My daughter is having a horrific week (lots of drama ) and part of it is she broke her phone, so she has a cheap burner phone to use for the week it will take to get her phone repaired. She is trying to set up gmail on her new phone, and can’t remember the password. Of course the only way she can reset the password is by getting a text to - you guessed it - her old replaced phone. She needs to get info from her email and use it on her phone but its a catch 22.
Is there anyway she can somehow get her password without her old phone? Or is she just screwed?
Assuming it’s not random gibberish probably she really can remember the password if she tries hard enough. Write down the top 10 prospects. Sleep on it. Repeat. Odds are she’ll remember something that works in a day or two of this.
But yeah, Google doesn’t provide helpful, caring customer service for free accounts. And if there is no backup plan for passwords or authentication, that’s pretty much it for that account. Which is why a) you should write down all your passwords on paper someplace, and b) use multiple backup authentication methods of phone and also one-time-password list, which they also provide as an option.
the phone number remains the same if the sim card is transferred. she should be able to receive text at the same number. unless she’s using some cdma-bullshit phone. no one to blame but herself if no recovery methods were setup. google regularly nags about ensuring that those are up to date.
I don’t think I want Google to be helpful and caring in this case. You can’t just let people call in and go “I forgot the password to this account, can you reset it for me”.
Can you ask your cell company to set up call forwarding from the old phone number to the new one, then ask Google to call (or text) in the authentication code?
Yes, this is the answer.
You take the sim card out of the phone being repaired, and you put it in a garbage phone. Then that garbage phone is the same phone number, and will receive the texts that google sends.
I think it’s fair to assume that either the phone was sent for repair without removing the SIM card (because why not?) or it’s a CDMA phone (because the largest American carrier sells CDMA phones).