For a variety of reasons, I spent my early 20s being paranoid. I wasn’t worried about my health, my finances, or my career, but I was worried about corporations and the government. When I was younger, tech companies were some of my least favorite. I saw the way people were being surveilled by them and was furious. I thought it was shocking and upsetting that this was allowed. I took action. Prompt, drastic action.
I found an email provider. One that I won’t name because it’s a secure email provider, one that can’t be hacked or accessed by the police (or so they say). They let me password-protect my emails. I was ecstatic, and I loved it. I made an account and used it for everything. I told everyone I was off of Gmail, and that they should get to using my email provider. Thankfully for them, nobody listened.
Fast forward about 2 years, and my computer has randomly broken. While this is a bummer, it’s not a huge deal because I know a bit about data recovery. I get online and find an enclosure for my hard drive on Amazon. I’ll be able to use it to get all my files and saved passwords as long as I keep the drive from my old computer from getting damaged. I try to get in my Gmail account (the one I keep as a burner account), and it’s a success. Then, I get into my Dropbox and found that in order to access the account I need to use an access code that was sent to my amazing secure email address. I try to log in and… nothing. I don’t think any of it. I probably just forgot my password. I go to my cell phone and find the saved password in my Google account. I use that to try to log in. Still nothing.
It’s been about two weeks since that happened, and I’ve still not been able to get back into my email account. I’ve tried everything, including the “forgot password” button. You need an access code to get into a lost account. I have no idea where this thing is if I even wrote it down. The owners of the email provider can’t access the account themselves. At all. That’s because the email provider is secure. Nobody can get in. Not the owners of the email provider. Not even the police. Kill me.
So basically, I’ve lost access to all of my information and accounts. I needed to create a new email. I don’t use online banking. I haven’t tried logging into PayPal, but I’m not excited to do that. I have no way of getting into my Payoneer account, and will likely need to contact customer support to create a new account. I never got into my Dropbox account, but thankfully I had all the files I needed on a second computer. I barely got access to all the stuff I needed, and I’m lucky this accident didn’t cost me more by way of files or money.
Sometimes it’s easier to just use the basic solution. I wanted to use something other than Gmail because I thought Big Tech was stalking me. Turns out it didn’t matter at all because I’m not doing anything worthy of being stalked. All I did was create a bunch of problems for myself while making it inconvenient for me to check my email for nearly two years. I think there’s a big productivity lesson here because if a company had followed my practices, they would be looking at many hours wasted and a bunch of lost revenue. Sometimes it’s just easier to use the most basic solution and trust the “big name” brand.
