Problems with a Gmail acct....suggestions, anyone?

[NRaleighLiberal]

Here's a tricky one - I have a few Gmail accounts that have been used over the years - I went to look at one today that was previously used for my consultancy business - I knew the password, but when I tried to log in, got the response that it didn't recognize my location and asked for a phone number - it had the location as Afghanistan (!!) - I suspect that the account was hacked.

I couldn't find any way to go in and either reset the password or delete the account, since to do so meant answering lots of questions I no longer had the answer for (since I can't access the account!). It seems essentially impossible to speak to anyone from Google to see if they could disable/delete the account.

any suggestions? I have a feeling this is going to be an increasing issue as we are all handling so many accounts, and there is so much hacking going on (I've had a Twitter acct hacked, and the a remote server site used for pic uploads infected with Malware - and the hosting company did a runner).

This inability to speak to a human voice for help in some email/web applications makes it so tough.

Ideas/thoughts?

[JimDandy]

1. As with Yahoo, they simply don't care if it's a free email account.

Good luck.

[TygrBright]

2. If it's worth salvaging, try to find the magic "Gmail help" email address.

You may, over the course of days of annoyingly slow and barely-responsive emails, get some assistance. Another, similar, option is to post a question on the help fora there.

This is not a quick fix.

The other option is to abandon it, assign a new email address for the function (I'm recommending Yandex these days,) and let everyone know that the old address is no longer relevant.

I manage a LOT of emails and I've found pretty much the only way to track things is with a password vault. I have an entry for each email, and it includes the security questions and answers, any any other account info I had to give them, such as location or phone number.

Another trick I use is to occasionally (about 1x per year) BCC a "test" email to the entire address book for a particular email account. Then I go back into the "sent" file, open the "BCC" line, and copy/paste all of the addresses into the body of another email to a "root" (personal) email, so that I have a copy of the address book somewhere.

helpfully,
Bright

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. Thanks...it is so frustrating!

It is bizarre to actually know the password, but Google security won't let me connect because it thinks that the location is Afghanistan (the likely location of the hacker!). And the long process of PW change is mind numbing, since it wants to know so much info that simply isn't available (date acct was started, types of labels used, etc).

Let me see if I can find the google help email!