You should assume Google, GitHub, and Apple are hostile and try to limit your blast radius. If you have an account problem they have no customer service to help you.

I can't get into my Google account that's almost 20 years old because I only have the username, password, recovery email and have all the email forwarded to me, but I no longer have the phone number and they silently enabled 2FA SMS at some point.

I wonder if you can phone the phone number, explain the situation and offer to venmo/paypal the new assignee money for the 2FA code

You could try every 3 - 5 years or so as it gets reassigned again

I tried this before, but I haven't tried for a couple of years -- you're right, it might have got reassigned -- I will try again!

+1

Yes, this is exactly why I won’t use these federated identity features of platforms like this. I have a reasonable amount of trust that they are mostly secure, but I have zero trust that they will be helpful if I ever have account troubles. What I don’t need is to have Google (etc) auth problems cascade down to every other account I own.

What's the alternative? What do you use for your base "recovery account" email?

My own domain’s email, which can easily be forwarded wherever I want.

Very well stated, concisely. Thank you.

Thank you, I should review that.