Google Won't Help and I'm Mad

On August 22nd, 2026, I was tricked by a hacker into downloading malware which, as far as I understand, stole my session tokens for Discord and the associated Google account. When I refused to pay the ransom, the hacker retaliated by deleting my Google account.

The subsequent week of wrestling with Google has been a nightmare. I have opened at least three separate support tickets, two through YouTube which insisted the account still existed and I could still access it (which was false), and one insulting email chain where the Google One team claims that I cannot recover my account except through the automated process. The automated process repeatedly claims that "Google does not provide another way to access this account," which is not true, as this account has 2 Factor Authentication, has existed for over 10 years, and has purchases included in it. Not only do I have purchases of Google One storage or YouTube Premium (which have been active for two years) but I also have media purchases that I no longer have access to. When I requested Google escalate my case to someone with the authority to help me recover my account on their end, they said "they're rooting for me," but gave no further advice. My last correspondence with them was sending video evidence of the automated recovery method not working. There has been no further response.

What really gets my goat about this is how nearly every other company I had to contact as a result of this situation has worked with me and helped me recover my account, change the email associated with it, and confirmed it using 2 Factor Authentication. My domain host helped me out. My financial institutions helped me out. My social media providers helped me out. Many of these companies are orders of magnitude smaller and less powerful than Google, and yet Google is the one that claims their hands are tied and the only method available is the automated process that I can prove isn't working? I can't help but believe that Google simply doesn't want to help me and, due to my small audience, believes that it can get away it. For a company like Google, the only way to get any help is to make a big public stink about what's happening in online spaces where they can see it.

As for the Discord account that got hacked, as far as I know there is no way for me to recover it without my Google account, and as a result I have no clue if the impostor pretending to be me is still at large preying on my contact list or if the account just got nuked by this point. Don\'t make the same mistakes I did! The hacker managed to impersonate a friend of mine and, with extremely human verbiage, requested I play test their girlfriend's indie game and leave an encouraging review to support her. Since I recognized the person, they spoke like a human, and they seemed to need my help, I accepted their request and downloaded their virus disguised as an indie game.

Thanks to getting my account hacked, now various friends of mine were targeted with requests to play games together or help "my" friend test their indie game. This is either a very well-crafted AI chat bot or an actual person on the other end, and these scammers are getting better and better at targeting people in ways that keep their guard down. The best advice I can give is to only open links from people while you are in a call with them, or can otherwise verify that they are who you think they are with security questions or something. This is a ridiculous and unfair situation, and I wish I had better methods to suggest.

Thank you for reading. Stay safe out there.

- Consuelo Higdon