Gmail Signing In.

[NoshowJones]

Can anyone tell me if it is the case that you do not actually have a password to sign in to your Gmail account and that you use your Google account password instead?

[Myran]

Yes, it's the same account.

[NoshowJones]

55 minutes ago, Myran said:

Yes, it's the same account.

Yes, My gmail account stays on my phone. But on my desktop when I try to sign in after a short time, I am told I have a wrong password, then I have to click "Yes! It's Me" on my phone, then punch the number then it takes me to Gmail. They never confirm my password, they just take me to gmail.

Doing that every so often is some hassle.

[NoshowJones]

Every day and twice today I have to go through a password and a link sent to my smartphone asking me to confirm by tapping in a box saying "Yes it's me" before I  can get back into my gmail account.

Then I get "Your Google account was recovered successfully".

Does anyone know why this is happening? May I point  out that I have just bought a new smartphone and my gmail account is fine there.

[JaiMaai]

It sounds like you have 2-factor authentication (2FA) turned on.  To ger rid of the behaviour you describe you will need to turn it off, although from a security point of view it's better to leave it on to reduce the risk of your account being hacked,

 

This link shows the instructions:

 

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1064203?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

[Myran]

As Jai points out, you likely have 2FA activated. That shouldn't trigger all the time, though. Only when you log in from a new device or a new place. Perhaps your new phone has a VPN activated?

[NoshowJones]

34 minutes ago, Myran said:

As Jai points out, you likely have 2FA activated. That shouldn't trigger all the time, though. Only when you log in from a new device or a new place. Perhaps your new phone has a VPN activated?

I don't see any sign of a VPN on my new phone. May I point out that gmail is no problem on my phone, I just need to tap the app and it is on straight away, I did not have gmail on my last phone. I am logging on from my desktop which I have had for more than 3 years.

[sandyf]

1 hour ago, NoshowJones said:

Every day and twice today I have to go through a password and a link sent to my smartphone asking me to confirm by tapping in a box saying "Yes it's me" before I  can get back into my gmail account.

Then I get "Your Google account was recovered successfully".

Does anyone know why this is happening? May I point  out that I have just bought a new smartphone and my gmail account is fine there.

Google is a bit like a sports centre, once you have signed in you can use any facility in the building.

Your gmail is just one facility of your google account, gmail is not on your phone, just that you can access it easily from your phone as phones are normally permanently signed in to the google account. You need to be signed in on the phone to use Play Store, another google facility.

Someone mentioned 2 step verification but that shouldn't be a problem. I have that on and can access gmail from multiple devices without a problem. I suspect you are signing out from the google account on another device and this is triggerering the password check when you change device. The password belongs to the google account, not gmail, that is an open door once signed into google. If you have google signed in on one device, your phone, it ought to be signed in on other devices you intend to use.

I leave all devices permanently signed in, I also have multiple gmails and they are always signed in and can read them on any device without a problem.

The only time I get a security check is sometimes when I use the gmails in a different country.

[Myran]

4 minutes ago, NoshowJones said:

I don't see any sign of a VPN on my new phone. May I point out that gmail is no problem on my phone, I just need to tap the app and it is on straight away, I did not have gmail on my last phone. I am logging on from my desktop which I have had for more than 3 years.

Ah, my bad. Then a VPN or proxy on the computer might be the culprit. Some browsers, like Opera, have built-in VPN's.

 

On the management page for your Google account you should be able to see all devices that are logged in. Perhaps you can spot something that looks amiss there (like a device being logged in from a different country).

[NoshowJones]

57 minutes ago, JaiMaai said:

It sounds like you have 2-factor authentication (2FA) turned on.  To ger rid of the behaviour you describe you will need to turn it off, although from a security point of view it's better to leave it on to reduce the risk of your account being hacked,

 

This link shows the instructions:

 

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1064203?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

The two step verification is turned off. I do not want to mess with passwords as I don't even know what my password is, I have set up at leaast 3 and they keep getting knocked back. Google keeps asking me for my last password and I just keep using that. 

[NoshowJones]

3 minutes ago, Myran said:

Ah, my bad. Then a VPN or proxy on the computer might be the culprit. Some browsers, like Opera, have built-in VPN's.

 

On the management page for your Google account you should be able to see all devices that are logged in. Perhaps you can spot something that looks amiss there (like a device being logged in from a different country).

I do have Opera as my main browser, I will check it and make sure it is off.

[treetops]

If your desktop browser deletes cookies on exit then Google may think you're logging in from a new device each time and instigate the extra security steps.

[brianthainess]

My old laptop decided to close and re-set itself, I lost my old yahoo e-mail address , can't log in to google for anything anymore, can't download any images or YouTube. just saying 

[NoshowJones]

1 hour ago, treetops said:

If your desktop browser deletes cookies on exit then Google may think you're logging in from a new device each time and instigate the extra security steps.

How can I check that?

[treetops]

10 minutes ago, NoshowJones said:

How can I check that?

Not sure - I don't use Opera.

[sandyf]

15 hours ago, brianthainess said:

can't log in to google for anything anymore,

Of course you can, but you need to know the account login details.

[sandyf]

13 hours ago, NoshowJones said:

How can I check that?

https://help.opera.com/en/latest/web-preferences/

[sandyf]

15 hours ago, NoshowJones said:

The two step verification is turned off. I do not want to mess with passwords as I don't even know what my password is, I have set up at leaast 3 and they keep getting knocked back. Google keeps asking me for my last password and I just keep using that. 

If you look on a device that is signed into google you will see in the top right hand corner your profile icon.  If you click on that a box will open and you will see a box with "Manage your Google Account"

Click on that and scroll right down to the bottom and  select "help options". A window will open with instructions on how to deal with various problems, password recovery being one of them.

[brianthainess]

1 hour ago, sandyf said:

Of course you can, but you need to know the account login details.

And they say, we have sent an email to the one i can't open

[NanLaew]

19 hours ago, NoshowJones said:

Every day and twice today I have to go through a password and a link sent to my smartphone asking me to confirm by tapping in a box saying "Yes it's me" before I  can get back into my gmail account.

Then I get "Your Google account was recovered successfully".

Does anyone know why this is happening? May I point  out that I have just bought a new smartphone and my gmail account is fine there.

Google was and still is the primary developer of android so the gmail on your android phone is securely hosted on that device.

 

If this new 2FA authentication requirement loop started AFTER you got the new phone then I think you need to match the new phone to Google/Gmail on your desktop devices. Maybe see if there's a checkbox option to 'always remember' that's being overlooked? Are you allowing the password to be saved on any of your devices?

 

I recall that Google brought in this need to register all your devices and browser access some time in the past year. I thought it was going to be a pain in the butt as I travel overseas a lot and my ip address changes several times in a day. However, it was a one-off event and both my smartphones, my desktop and both my laptops (old and new) allow me to log in with just the gmail option on Google's browser with the password saved.

[NoshowJones]

3 hours ago, sandyf said:

If you look on a device that is signed into google you will see in the top right hand corner your profile icon.  If you click on that a box will open and you will see a box with "Manage your Google Account"

Click on that and scroll right down to the bottom and  select "help options". A window will open with instructions on how to deal with various problems, password recovery being one of them.

I added that and it does not work. I took the computer to a local engineer also with my phone, he pressed on google Chrome and gmail came up. That was on my laptop. but it does not happen that way on my  desktop.

[sandyf]

6 hours ago, brianthainess said:

And they say, we have sent an email to the one i can't open

What exactly are you trying to say.

You said your computer crashed, that in itself wouldn't make the google account irrecoverable, subsequent security checks may be a bit challenging.

A few years back I had someone steal a microsoft email account. That is a different ball game and quite complicated, took nearly 5 weeks but got it back.

Always pays to hold on to the details.

[sandyf]

3 hours ago, NoshowJones said:

I added that and it does not work. I took the computer to a local engineer also with my phone, he pressed on google Chrome and gmail came up. That was on my laptop. but it does not happen that way on my  desktop.

Not sure what you mean about adding something. You said you didn't know your password and I just pointed you towards passport recovery.

As far as your email is concerned it appears to me that it is a question of getting things set to work as you want, effectively have your desktop signed into your Google account permanently. You have never said how you access gmail on the desktop, browser?

There was no problem on the laptop as that had chrome running so you were signed into google on that device and the gmail client would have opened straight away.

You have a couple of options, you could have Chrome installed on the desktop in the background with Opera. I have 2 browsers Chrome and Microsoft Edge, very seldom use Edge only when I want to change something on my hotmail emails.

Another option is to use the mail app that comes with Windows, you may well be using it already if you also have a microsoft email. The app can handle multiple emails and a very usefull tool, I have 6 email accounts on mine, 2 x Microsoft and 4 x Google. The only slight downside is you cannot adjust any email account settings from the app, that has to be done at the client. This would be your laptop for gmail, and why I have Edge installed for Microsoft.

https://www.intowindows.com/how-to-add-gmail-to-windows-10-mail/

 

[NoshowJones]

8 minutes ago, sandyf said:

Not sure what you mean about adding something. You said you didn't know your password and I just pointed you towards passport recovery.

As far as your email is concerned it appears to me that it is a question of getting things set to work as you want, effectively have your desktop signed into your Google account permanently. You have never said how you access gmail on the desktop, browser?

There was no problem on the laptop as that had chrome running so you were signed into google on that device and the gmail client would have opened straight away.

You have a couple of options, you could have Chrome installed on the desktop in the background with Opera. I have 2 browsers Chrome and Microsoft Edge, very seldom use Edge only when I want to change something on my hotmail emails.

Another option is to use the mail app that comes with Windows, you may well be using it already if you also have a microsoft email. The app can handle multiple emails and a very usefull tool, I have 6 email accounts on mine, 2 x Microsoft and 4 x Google. The only slight downside is you cannot adjust any email account settings from the app, that has to be done at the client. This would be your laptop for gmail, and why I have Edge installed for Microsoft.

https://www.intowindows.com/how-to-add-gmail-to-windows-10-mail/

 

I moved from Hotmail to gmail over a year ago and was using it no problem, my own opinion is that when I bought a new samsung smartphone 3 weeks ago, the Samsung shop changed my data from my Redmi and I was asked to use a new password for google and I gave her one, I used it fine till about a week ago and tried to sign in to my gmail account and that's when things started to go haywire.

I have a note of about 6 passwords  I have given Google and every time I tried to use one it was not accepted.

The local computer shop guy tried to get me a google password and he had the same problem as me.

[BenStark]

You were never asked for a new password, you were asked to verify it was you.

 

Some people should not be allowed near a computer

[brianthainess]

1 hour ago, sandyf said:

You said your computer crashed, that in itself wouldn't make the google account irrecoverable, subsequent security checks may be a bit challenging.

Well it did, it is probably me trying the wrong passwords etc. over and over. I also get ''you already have an account in this name'' 

[sandyf]

15 hours ago, brianthainess said:

it is probably me trying the wrong passwords etc. over and over.

Exactly.

[sandyf]

15 hours ago, NoshowJones said:

I moved from Hotmail to gmail over a year ago and was using it no problem, my own opinion is that when I bought a new samsung smartphone 3 weeks ago, the Samsung shop changed my data from my Redmi and I was asked to use a new password for google and I gave her one, I used it fine till about a week ago and tried to sign in to my gmail account and that's when things started to go haywire.

I have a note of about 6 passwords  I have given Google and every time I tried to use one it was not accepted.

The local computer shop guy tried to get me a google password and he had the same problem as me.

You need to be consistant in what you say, you were saying there was a problem with the desktop and now that the problem is with the phone.

Your google data is backed up to the cloud and when you bought the new phone they would have downloaded the data but in order to do that the new phone would have to be signed in. There would be no need for a new password but there would have been a security check being a new device.

 

"I used it fine till about a week ago and tried to sign in to my gmail account and that's when things started to go haywire."

 

You do not sign into gmail. Gmail is a service available under the Google account umbrella and it is quite important to understand the concept and how it is applied across multiple devices.

What may have happened is effectively speculation and supposition so you are left with trying to follow the recovery procedures or getting in touch with google.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7682439?hl=en

 

[NoshowJones]

9 minutes ago, sandyf said:

You need to be consistant in what you say, you were saying there was a problem with the desktop and now that the problem is with the phone.

Your google data is backed up to the cloud and when you bought the new phone they would have downloaded the data but in order to do that the new phone would have to be signed in. There would be no need for a new password but there would have been a security check being a new device.

 

"I used it fine till about a week ago and tried to sign in to my gmail account and that's when things started to go haywire."

 

You do not sign into gmail. Gmail is a service available under the Google account umbrella and it is quite important to understand the concept and how it is applied across multiple devices.

What may have happened is effectively speculation and supposition so you are left with trying to follow the recovery procedures or getting in touch with google.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7682439?hl=en

 

Thanks I can get Gmail on my phone ok but it is getting a password, I have had about 8 so far. I am shut out of my desktop right now, the fault lies with Google.

[NoshowJones]

28 minutes ago, sandyf said:

You need to be consistant in what you say, you were saying there was a problem with the desktop and now that the problem is with the phone.

Your google data is backed up to the cloud and when you bought the new phone they would have downloaded the data but in order to do that the new phone would have to be signed in. There would be no need for a new password but there would have been a security check being a new device.

 

"I used it fine till about a week ago and tried to sign in to my gmail account and that's when things started to go haywire."

 

You do not sign into gmail. Gmail is a service available under the Google account umbrella and it is quite important to understand the concept and how it is applied across multiple devices.

What may have happened is effectively speculation and supposition so you are left with trying to follow the recovery procedures or getting in touch with google.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7682439?hl=en

 

I just got on to gmail on my laptop by logging on to Chrome then gmail, but this is on my laptop, not my desktop. I will try your link and see what happens. Thanks again.