Gmail Account Disabled?!

September 2, 2014 2:26 PM

I have a primary and a secondary gmail adress. The first address is [e-mail], the secondary address is [e-mail]. I have been using both for years. Since a couple of weeks, people cannot send me email onto my secondary address. I have tried it myself, it says "Technical details of permanent failure: Account disabled"

I have tried to send from my secondary address, and that seems to work just fine.
What could have caused this?

posted by Omnomnom to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

That's baffling. Even more oddly enough, it doesn't seem like Google has a dedicated support team for Gmail; instead, they encourage you to post in the support forums - I'd recommend posting there. You may then be contacted by an actual Google employee who can help diagnose.

In the interim - did you try replying to emails you made from the secondary email? If so, did the error still pop up? Also, I know this seems exceedingly basic, but did you make sure you and others spelled the name correctly? Just trying to do troubleshooting steps.
posted by dubious_dude at 2:34 PM on September 2, 2014

Best answer: Based on this forum discussion of the same problem, I would try this: open an incognito window on your browser and try logging into the [e-mail] account directly. You will probably find, as that questioner did, that you can't login because of whatever the problem is. In that event, go through the "forgot my password" steps which probably entail sending a verification message to your cellphone or to some other email address. Once you've got the password reset, the account should work, but you'll have to go into the settings for [e-mail] and under Accounts and Info, go into "edit info" for [e-mail] and reset the PW there.
posted by beagle at 2:41 PM on September 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Beagle, that helped, thanks!
Seems Google shut down my account because of suspicious activities. I restored it but wtf? Should I be worried?
posted by Omnomnom at 2:51 PM on September 2, 2014

> I restored it but wtf? Should I be worried?

Do you have two factor authentication enabled? You should do that, as well as changing the password.
posted by bluecore at 2:53 PM on September 2, 2014 [5 favorites]

I know gmail used to have a problem with email addresses that were separated with a period like that. They couldn't differentiate between an account that had say, john.smith and another with johnsmith.

So maybe someone else out there has a similar account name and is doing something suspisicous?
posted by Kimmalah at 3:18 PM on September 2, 2014

> They couldn't differentiate between an account that had say, john.smith and another with johnsmith.

My understanding was that gmail explicitly treats them as the same. You can arbitrarily add or remove periods in your email username and gmail should deliver them all to you.
posted by ethidda at 3:24 PM on September 2, 2014 [6 favorites]

My understanding was that gmail explicitly treats them as the same. You can arbitrarily add or remove periods in your email username and gmail should deliver them all to you.

This is correct. There has been misinformation in AskMe and elsewhere that this was NOT the case but it is wrong. (cite)
posted by jessamyn at 3:48 PM on September 2, 2014 [5 favorites]

Check your sent mail. If your account was hacked, it may have been used for spam.
posted by theora55 at 9:14 PM on September 2, 2014