ANTenna Blog -- Security

Forgot or (mistyped) your Gmail password? Be careful how many times you try and fail to get it right. You just might find your account cut off. And then you'll find just how hard it is to get service from the service.

A long piece in The New York Times (free registration required) this weekend took a look at what happens when users hit the wall of mismatched user name/password log-ons that Google has erected as a security buffer against auto log-on attempts.

Up to a point, the protective buffer works as it's intended to: too many incorrect attempts and the account is blocked.

But then, as the article explores in some detail, the challenging of re-establishing access to your account presents its own wall, one that proves even higher. Contact with a human customer service representative lies somewhere on the other side of that essentially unscalable wall.

Gmail is hardly alone in providing little to no human customer service with its free apps and tools; the article explores some of the rationales for minimal service.

But if you're using Gmail or any other freemail (or other free apps, for that matter)for your small and midsized business, you might want to take a close look at the services' account blockage triggers, policies and remediation paths.

If, that is, you can find them.