GMail Account Locked

October 17, 2008 1:09 PM

GMail apparently has had an outage. Supposedly it has been fixed, but I still cannot log into my account. I am going insane. Please help.

My password is remembered on my computer (MacBook, Leopard) and I am the only one who uses my computer. The other day I go to log in and it says that my username and password do not match. It's been almost 48 hours and I still cannot access my account.

I suppose there is a possibility it was hacked, but I highly doubt it. My password is not an easy guess and is a letter/number combo. My financial accounts have not been touched.

I have a Yahoo email on file as a secondary, so I tried to reset my password that way. I can login to my Yahoo account (which I seldom use) but for whatever reason, it's not receiving email. My inbox is empty.

Aside from waiting 5 days for them to send me a password hint-- which won't help, really, because I KNOW MY FREAKIN' PASSWORD-- what are my options?

I can get a new email address/provider, but in the meantime I am missing a ton of email. Pardon me while I rip out my hair.

posted by miltoncat to technology (7 comments total)

Do you have the first email they sent you when you made the account?
If you can show them that, the people at Google will give you back your account.
posted by ooklala at 1:17 PM on October 17, 2008

You could download a POP client and try to get into your stuff that way, but if your username/password isn't working then you still are out of luck until the Gmail people fix your account. Gmail POP Help Center.
posted by BeerFilter at 1:39 PM on October 17, 2008

"Please try to answer the security question given. If you're still unable to answer the security question and are sure you're the correct owner of the address, contact us and provide as much information as possible to help us investigate your issue."
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 2:30 PM on October 17, 2008

Ant the Contact Us link...
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 2:31 PM on October 17, 2008

I wouldn't be worried about missing mail unless senders are getting mail delivery errors. I'm sure you can manage without e-mail for a few days :)
posted by wongcorgi at 3:04 PM on October 17, 2008

Did you check the spam folder on your Yahoo account? When I had a similar issue I found that Yahoo was sending my Gmail password emails to spam.
posted by COD at 3:16 PM on October 17, 2008

everyone else seems to have covered the bases but definitely when you can get in, back your email up on your HD and maybe set up a clone account on another service and have gmail forward everything over there too. being without email is very scary (a similar thing happened to me a few months ago)
posted by alcopop at 7:53 PM on October 17, 2008