Can I help my daughter get her Gmail account back?

May 18, 2019 2:15 PM

GMail has just disabled my daughter's account because she is 13 and not 14 as required in Spain. It is requesting proof of ID which she cannot give because she is underage. I would be happy to let her continue the use of her GMail account under my supervision, but the problem is that her account has now been disabled and I need to access it to allow this to happen. My question: How can I set up a supervised GMail account for my daughter using an already existing account that has been disabled? Thanks in advance!
posted by Holly to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Sorry. Google probably won't restore the account unless you provide the ID. They're pretty strict when it comes to disabled accounts. I would see if you can download the data attached to your daughter's account. Some disabled accounts seem to have this option. You may have to create a new Google Account with the appropriate parent supervision options.
posted by mundo at 8:01 PM on May 18, 2019

What proof do they want? It's unlikely that they'll be requesting notarized copies of physical paper documents and having an actual person look them over. Plausible fake ID photographed on a wooden table and pasted into a Word document will probably be plenty good enough. In your daughter's shoes I would stick to the explanation that I was actually born in 2005 but just fat-fingered the birth year on my initial signup.

Worst they can do is refuse to re-open an account you paid nothing for in the first place. It's not like they're going to issue fines or have your daughter charged with fraud.

And if the worst does come to the worst: well, 13 is a pretty good age to lock in the idea that data you can't put your hands on the storage media for two physical copies of doesn't really exist.
posted by flabdablet at 10:04 AM on May 19, 2019