For context, my wife was given delegated email access to a Gmail account >10 years ago and no longer has contact with the account admin. She'd like to remove herself from this delegated access but multiple chats with Google support reps have indicated that the only way to do this is by contacting the account admin and asking to be removed.
I've been looking into this and seen multiple forum threads of people delegated access by ex's, relatives who have passed away and the like who are unable to remove themselves from this access even if it's extremely painful.
It blows my mind that this isn't a feature that exists or that Google can't help you remove your _own_ delegated access.
Anyone encountered this before and found a solution?
by computerfriend on 1/28/23, 11:39 AM
Trigger a password reset, use delegated access to reset the password, take over the account, remove delegation.
by refurb on 1/28/23, 11:03 AM
by Brajeshwar on 1/28/23, 9:54 AM
My assumption is that Gmail delegation is possible only with Suite/Workspace. Since she has access to that domain, ask one of the admins to do that. Otherwise, I have no idea how the public Gmail.com account can be delegated (this is a nice feature).
Otherwise, it might be a forward.
In that case, the only option is to add a filter -- if email is marked TO:themail@domain.com, then mark as read, delete, not marked as important.
by barney54 on 1/28/23, 10:07 AM
What is delegated email access?
by radu_floricica on 1/28/23, 12:12 PM
Same with plain forwarding. Yeah, doesn't make sense, after all you had to give permission to set this up - now there's no way to revoke. Just set up a filter and forget about it.
by rahimnathwani on 1/28/23, 3:30 PM
Several comments in this thread suggest solutions make no sense. Perhaps the commenters have never seen how delegated access works in Gmail?
Once you've been delegated access to a Gmail account, it appears in the list of accounts you can switch to, but only within the Gmail web UI.
When you explicitly switch to that account, you see the other person's mailbox. If you never click on the switcher, you wouldn't even remember you had access.
Given the above:
- filtering makes no sense, because the mail items never appear in the same mailbox anyway
- changing password makes no sense, as you can only access gmail and not the whole Google account
by ecf on 1/28/23, 11:29 AM
Receiving a response from Google support is a win in and of itself. Unfortunately they didn’t help out, but most never get that far.
by bluena on 1/28/23, 2:17 PM
Would suggest to keep delegated access but use automated filters in Gmail so that those mails:
- skip the inbox
- are automatically marked as read
- either deleted or place those mails in a separate and hidden folder
Painful memories should be avoided this way
by sebazzz on 1/28/23, 9:44 AM
Since you're delegated, I suppose you could plant a email in the inbox. I'm not sure if the legality of this though.
by nl on 1/28/23, 11:06 AM
I don't have any particularly useful suggestions, but I wonder if this falls under the can-spam act?
by isthisthingon99 on 1/28/23, 2:28 PM
I use fastmail and use sieve filtering to reject all emails I don't want. They don't even show up in my email account, there is no record of them.
by neximo64 on 1/28/23, 8:51 AM
If i'm honest it makes sense the admin should do it. For the person invited to uninvite themselves after is a bit weird.