Just last weekend I had a friend lose their Google account. They can’t sign in any more. Trying to sign in prompts them to “verify” their account by signing in on a certain specific tablet computer. That tablet computer has broken wifi and can’t sign in to anything. Maybe we could configure the wifi right, if we could sign in, but we can’t without wifi. As far as we can tell, this Google account they’ve had ever since the beginning of Gmail is now dead. All their data is inaccessible.
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
However it turns out for ya, I’ve spent 25 years telling people that they cannot understand the importance of backups until they lose it all. I don’t blame them! Understanding a thing logically doesn’t have much to do with understanding it emotionally.
If anyone cares, I use Google for backup. Yeah, I know, hateful around here, but for $100 a year I get my data offsite. At the house, it’s all on my own drives and backed up again nightly to more drives. You’d have to cancel my Google account and burn my house down for me to lose it all, and I’d snatch the backup drive on the way out the fire.
Is this solution perfect? Hell no! But rewiring my Windows libraries to Google Drive gives me peace of mind. Drop a pic in the Windows Pictures folder, it’s backed up in two places, automatic.
Limonene@lemmy.world 1 day ago
shalafi@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
And THAT kinda bullshit is why I have two copies of my data on site.
But I’ve been close to your friend’s position! When I got a new phone, the only path to getting my login back in the past was authenticating on my $20 Amazon tablet that I read epubs on. Need to up my game, but I got spoiled to having two phones for several years. Wish I could get a modern Palm again. :(
lenhaas2001@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
There are shared lists of people, big tech, bans.
jeannoelhurpeau@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ve backups for my files. Only my files. But we live and we learn, so I’m going to change that.