Computer Hope

This is not a joke. It is an open letter to Google.   

    2/11/2022
Dear Google,
   I have used your email for years. Until l this year I have not had trouble. But now it has come bard.
The recovery system wants me to use my cell phone to get a code. But just now my cell phone has its own problem and it does not show me text. Only voice.
   So now I can stuck. Both the cell phone and my PC use the same email username Geek9pm. I never thought this could happened. I can not use my email and I can not use my cell phone.
   That that is not all. The username is also used for recovery of other things. What a mess.
   What should I do?
   John Palmer, Geek9pm.

Has this ever happened to you, too ?

For a very long time I've suspected that my phone is colluding with my computer to their own ends - whatever they may be

   Now I  want to expand this. 
      This is now a rant about the two-step verification. Recently my password accounts have been somehow compromised, or at least I think so. I am not really sure. Malware?
   If you already know what two-step verification means, just skip over this paragraph. Otherwise, the two-step verification involves using either another email address or your cell phone. In the case of your cell phone it will send a message to your cell phone giving you a temporary password which might be a string of nine numbers. You then have to use those numbers like Temporary password and after verification it will allow you to reset your password to something else. In some cases I have had asked for the t two-step verification even when I had the right password. It does not seem to have any explanation.
   Anyway, it is more than a small irritation. At my age I tend to forget details and I'd always know where my phone is at any moment in time. When I don't have my phone in front of me, it will always ask for the two-step verification. Well, that's what I think. It almost seems like someone is looking over my shoulder and making the decision to invoke a two step verification when my phone is not attend. There's more. Listen to the following story and see if you can understand what I mean.
   I going to a website that I've been to before and I know what the password is because I just changed it a few days ago. Ever mine which website it was, because this sort of thing seems to go on almost anywhere. I'm sure I have over 25 different accounts that I use somewhere for something and I try to keep separate passwords. But somehow, somewhere there's a rumor going around that my computer is not a secure connection. I have no idea why my computers been singled out. It just seems like someone is deliberately picking on me.
   All right, I'm getting off topic again. Check to the main issue. I get a notice saying that I have to use the two step verification at a certain point. This time the two-step bull involved another email account that I have used in the past , or may be sometime earlier. All right, it's not one of the emails and send my regular email client, which used to be Thunderbird until all this bad stuff happened. So I look around and find where I have the username and password for that old email account. Then I check into that email account and I'm sure I'm using a password and guess what happens? It also asked me for the two-step or vacation. So then I wonder, who is doing this to me? Is there some kind of conspiracy here?
All right, it will let me in if I just checked my phone for messages and find the verification. I don't see it so I click again on something and all of a sudden my phone gets to messages. Then I have to figure out which message was sent first. And then should I use the first message for the second one ? Well, it should have been the last one they sent and that turns out to be the case. So now they let me see the email and sure enough I got a email from the other company giving me a temporary password. Have you been following this? At this point I am rather confused. Bear in mind that I am an old man now, I'm not the young geek that I was some 50 years ago when I worked in Silicon Valley. Or maybe it was 60 years ago. I don't recall.
   This rant is getting be longer than reading it ought to be. Meanwhile I am trying to dictates this to you, I hear my phone buzzing because Sunday sending me a text message so I got to stop what I'm doing it seems as an important message on my phone. Just a second..
   It was not important, just another advertisement that somehow makes it to my cell phone. That is also another annoyance. Anyhow, I'm still getting this to step verification circus from time to time. In fact, for while I cannot even check into computer Hope because my password got messed up somehow. I have been on computer Hope for years and never had to change my password. Then somehow boom! Wham! Snap, crackle and pop! Almost all my password protect protected accounts have been messed up somehow.
   I buy a new virus scan product and do a couple scans and I don't see anything that explain what happened. My best guess is I had a hardware failure on my hard drive and it just happened to hit the area where one of my browser stores all my important passwords. There has to be a better way to do this.
   Anyway, I think the two-step verification thing is more than a slight bother. I also have a vision handicap and every time I go to read something I have to use magnifying glass even with an best screen resolution on my 32 inch monitor.
   Yeah, this rant is gone too far. But what can I say? I've yet to find some way to directly communicate this kind of thing directly with the CEO of such companies as so Amazon Google and other companies. Believe it or not, so far Microsoft is not asked me to change my password. What do you think? Is there some conspiracy here?
End of rant.

I had a similar problem recently with my yahoo email account. Both of them wanted to use each other for a two-factor authentication proof. So I couldn't sign into either of them.
Tried different devices. Not working.

THEN - someone advised me to turn off my VPN - Viola! (I mean, Voila!) Without the VPN on, I was able to login to one of them and get the 2FA. Which didn't make ANY SENSE AT ALL because I'd just been logged into one of those accounts WITH my VPN on.

Yahoo just didn't like it that they didn't know where I really was.