> and shut down my Google Pay account I never knew I had
Google loves that nonsense, don't they? It's as though they think so highly of themselves that they cannot imagine they might not be strictly doing us all a favor by signing us up for their services.
Fifteen years later, I still have friends occasionally sending messages to a GMail address I never asked for, never used, and didn't even know about for most of a year while it was virally spreading through people's address books, silently diverting mail away from my actual address. The only time I used this account, after I discovered that it existed, was to delete it - but GMail apparently still suggests it when people type my name, because I get an "oops, sent this to the wrong address" forward every few months.
No I will not be knowingly using any Google passkey service, but perhaps I will someday find that they have signed me up for it anyway.
As shitified as the world wide web has gotten over the last few years, that's almost a feature these days.
Now you have lots of chaff / ablative / imposter emails to divert away all the robo-mailers, spear fishers, destitute princes, and the like. Even the tiniest little mistake and the email goes to one of a million diversion accounts.
Side Not-a-joke: On this topic, I also really hate two-factor authentication you don't sign up for, don't want, yet are forced to add to your account, because Google Play is too much of SCIF to just let you log in. Even more security theater for the most basic activities. Now I need two-factor every time I try to use GitHub. Ugg.
My wife has the opposite side of this problem coin. Her gmail address (which she does use) has virally spread through a family and circle of friends who all believe it relates to a person in the US who we are entirely unconnected with in any way. Attempts to get them to sort this out always fail because inevitably the address gets re-added to some thread or other and starts spreading again.
Never surrender any email address that a random berk can then claim.
I had my Facebook taken over because I had all notifications disabled and forgot that the email address was associated to it. Some criminal behind an Egyptian IP address took my old email and was in my Facebook within two days of me surrendering it.
The issue is not forwarding the email. The issue is people sending email to the Google address in the first place. As someone who just set up email on his own domain, I'm starting to wish I could search every database and contacts list for my old Google address and replace it with the new one which is actually mine.
That seems like an invitation for long-term pain if Google changes their policies, requiring someone to log in every X months or have their gmail account locked, for example, or some AI enforcement tool locks the account for inscrutable reasons.
I'm locked out of my Gmail and it still forwards to the recovery email address, but I can't get in to change the settings. They also won't allow me to download all my data, as required by statute, because I can't log in.
I've got some active GMail forwarding addresses that I haven't logged into for 10+ years. I don't think they could change how that worked now even if they wanted to.
Google loves that nonsense, don't they? It's as though they think so highly of themselves that they cannot imagine they might not be strictly doing us all a favor by signing us up for their services.
Fifteen years later, I still have friends occasionally sending messages to a GMail address I never asked for, never used, and didn't even know about for most of a year while it was virally spreading through people's address books, silently diverting mail away from my actual address. The only time I used this account, after I discovered that it existed, was to delete it - but GMail apparently still suggests it when people type my name, because I get an "oops, sent this to the wrong address" forward every few months.
No I will not be knowingly using any Google passkey service, but perhaps I will someday find that they have signed me up for it anyway.