24hrs Without Gmail (Unusual Usage – Account Temporarily Locked Down)

January 24, 2012 7 Comments by Tom Krieglstein

At 11:30am today, I logged into my main work gmail account and got this message…

It’s now 11:05pm and I still don’t have access to my main work email and according to friends who’ve been previously locked out by gmail, it usually takes the full 24 hours to unlock the account. So now I’m looking at 24 hours without access to my main work email on a non-holiday Tuesday. I know this is a 1st world problem to be ranting about, but…

In trying to figure out why my account was locked down, I looked back over their five reasons…

  1. Nope – well that I know of, I don’t check my Spam folder
  2. Nope – nothing more than usual
  3. Nope – unless someone tried to hack it without me knowing
  4. Tried this, didn’t work.
  5. I haven’t done anything new to the account lately

Though no one is going to die over this issue, there’s a real cost in lost productivity. I can imagine if this happened and did end up causing a real issue that Google would have lawyers come knocking.

I want to know why my account was locked down, but all I get is this generic page.
I want to contact Google, but the page only directs me to a community help forum.
I want Google to see I’ve been a user for a long time and, unless my account was hacked, realize this is ridiculous.

None of that’s going to happen. I’ll go to bed hoping I didn’t miss anything too important in my email and tomorrow morning around 11:30am, my account will magically be unlocked and life will go on.

Really Google? Come on. This is my work account. I’m not forwarding the latest LOLcatz to everyone in my address book. I’m doing work. Work that leads to revenue. Revenue that pays my salary. Salary that I use to…you get the idea.

I have so many things to worry about with growing a business, this isn’t one I need nor want.

Going to bed annoyed.

  • Martin

    It sucks ! I am also in a 24 hour lockdown at the moment… not cool when expecting mails from clients etc.

    Why can’t i just reset this lockout in the domain management? What would make sense…

    Obviously i cannot have an ipad, a smartphone and a computer on my gmail at the same time….. or…. hacking without my knowledge – but come on?

    • http://www.alumnichoose.org/ tomkrieglstein

      Sorry Martin, I know it sucks. One thing I thought might have worked was that I was able to download my emails via my iPhone’s MacMail App…I think that worked.

  • Z-RoW .

    i just got this error today, google totally sucks 

    • http://www.alumnichoose.org/ tomkrieglstein

      Bah sorry. Give it time, they’ll reopen the account…eventually.

  • Joe

    I’ve experienced this problem (intermittent) as well. WTF?

  • Sosdjing

    I’ve had this problem on and off for three days… anyone have any ideas?  

    • http://www.alumnichoose.org/ tomkrieglstein

      For me, there really was nothing I could do but wait. But I was able to download mail via the MacMail App on my iphone. that was at least helpful to stay in the loop and take care of immediate needs.