today I took
> our principal computer into MotherComputers for a long-overdue BIOS
> upgrade (that with some luck might finally solve the AMD Ryzen 7 1700
> linux kernel lockups I have discussed before and which with "random"
> uptimes between lockups ranging from 0.5 days to 24 days with the mean
> roughly 8 days or so.)
> 
> Although it is way too soon to say much about stability other than the
> system is still up after 0.3 days or so, this "new BIOS" system passed
> all my immediate tests except for one simple thing.  Which is I cannot
> access my email stored in my gmail account!
> 
> For example, access to gmail is controlled via a google account login,
> but that login prompt no longer works for me.  Instead, I get diverted
> to "This device isn't recognised. For your security, Google wants to
> make sure that it's really you. Learn more."
> 
> So unless there is some huge coincidence going on, google somehow got
> access to my previous BIOS version and feels I am now trying
> to log in from a different device (which is technically correct, but I
> assume most users would like to access their google account from
> anywhere rather than be limited to just one device with a fixed BIOS version.
> 
> Google documentation does claim that you can use a firefox private
> page to login from some non-standard location, but so far that option
> has not worked for me either.
> 
> And specifying a separate non-gmail account to recieve verification
> numbers does not work either.  The message in that case is
> 
> Thanks for confirming that you can access
> the [alternative] contact email address that you provided.  Unfortunately,
> Google
> couldn't verify that alan.w.irwin1234 at gmail.com belongs to you. Learn
> more about how to recover your account.
> 
> Has anybody every run into this situation of being shut out of their
> google account whenever they try to access it from a different
> computer (e.g., new computer or new bios)?  If so, how did you manage
> to recover access to your account?
> 
> Alan