[AnonC]

> Unfortunately I did not have a phone number associated with this account. My understanding is I would have been able to recover my account, If I had one.

This is not true, in my experience. Having a phone number verified and linked to the account as a recovery number may help, but it does not always mean that you’d be able to recover the account. I recently had trouble with one of my Gmail accounts where I successfully changed my password and linked a phone number, but it wouldn’t allow me to login again or allow me to go through the recovery process.

As more stories of such casualties come up, one can only hope that more people stop using Gmail (it seems to me that this is what Google really wants).

Good luck, and I hope you’re able to get back into your account and/or move to a reliable provider.

[j4tech]

Thank you. I was wondering if having my own domain would be a better option...

[davidmitchell2]

Get an account with iCloud and forward all mails as backup to iCloud