Locked out of GSuite Admin after domain verification - google-workspace

I have signed up for Gsuite Essentials and attempted up upgrade to Gsuite Enterprise. I only have a single email address eg a#abc.com. I had already been using this account as a normal google account. (no gmail though).
I couldn't get the admin console to show the upgrade option, but found I needed to verify my domain. So I added the TXT record to my domain abc.com, which would then let me verify.
I could then log in to the admin console as a#abc.com and clicked on the upgrade option and completed the process. This then let my a#abc.com user have access to Gmail. I have not transferred any domain settings over to google, that is all still externally hosted.
I can now no longer log in to the admin console, it says that my a#abc.com account doesn't have the rights and I need to log in as the administrator. There is no other account linked to the Gsuite settings, so there is no other administrator. I can still log in to the normal google account and do the same functions as previous.
I have now removed the TXT record hoping that would cancel it out again.
How do I get access to the admin side again?
Side note: What I am mostly worried about is that I put my credit card details into the signup, but can't get into the admin page and can't contact any form of support. It is literally impossible to get support to use the serve I paid for.

First thing first, the txt records are a string for the only purpose to verify the ownership of the domain therefore deleting them won't change anything you only need this record for the verification process and once is done you can delete them.
As an example is like a text message sent to your mobile phone, if you delete the message nothing will happen right?
I tell you this so you won't more time on the domain DNS zone settings because the issue is not there and you won't solve the problem.
There may be few things that may have happened.
The first thing you should do is to navigate in an Incognito page, make sure that is the only incognito page that you have opened and log in with a#abc.com.
Try to run different test in incognito, the issue really looks like that you are logged in with multiple Google Accounts and when you go do admin.google.com it picks up the wrong one. That's why you should go in incognito.
EDIT
Use as reference this link Here.
Follow the steps in Paragraph 'I'm taking control from another admin' here the steps:
Go to the G Suite Essentials sign-up page.
2, Sign up using your email address at the domain you're verifying.
Use an address where you can get mail.
Follow instructions in the Setup Wizard to become the admin who manages G Suite Essentials for all users at your organization.
If this didn't solve the issue then you should contact the Google Support and they will tell you what happened.
The thing is that if you can't access the Google Admin you won't be able to contact the Google Support, hence you should follow this:
.1 Can't sign in to the Admin console: https://support.google.com/a/answer/6335621?hl=en

Related

Google workspace account has been suspended with no recovery method

Many years ago I set up my domain so Google would manage my domain's email. Today, possibly because I was accessing from another state, Google decides to suspend the service:
Your organization's Google workspace account has been suspended. Please contact your Google workspace organization administrator to re-activate your organization.
So since I'm the administrator, I try to logon with those credentials, which are correct, but they challenge me, and want me to complete an email loop, but the recovery email is in the locked domain!
There seems to be no way to get this fixed. There's some code they can send me that I'm supposed to put my domain's server to prove I'm legit, but Google controls that...I have nothing on the domain except email. I'm paying Hover as the registrar.
Any way out?
I appreciate "Only Google can help", but there's no path forward. No phone number, no button to "open a ticket", no live chat. If you can't log on as administrator, none of that is available. How would a superuser get through on a problem like this?
There is a page that says:
To get phone, chat, or email support for your legacy free account at xxxxxxx.com, you need to upgrade to Google Workspace.
To continue, switch to an administrator account. This will open the Google Admin console.
https://support.google.com/a
But I can't log in as administrator to upgrade my account so I can get support because when I log in with correct credentials, they send a challenge to an email address that's in the locked domain!
I can't be the only one this happened to, so figure they're just hiding the path to victory so they don't have to answer too many phone calls. This page might be as close as I've gotten: https://support.google.com/a/answer/6335621
When I try to open a support case under my non-admin account, it says
You do not have permission to create support cases.
I found a form to fill out: https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/disabled2
The above form accepts any email address, so you enter any email address that you currently have access to (not one that is locked, obviously).
But matter what I do, they want me to prove my identity by adding something to my domain. I've asked Hover how to do this, but have not received a response yet.
Here's the email Google sent
Your action is required in order for us to assist with your request.
We were unable to verify the DNS ownership of Google Workspace Account sengsational.com. Please follow the instructions below to verify domain ownership.
The following instructions outline the DNS record (CNAME or TXT) to add to your domain settings. Learn more
Via CNAME (preferred):
Label/Host: [eight digit number removed]
Destination/Target: google.com
Time to live (TTL): 3600 seconds / 60 minutes / 1 Hour
For more information on how to create a CNAME record, please refer to the article Add a CNAME record to your domain's DNS records. If you need assistance creating the CNAME record, please contact your hosting provider for support.
You can verify your CNAME record here.
Via TXT:
Label/Host: enter # or leave it blank
Value/Destination: google-gws-recovery-domain-verification=[eight digit number]
Time to live (TTL): 3600 seconds / 60 minutes / 1 Hour
For more information on how to create a TXT record, please refer to the article Verify your domain with a TXT record . If you need assistance creating the TXT record, please contact your hosting provider for support.
You can verify your TXT record here.
Note: Updates to DNS records may take 24-48 hours to propagate across the entire internet.
In order for us to help you with the sign-up process, please follow this link and submit your request.
Best regards,
Google Workspace Support
Key Finding:Contact the company where you have your domain registered to have them manage the DNS records.
Hover is who I pay every year to keep my domain name active. I logged on, opened a chat, pasted-in the email from Google, and they were more than happy to update those records, right there on the spot!
Then, I went back to the email that Google sent me. To complete this authentication loop, there is a button on the page to re-check DNS.
After refreshing the page, I was provided the option to change the password. After I did that, I was logged into the gSuite administrator account, finally!"
They also automatically changed the recovery email to the one I was using that was outside the domain that was locked.

Error when inviting a user to google cloud

I am trying to add a new member on my google-cloud project but i can't make it work.
The link inside the auto-generated email from google is well linking to the page where the user can confirm/decline the invitation inside a modal.
But when this user click "confirm" an error message appear inside the modal but disappear immediately - so quickly i can't read it. As a result i can never grant access to my project to this user.
In my browser debugger here is the error i can trace (some values are forged) :
"NetworkError: 400 Bad Request - https://console.developers.google.com/m/teams/acceptinvitation?xsrf=AFE_nuNg_V8394FDKjdfkjkjwKDFXDVg%3488T6J5783&authuser=1&action=accept&pid=apps~myproject-hosting&receive_updates=false"
This user has a custom domain which is a google-apps managed domain. I specify this because its the only kind of users we cannot invite to the project.
No problem for adding users with #gmail account.
From the google-cloud documentation i can read this :
If you are using a Premier or Google Apps domain, the administrator for your domain should first create the Google account from within the Users panel of your Admin Console.
I don't understand this sentence as my user is off-course already listed in my domain.
This might be expected behavior from the App Engine. I know that once you link you application to a specific domain via Google Apps, it becomes very hard to add people from outside that domain to your application.
I know that you can create a google group, enable "out-of-domain" members to that group. Then you can add that group to your project. Then you can add his email to the group, which should give him access to the project.
Only caveat here is that, if your domain is google.com, you will not be able to use this workaround, and this may require help from support.
Well i finally did it.
Google seems to have fixed the flashing error message making it impossible to read.
Now it display something like this : "Contact your administrator to enable AppHosting admin on your account".
This is done has follow :
Login to your main google-app account on http://admin.google.com
Go to "App"
Go to "Additional Google services"
Enable "Google Developers Console" for everyone
Now my user can be invite to the google-cloud project.

Correcting Gmail's "sign-in attempt blocked"

I need my application to be able to log on to Gmail and send email on behalf of the user. The user supplies credentials. However, when I do so I get this message from Gmail:
Subject: Google Account: sign-in attempt blocked
Hi Jessica,
We recently blocked a sign-in attempt to your Google Account [...].
...
If this was you you can switch to an app made by Google such as Gmail
to access your account (recommended) or change your settings at
https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps so that your
account is no longer protected by modern security standards.
I would like my app to "protect users by modern security standards" but nowhere do I find any data on what "modern security standards" means in this context. The app uses SSL, user name and password.
The app works if you do click the link, but I really don't want my users to have to click the "lesssecureapps" link, though if that is the only option, so be it. But I'd rather modify my app to be compliant with what Gmail needs. However, nowhere does it say what I am missing.
Any help please? I want to do the right thing.

Facebook test users and auth

I have a project where I am using Selenium to test the Facebook auth. I created a Facebook app, created a test user inside this app and created some tests using Facebook login. Until now, it was working. But during the last two weeks something changed in Facebook and my tests are failing. It is due to interface changes in permissions dialog (I am targeting the button by his id). The second problem is that I don't get the email address from Facebook test user but a proxy email which is longer than 75 characters (my db field length is hardcoded in framework I am using).
If I log in as a regular user, it is working correctly and I get this permission box:
But when I log in as the test user I created (via 'switch to' in app's developer roles), I get this box:
I tested it ~2 weeks ago and this was yet working. Today it is changed. So my questions:
How to get back the old permissions box for test users?
How can I get the real email address and not the proxy?
Thanks!
I experienced the same problem with the Auth Dialog. I tried it with some old and new apps with various settings including March/Apr. 2013 Breaking Changes enabled/disabled, but it didn't help.
However, I guess I can help you with the email problem. When you login as a test user and go to account settings page, you will see the test user's primary email addres. By default this should be a really long one like the image I attached.
Facebook Platform returns this primary email address. If you pass the Auth Dialog with your test user account and see the privacy setting page, you will find the default primary email address is shared with the app. You have to provide a new email address for the test user and set the new one as primary email address via account setting page.
Why is the Login Dialog different with a test user?
With your test user, you can see the future of login dialogs. In fact, this isn't "not working" but this is an update which was unveiled on December 2012. Let me quote:
Our Login dialogs have undergone a redesign to make it easier to
understand permissions that apps request. We've simplified
presentation and have also updated our language for greater clarity.
“Basic info” has been renamed to “public profile and friend list,” to
reflect what what is being shared. Apps accessing your public profile
get your name, profile picture, age range, gender, language, country
and other public information.
Source: Providing People Greater Clarity and Control, developers.facebook.com/blog
The reason why you don't meet this update with a regular user, is that Facebook doesn't use to update everyone at the same time. They partially launch updates depending on the country, the type of account or some other parameters I ignore.
Example of a partial update (unified_message FQL table) dedicated to developer accounts:
We are providing early access to this API for registered developer
accounts only until the new messaging system is broadly available. You
should use the message table for production applications at the
current time.
In our case, we now know that test users can access to the update, but it is also said:
We have already launched many of these improvements as part of our
iOS6 integration and are now rolling them out more broadly.
About proxy emails
In fact, proxy emails are a way for any users to keep their real email anonymous. You have to consider proxy emails.
When joining an app, the user can choose between a real email and a proxy email:
Other thing you need to expect are users who didn't validate their account when connecting to your app, a case which is possible as described here and here.
Then, why do test users give back a proxy email? Because test users (being bots and having fake emails) didn't validate their emails.
You see that in at least 3 cases (and finally, test users are a good example), you need to handle these proxy emails. They are incidentally or accidentally met by developers and they can't be neglected. For your case, you can still try to disallow tests users who have a proxy email from accessing your app. But you should accept them and shouldn't force them to share their original e-mail addresses. A better solution is that you validate the test users emails:
Connect to the test user account that gives a proxy email
Add an email address (password needed here),
Go to the email mailbox and click on the validation link,
Set the new email address as primary,
The test user should now give his original email and not a proxy anymore!

How can I avoid google mail server asking me to log in via browser?

I am trying to send emails from Django using an email configured by Google Apps, my configuration at the settings.py file looks something like this:
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'contact#mydomain.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
When I try to send an email using:
from django.core.mail import send_mail
send_mail("Happy new year", "We wish you the best for 3001",
"contact#mydomain.com", ["someuser#gmail.com"])
I get the following error:
SMTPAuthenticationError:
(535, '5.7.1 Please log in with your web browser and then try again.
Learn more at
5.7.1 https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=78754 k2sm758604obl.14')
Since I'm working on a remote server with no graphical user interface, I cannot even try to login from the browser.
Just go to
https://accounts.google.com/DisplayUnlockCaptcha
and click "continue". This is going to allow access from other servers.
I've been messing with this for a couple of hours within a cucumber/capybara/selenium test - discovered something stupid which will fix this error for good, guaranteed
The all too familiar error:
Please log in via your web browser: https://support.google.com/mail/accounts/answer/78754 (Failure) (Net::IMAP::NoResponseError)
As it turns out, there are TWO "Allow Less Secure Apps" toggles which need to be changed to allow logins from unknown devices/IMAP.
One here: https://myaccount.google.com/security?pli=1#connectedapps (bottom of the page)
And one here: https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps
BOTH OF THESE GODFORSAKEN TOGGLES need to be changed to get rid of this error message.
edit: from user Milothicus (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3538026/milothicus): in myaccount.google.com, under 'Sign-in & Security', select 'Connected apps & sites'. this also has an option to 'Allow less secure apps'. after turning this one on, my server could now send me an automated email.
When I tried to access my account I was sent this email consisting of this link.
https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps
You can turn-on then possibly turn-off after you've done testing.
I got the following response from Google Apps support:
You need to turn on your Outbound relay. To do this:
Log into your account at google.com/a/yourdomain.com
Click the Settings tab and then select Email in the left column.
In the Outbound relay section, select Allow users to send mail through an external SMTP when configuring a "from" address hosted
outside your domain.
Click Save changes.
They also provided a help link: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=176054
After turning on Outbound relay and using the proxy to login to the webmail one more time (thanks to #DaniloBargen and #joshcartme) the issue was resolved. I've read the link explaining what the Outbound relay is and I'm not really sure why would I need it (I don't believe I'm using an external SMTP server).
Since I'm not really sure this is what solved the issue I won't mark the response as accepted until I get some confirmation.
Set up an ssh tunnel to the server in question so that you could, from your home computer, log in to the gmail web client using the server's IP. You probably need to tunnel port 80 and port 443, maybe just 443. After logging in through the web client the problem should go away according to knowledge base article listed in the SMTPAuthenticationError.
Here's an example of how to set up the tunnel:
http://www.noah.org/wiki/SSH_tunnel#simple_port_forwarding_.28SSH_tunneling.29
Option #1 (this worked for me):
After getting the error Please log in with your web browser and then try again. Learn more etc. when trying to send email from my web application, I logged in to the email via browser from my local computer.
After I logged in, there was a yellow notification bar on top which asking me if I want to allow external application access my mail. I confirmed this and Google asked me to log in to the account from the application within the next 10 mins. This will white-list the application.
Option #2:
If Option #1doesn't work for you, try this: http://www.rocketideas.com/2012/05/gmail-error-password-not-accepted-from-server-solved/
etusm provided two locations to turn on less secure apps:
One here: https://myaccount.google.com/security?pli=1#connectedapps
(bottom of the page)
And one here: https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps
both were turned on, but my headless server still couldn't send me an email. based on JohnPang's google+ recommendation, i found a third location where i had to allow access to less secure apps:
in myaccount.google.com, under 'Sign-in & Security', select 'Connected apps & sites'. this also has an option to 'Allow less secure apps'. after turning this one on, my server could now send me an automated email.
I found the solution at: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en and finally https://security.google.com/settings/security/apppasswords
If you are testing your project on a local machine, you should go to the latter link, and enable "Access for less secure apps".
Do you have two factor authentication enabled for the apps account ? Then you might need to use an application specific password for that application.
All of the above doesn't help in my case (weird). But this link might help you:
https://security.google.com/settings/security/activity
You can access it via Google Plus
Open Google+
Select "Security" from the top
Under "Recent activity" click "View all events"
You will see a list of "Unusual Activity"
It shows "Application / device sign-in attempt (prevented) Singapore" as I'm using AWS from Singapore
Click on "Change" > "Yes, that was me!"
Retry again. Done!
As of now (look at my post date) there is only one "Allow less secure apps" toggle in the Gmail account admin UI:
https://myaccount.google.com/u/0/security#connectedapps
It'll work from your local computer (Mac or PC) after that.
To allow access from Amazon EC2 (and I suspect other Cloud-located hosts), there is yet another flag to set in Google's never ending battle with spammers:
https://accounts.google.com/b/0/DisplayUnlockCaptcha
Recently, I have found that this issue can be resolved by confirming that the activity has originated from a request I initiated, by visiting Google Account
I had to confirm, under Security Events, that the suspicious activity was in-fact me, even though the originating server from where the request came from was cloud hosted, and therefore over 1000 km away. After clicking this step, and setting less secure apps, I was able to use getmail to retrieve my mail, over ssl using either imap or pop.
Just want to highlight Danilo Bargen's comment:
An easier way to connect to the other network using tunnels is to use a dynamic tunnel (ssh -D 6789 remotehost) and then to set localhost:6789 as SOCKS5-Proxy in Firefox. Then you are basically in the remote network with your browser and localhost is the remote host
Also I want to add that SOCKS Proxy method also works with Chrome. As a result you can log in with your local web browser as if you are on a server.
change your settings at https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps so that your account is no longer protected by modern security standards.
This is occuring due to some apps are marked as less secure apps by google. So to use those apps, you need to give access for those apps. to do that follow http://www.codematrics.com/your-imap-server-wants-to-alert-you-to-the-following-please-login-via-your-web-browser-gmail/
Hope this will solve your issue.
In my case, when i tried to login to the google account via web, it asked me for a captcha. I entered the captcha and then the automation worked.