Account recovery failing for many genuine Gmail users

For some who forgot their Gmail password, account recovery is acting like a nightmare, as the service is not verifying the users.

Changing password could cause one to lose their account on Gmail, as the app isn’t letting many to pass through the recovery process. Affected users get a notification saying “Gmail couldn’t verify that ……[email protected] belongs to you”. The following screenshot shared by one of the users shows the exact notification

There’s a long list of reported use-cases where-in users say Gmail is not verifying that the account belongs to them. Some of those suffering note that despite answering all the security questions and submitting the received verification code, Gmail inquires about the create date of their account. When unable to recall, it fails to verify the account.

This issue continues to be reported since April, 2017. Not much has been contributed by the experts on Gmail forum, as they keep on repeating that lack of sufficient information to prove ownership or an account lost during recovery often does this.

Users who ended up losing their accounts due to Gmail’s inability to verify had no other option but to create another account. But that effectively meant they lost all their emails and data associated with the previous account.

A quick look at the relevant threads at official Gmail forum reveals that a large number of users are facing account recovery failure on Gmail. But Google has neither acknowledged nor addressed the issue yet. In case of any further updates, we’ll keep you posted.

If you have been affected by this problem, you can try following the instructions mentioned here.

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