Nothing hurts more than loosing access to your Gmail account due to hacking or a forgotten password.  But since Google already knows that these things happen everyday and has set up a couple of recovery options that you can use to regain access to your account.

Apart from setting up a strong password for your account, it is also important to set up your recovery options as soon as you can because you never know what will happen;  nobody knows. Not even the Gmail team. That’s why these recovery options are provided.

Gmail Account Recovery

From the Gmail homepage,  go to the settings page by clicking on the cog icon in the upper right side and selecting ‘settings’.

Click on the ‘Accounts and Import‘  tab.  Then click on the ‘Change Password Recovery Options‘ link.

This is generally a page Google provides for you to do a security check up of your entire Google account.  You can see when your password was last changed  and your sign in method.  Below that,  are the account recovery options.  Recovery Mail and Recovery Phone.

Recovery Mail:   Enter another email address that you have access to.  You must be able to access this email because if you want to recover your account,  Google will verify you through this address.  It’s useless if you can’t access it.

Recovery Phone:  Enter your mobile phone number that is able to receive text messages.  Google will send e code to this number via SMS.  This code helps Google to verify you are the owner of the account in case it’s been hacked or you cannot remember the password.

Tip:  It’s important to always make sure this information is always up to date.  If you can no longer access the recovery email,  change it to another one that you have access to.

If you change your phone number,  update it on this page.  If the verification code is sent to a phone number you have no access to,  it will be useless.