[Emacspeak] OFF TOPIC - Locked Out of Gmail Account

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello List,

I am trying to help emacspeak list member, Jim Green get back into his gmail account.

Jim is blind and he uses alpine and emacspeak to communicate with the Internet.

Recently he cannot use his gmail password to log in with Alpine, because Google has changed access with external applications like alpine and mutt.  It has to do with Google's rolling out two factor authentication.  (2fa).

The good news is that gmx.com provides pop and imap access and a huge mailbox.  It will work with alpine, mutt, and emacspeak.  Even better news is that gmx.com provides a web application called a "mail collector" which when it is provided with your email address and password, it will log into that account and retrieve all the mail from that account.  After verifying that all the mail has been transferred, you can delete the email in the original email account. Unfortunately, it also requires a "application specific password" for google gmail.

Unfortunately, when Google.com asked him for his phone number, he gave them the only phone number he has, a landline. At the time, Google didn't say it must be a cell phone number and if Google validated the number, they had to call the number because that's the only thing the number does, it rings and must be answered. No texts!

The only recovery option for his 2greensinva@@gmail.com account is for Google to send him a text message to his landline.

Obviously, this won't work.

Is there some way he can change his phone number with Google without being able to log into his account?

The ONLY option I can think of is going to the Verizon store near him, have him buy a cellphone, have the house landline number transferred to the cellphone, then get the recovery code over the new cellphone.

Use the validation recovery code, recover the gmail account, then generate an "application specific password" as described on this page:

https://www.lifewire.com/get-a-password-to-access-gmail-by-pop-imap-2-1171882

Best regards,

David