How Do You Get to Know Your Recovery Email
Somebody stole my phone and inverse my e-mail password. I've tried to recover it, just I don't have the phone number linked to my account considering my telephone was stolen. What should I do? Tay
First, recover your phone number, which is much more of import than the telephone.
When a phone is either lost or stolen, you should immediately contact your mobile network provider to tell them what's happened. They should then suspend the electric current sim and send you a replacement sim with the same phone number. This service should exist free but sometimes incurs a nominal charge. It won't get your phone back, but it will make it harder for the thief to log on to your accounts and change your passwords.
Some network providers can as well block your handset'due south IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number. This makes information technology harder for the thief to employ your phone with a different sim.
Of course, you volition demand to be able to show that yous own your telephone number, and dissimilar companies may have different systems for different types of account. My advice is to exist prepared. I wasn't, and it wasn't fun.
Phone number recovery
When I lost my phone in Nov – I left information technology on a plane in Kuala Lumpur – I phoned O2 just couldn't laissez passer the recovery tests, which included providing some numbers I'd dialled in the past three months. Being half dozen,500 miles from home, I couldn't wait upwards the telephone number of my window cleaner, whose surname I couldn't recall.
Back in the Uk three weeks subsequently, an O2 shop refused to accept any other evidence that I owned this pay-equally-you-go number, which was originally supplied by BT Cellnet before O2 was launched in 2002. It was on my concern cards, in ancient emails, in online media databases and then on. I could too prove I endemic the bank business relationship that paid for its minutes. O2 wouldn't budge. Only later digging out my window cleaner's telephone number did I eventually get a replacement sim.
Not conveying around a written list of the numbers I'd dialled was clearly a bad error on my part, but full marks to O2 for using the Information Protection Act to put my personal data at risk.
If you have not nonetheless lost your phone, or had it stolen, I strongly suggest that you lot find out what volition happen if y'all practise. Yous could easily lose a number you've used for 20-odd years.
Mitigating steps
While trying to recover my number, I took steps to limit the harm someone could do if they were able to use my lost phone. You lot should as well log on to any other accounts that hold your phone number, such equally Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter then on, including any mobile cyberbanking or payment systems. Prepare and confirm an alternative email accost equally a manner of recovering your accounts, delete the compromised phone number, and change your passwords before the thief can do the same thing.
You can also try to disable or erase your phone remotely, via the spider web. If information technology'due south an iPhone, log on with your Apple ID and use Lost Fashion, which is part of Find My Phone. If information technology'south an Android phone, log on to your Google business relationship and go to Observe My Device.
This does depend on certain weather, one of which is that the lost or stolen phone must have a mobile or wifi network connection.
I did try to erase my lost phone, because it was backed up to Google Bulldoze. I failed because, as far as I could tell, it was never switched on. It may still be flight betwixt London and KL …
Electronic mail recovery
You didn't mention which e-mail service you were using, merely most of them take the same approach. That is to say, you go to a web page and fill up in a form to recover your email address.
Forms typically inquire for your electronic mail address, whatsoever passwords you lot remember, the answers to diverse security questions (the name of your first pet, or whatsoever), and the subject lines and email addresses of people you've emailed. In Microsoft's instance, you can also provide the names of three Skype contacts.
Y'all can also create unique security codes to use if you lose or forget your email password. Microsoft lets you lot generate a single code from its Additional security options folio, while Google lets you create ten.
If you are trying to recover an email address, yous will usually demand to provide a 2nd email address so the visitor can contact you.
It helps if you lot fill in the grade with a device that you accept used previously with the business relationship y'all're trying to recover, and from the same place, such every bit your domicile network. Mail services now proceed records of the devices and IP addresses you lot use (Google, Microsoft). Indeed, they may well challenge you if yous log on with a dissimilar device, or from a different country.
If you commonly download and answer your emails on a PC, you lot should non have a problem: you lot will have hundreds or even thousands of contact names and field of study lines. If y'all but use email in a spider web browser, it may challenge your memory. I solution would be to screen-catch your inbox in one case a month, just it would be ameliorate to backup your emails, as explained beneath.
Unfortunately, there are no technical tricks to recovering an electronic mail accost. All you can practise is provide as much data as possible, and every bit many different kinds of information as possible, even if some of it is slightly wrong.
The real problem is that password resets and electronic mail recovery systems are commonly the easiest way to hack someone's mailbox. You have to do better than a would-exist hacker to go past the automated mailbox recovery software, and hackers who take studied your social media accounts can be very convincing.
Taking steps…
If you really want to be able to recover a mailbox, you lot need at least 3 ways to verify your account, on top of any security questions. For a start, you must have an culling email address, and ii is ameliorate. Y'all should also take a mobile phone number, and perchance a landline number. All of these have to piece of work, and you have to proceed them all updated. Information technology's extra work, but it'due south amend than losing admission to your main mailbox.
If you lot use a schoolhouse, university or work address as a recovery account, you may no longer have access to it a few years later, when you demand it.
When information technology comes to security questions, people have been hacked because their answers could exist found from web searches or their social media accounts. Your female parent'southward maiden proper noun, past schools or the names of your pets may already exist known, or piece of cake to guess.
This is an argument for providing nonsensical answers: nobody will estimate that your favourite teacher was called 23o;Aif99#. Only you will accept to proceed records of fake answers considering y'all won't be able to guess them either.
People often recommend 2-pace or two-factor authentication (2FA), only if this involves your email provider sending a one-time code to your mobile phone, then you're in trouble if yous lose the telephone. Besides, 2FA users can still fall victim to phishing attacks. Information technology would be better to apply a YubiKey, like Facebook and Google employees. Just brand sure you take a backup YubiKey in case y'all pause or lose the first ane.
Mail backups
The adventure of losing admission to all your emails ways you should accept them backed upward. For example, you lot could download all your emails to a PC program such as Microsoft Part Outlook, eM Customer or Mozilla's Thunderbird. You could utilise MailStore Habitation 11 for Windows, which is free for habitation users, or Mail Archiver X, which is $39.95 for Mac users. You could back up your Gmail with Gmvault, and restore information technology to a unlike Gmail account.
For an actress backup, I've ready my main mailbox to forward all incoming emails to my backup mailbox. The key trick is to retrieve, when y'all reply to emails, to bcc a copy to the fill-in business relationship.
I wouldn't like to lose access to my chief electronic mail account, but at to the lowest degree I wouldn't lose whatsoever emails.
Accept you got a question? Email it to Enquire.Jack@theguardian.com
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/jan/31/how-do-i-recover-an-email-address-i-lost-when-my-phone-was-stolen
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