Can't open your e-mailbox? Good luck

What would you do if you logged onto your e-mail and received an unfamiliar message: "User name and password do not match"?
(From The New York Times)

The story "Can't open your e-mailbox? Good luck" published October 4, 2008 at 2:22 PM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[TheTechKid]

I think that Google should consider offering live support to those who subscribe to the ad supported email service it offers. However, I do not see it a necessity as it offers a variety of alternatives for the support that a customer would normally require. Rather, it is an oppertunity to attract more customers from other email providers something that I should think Google would be enticed by as most of it's business seems to orbit about information collection and analysis tools.

The impacts of this towards Google would likely be as follows: A noticeable percentage of paying customers would switch to the ad supported version of g-mail, g-mail as a whole would attract more customers which would eventually pay off as increased ease of data aggregation for Google as more would do Google searches while logged into Google. Overall this would lead to increased profits because for an information oriented company such as Google information is money.

Thus it would be a smart move for Google to separate itself from the rest of the field as much as possible...by offering live support for it's ad supported service.

[jeremyblaze]

Um, NO! Your relationship with your bank is about your money. You deposit it, they use it to make more. They OWE you support. Google/Yahoo/MSN owe you nothing. It is a free service and has never made claims to be more. If you depend on your gmail (its now my primary too, but I have backups) AND you are HAVE to have access 24/7 no matter what, then you probably need a premium email account. I pay for my blackberry account and expect lots. Usually I get it. I dont pay for my gmail, use it tons, expect little, but always get more than what i pay for!

[magicmaster]

I won't instantly terminated my gmail account, but I would reconsider whether to entrust my precious data with Google.

[Imalittleteapot]

Well I agree with that. I use Google every day, but why would anyone trust their precious data to any one service? If it's precious keep a backup or two in separate locations. If it's confidential don't give it anybody that you don't have to.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Customers who use the advertising-supported version of Gmail, however, must rely solely on what Google calls "self-service online support."

[CNET editors' note: Suggestive sentence removed.]

[jscott418]

This is the same problem as Linux faces. Unlike Linux though Google could afford a support system to assist with their products. I guess the folks at Google would rather make money for themselves and their stock holders. Good support is the key to a good product. Its too bad Google chooses to follow a lame support system as the Linux community. But I guess the old saying "you get what you pay for" is all so true here. I guess today we expect too much from FREE.

[Lerianis]

That would never happen to me, because I am smart enough to save my username and password using Norton Internet Security's built-in password manager that works with IE7/8 and Firefox 2/3.
I swear, some of these people who are still punching in passwords are STUPID!

[sanenazok]

Sounds like everything will work fine for you until your computer crashes or is stolen. How about if you want to access your account from someone else's computer, like at work? Don't go around calling people stupid, too, when you know nothing about them.

[groink_hi]

You didn't read or understand the article, did you? It has nothing to do with forgetting passwords. If a hacker fails to log onto your account X number of times, the account is locked - regardless of whether or not you remember your password. Even worse, if the Gmail account is your primary account, and you have no other email address outside of Gmail, then you're in the same Hell as Mr. Lynch in the article. As Google says, this is by design. Unlike Yahoo where the hacker got into Palin's account, he could not do the same thing with Gmail.

[Vegaman_Dan]

As long as Google keeps their Gmail service as a 'beta', they have no obligations what so ever to do anything to help you. It's a beta and not supported. You take your risks with full knowledge of this.

Granted, it's been years and people even pay $50 a year for the premium service, but it's still for the 'beta'.

Given Google's recent trend in exploiting end users for profit and power, this isn't really a surprising article.

[RandSec]

I think the support issue is essentially beside the point: Apparently it is Gmail policy to allow anyone on the web to easily cause Denial Of Service (DOS) on any Gmail account they do not like, simply by trying to log in until the account is suspended. That is breathtakingly wrong, even when the account is free. That is a serious security flaw of the sort often seen on the browser end. The correct approach is to demand that a user have and use a long, random password (typically created and saved by Password Safe or other password manager). If an attacker gets past that, good luck to them, but at least Gmail is not conspiring with the attacker against the registered user. Gmail should not be suspending accounts simply because log-in has failed.

[azcomicgeek]

GMail is still in Beta so it is the User's fault for using this as their only email for any important or business related mail. "Free" and "Beta" should indicate limited or, more likely, no support and you shouldn't expect any support. I use Gmail as my primary email but I also maintain several other free email services in case one or more go down at an important time.

[RandSec]

I just read a Gmail page which claimed Gmail would NOT suspend a user account for repeated login failures. That is the correct approach. Either something else is going on, or the servers did not get the memo.

[TheReaperD]

One of the options that neither side seems to want to mention: pay per incident support. As long as the free online tools remain available, if free is the most important thing to you, then you use them. If immediate support is the most important thing to you, then you hand over $$$ to get Google to listen to your issue now.

If Google priced the service correctly, it would pay for the service representatives that would need to be hired for the support. Thus, there would not be any additional net cost to Google.

[sbrixie]

When I signed up for a Gmail account, I had to provide them with my mobile phone number. I believe they sent me an SMS message with a code or temporary password. Why don't they implement a similar method for locked out accounts?

[frankmcma]

I produce a very popular podcast called Rumor Girls which has been produced for years, we always had our rumor girls email through gmail. Earlier this year we could not log in, we kept trying and nothing. We emailed back and forth between google and after a few weeks the end result was "we do not know why your account is inactive and we currently cannot reactivate it". Just like that...our 4 year database of contacts, all our emails, everything gone.

PLEASE do not use gmail for anything other than a side account. It is very nice with great features (searching is cool) but its apparently easy for your account to be locked and you could never get it back. At least other places like yahoo mail treat it like an actual service and provide support. Just because the "beta" tag is on it does not mean google can stumble so badly. Again..I would not recommend gmail for professional use...we got burned :(

[frankmcma]

Also...........

When I got locked out of my gmail, here is the email I received from google:

Thank you for your report. We've completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at
this time. We've disabled access to this account for your security. Please
note that disabling protects your account from further abuse. If you used
orkut with this account, we've deleted the orkut profile. At Google we
take the privacy and security of our users very seriously. For this
reason, we're unable to reveal any further information about this account.

----------------

Please don't reply to this email, as we won't be able to review your
response. If your question wasn't answered, please search or browse the
Google Accounts Help Center

[umbrae]

This is why I run my own mail server. Screw the Cloud: the most insecure and unreliable place to store your data.

[RMR09]

I found Gmail accounts good data achievers, but technology isn?t always trustable so we must have back ups, even though Google should give a complete service because we are being helped by its service but also it is being helped by us.
It is important to talk about theft and what we can do for protecting authenticity we as users should be protected by any mail brand.
At last I hadn`t experienced troubles with my e-mail account.

[santiagoinfo51]

My opinion about this article is that Gmail (Google) should be much more careful about this theme of people being locked out of their accounts. I think that if Gmail is not able to solve this problem the least it could do is having a free phone customer support line available to all Gmail users. I also think that Gmail should pay more attention to these problems if it doesn't want to start losing users or customers.

[idrukurdi]

A01164411 Fer:

well, I think gmail has a lots of benefits but we cannot think of it as they only way of having a mail, there are so many other places where you can create your account, so don't freak out and just do an account on gmail and another in... I don't know, yahoo or hotmail... so if you have a problem, you can enter any of these accounts and both will have the same information...=)

[betoooopp]

In a way, it would be good that google and all of the other mails offered a service for whatever problem that the costumer has. Because after all, even if you're not paying to them, if they offer their service then they should do a good service and not just let you have these kinds of problems without any solution. At the same time, if you know you are signing in a free webmail then you should take your precautions like having another e-mail ... If you know that you are not paying to this webmails, then you must be concerned that problems might happen and that you will not always have the service you expect to have. Another precaution; be always careful with the information you manage in your webmails! Technology sometimes does betray us.

[betoooopp]

In a way, it would be good that google and all of the other mails offered a service for whatever problem that the costumer has. Because after all, even if you're not paying to them, if they offer their service then they should do a good service and not just let you have these kinds of problems without any solution. At the same time, if you know you are signing in a free webmail then you should take your precautions like having another e-mail ... If you know that you are not paying to this webmails, then you must be concerned that problems might happen and that you will not always have the service you expect to have. Another precaution; be always careful with the information you manage in your webmails! Technology sometimes does betray us.