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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Any chance you can access Gmail from the same IP address? Or at least same city (as located by IP?).

I got locked out because of an old phone number I no longer had access to. Waited until I went back to my old home town. Tried again and there was no request for the phone number. Got in and updated everything.

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Thanks. I was accessing gmail with the same IP, I tried both home and work, unfortunately I changed my phone and my laptop at the same time. My phone works, I can receive verification code, but somehow it is not enough. It asks to send a different code to YouTube (which I don't know how would that help), or Google Authenticator, or the exact email I am recovering. I have been thinking about maybe apply for a court order or something...

Do you have the YouTube app installed? Sounds like it's trying to send a notification to that app to authenticate you.

I will need to log in YouTube in order to receive the notification, should be the same google account, right? I had YouTube on my phone, but I didn't log in though.

True. If you had already had the YT app installed and logged in, it might have helped. Seems like you're in a catch22 situation. Very strange system design.

Is this on android?

I am on iOS. The most annoying thing is that I always ended at the "I have sent a verification code to your gmail address" thing, doesn't it know I am trying to recover this email address???? Google maybe know me more than myself, and it cannot verify me for my email.

Gmail is saying that when you attempt to recover your account? If so, then I believe it's saying it sent the verification to the backup email on file, so check any other email addresses you have access to and might have used for backup recovery addresses.

Unfortunately it is not what is happening. There are plenty of people having the exact same experience, the hope of recovering it is slim to none. I didn't have a backup recovery address, so maybe the developer put a default recovery address as the original address, maybe that's why. I just received an email from epicgames that they cannot change my email address without me providing the verification code sent to my gmail now...

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