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Losing your phone or having it stolen is bad enough without losing access to all of your personal data. Recovering your accounts only adds to the stress, so Google wants to make it less frustrating to recover one of your most important logins.
New features launched this week bring two new options to regain access to your Google accounts. The first is using your phone number to find linked accounts and allowing you to sign in to them without a password.
The feature is called Sign in with Mobile Number, and it’ll allow you to reenter your screen passcode from your last Android device to regain access. This feature is being rolled out gradually, but it’s unclear if you need to manually turn this feature on or whether it’ll happen by default.
(Credit: Google)
The more inventive idea from Google is allowing your friends and family members to act as recovery partners for your Google account.
If you’re locked out of your account after forgetting a password or losing your device with a passkey onboard, you will first go through the traditional recovery methods. If those don’t work, and you’ve added Recovery Contacts to your account, they can now help you regain access.
Google has yet to share how the process works for those acting as Recovery Contacts, but it says “these contacts can help verify your identity, providing a simple and secure way to regain access.”
You’ll need to manually add Recovery Contacts to your account before you lose access to be able to use this feature.
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(Credit: Google)
To do this, head to your Google account and select Security & sign-in. There’s a section called How you sign it to Google, which then says Recovery contacts. Within here, press Add recovery contact, and add their email address.
You will want to tell the person you’ve added ahead of time so they’re not surprised by the next step.
Then press Send request, and a pop-up will appear on your friend or family member’s device asking them to be added as a Recovery contact. It’ll show your name, email address, and your profile photo. They’ve then got seven days to accept it before the request times out.
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