Google announces Recovery Contacts: ask your friends and family to help you sign in to your account

Google has announced a new safety feature for securing user accounts. If you can't sign in to your account, you can now ask friends and family to help you regain access to your account.

There are multiple ways to recover access to a Google account such as resetting the password, getting a one-time code via SMS, using an alternative email address connected to the account, or by using backup codes, etc.

Now, you can now recover your account in a new way. Let's say someone has forgotten their password, or their phone, or the device that had their passkey or 2FA authenticator, email client, etc. They can't receive a text to sign in, or use alternate methods immediately. Recovery Contacts is Google's answer to this problem. You simply add a trusted contact, like a close friend or a family member, to your account. It's important to note that the contact will need to have a Google account. That should be fairly obvious, but I think it's better to mention it. Don't confuse this with a recovery email address, that's different, as you own both accounts.

Setting up Recovery Contacts is simple, go to your Google account's Security and Sign-in page, at https://myaccount.google.com/security. You should see an option that says "Recovery Contacts". Click on it.

Or you can directly go to g.co/recovery-contacts and click on "Add recovery contact". This opens a pop-up, which is populated with some suggested email addresses belonging to your friends or family.

Select the contact, hit continue, and it should prompt you whether you want to send a recovery contact request. This will send a mail to the selected contact, and they will be able to view your name, email address and profile photo. I mean, if you trust someone, they probably already have all these details, right? Hit the send request button, and it will tell you the contact has been sent a request, and that they will need to confirm the request within 7 days. You will also receive an email stating that you have sent a contact request.

The Recovery Contacts page will list your open requests. In case you changed your mind, you can cancel the request, or remove a contact from the Recovery Contacts list. This is also where you can choose to accept or decline requests that people have sent you.

Google's announcement says that in case of an emergency, and you're locked out of your account, you can choose to sign in using a Recovery Contact. You will need to send a code to them (that you get from Google), which the contact can use to verify it's a legitimate request, and approve the sign in attempt. Pretty cool!

Here is the official support page for Google Recovery Contacts if you need more details.

Recovery Contacts are rolling out to users slowly. I think this is a good feature, it may be useful for everyone, but especially for elderly people, or those who aren't tech-savvy, and may need assistance with recovering their account.

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