Let me start with something simple. How many of you use Google as your primary personal email? In my network, easily half. And if you use Google One for storage, chances are your entire life is sitting inside that account: your kids' photos, personal moments, tax documents, passport scans, driver's license, old paperwork, everything.
Many people also link the same Google account to Google Authenticator. That means the same account controls your MFA for Coinbase, banking apps, exchanges, password managers and other sensitive systems. Everything is connected to that one identity.
Now imagine that this primary Google account gets hacked. Even if you had a strong password, MFA, passkeys and followed every guideline. The reality is that attackers do not need you to be careless. They only need one weakness. And for older adults, the risks are even higher because they may not be aware of all the security layers.
Here is what typically happens.
- The hacker logs you out of every device.
- They change your recovery phone.
- They change your recovery email.
- They remove your passkeys and add their own.
- Your backup codes are either not printed or sitting inside your Gmail as a PDF.
Now you try to recover your account. This is where the shock begins. Even if you pay for Google One, there is no real human support for account recovery after a takeover. You are pushed into automated flows that assume you still have access to your recovery phone or recovery email. But you do not, because the attacker changed them.
You try to argue in your mind. Google knows your face, your voice, your location history, your WiFi networks, your IPs, your browser fingerprint, your devices, your photos. They probably know more about you than you know about yourself. Yet they tell you they cannot verify it is you.
And here is the most frustrating part. When Google internally detects that your account has been hijacked, they often reset the recovery email to the same compromised email account. So now the recovery codes are being sent to the inbox you no longer control and you are trying to recover. It is a baffling design flaw.
The result is devastating
Your sensitive documents are probably already circulating on the dark web.
- Your Gmail is gone.
- Your Drive storage is gone.
- Your Photos account is gone.
- And you cannot log in to the hundreds of services where you used Google SSO.
You are locked out of your own digital life. And unlike a bank, there is no branch to walk into, no officer you can meet, no way to present a government ID to prove you are the rightful owner.
This raises a bigger question that we have avoided for too long. Should email providers like Google and Microsoft be regulated in some form? Should creating or recovering an email account require a verified identity check through a trusted service? Should users have the option to verify with government IDs or an identity verification service?
Or should banks start offering verified email and secure digital lockers as a paid service, the same way they offer KYC, secure vaults and data protection? Some banks in India already offer digital document lockers. Why not identity-verified email?
Your email account today is more valuable than your physical wallet. Losing your bank account is painful, but recoverable. Losing your primary email account can effectively erase your digital existence.
It is time we start treating digital identity with the same seriousness as financial identity. The current system prioritises convenience and scale, but one breach can destroy a person's digital life.
What do you think?