Google Account Recovery Per SMS Available In Additional Countries

Google introduced a new account recovery option some time ago that allowed Google users from the United States to add a cell phone number to their account.

The user could then use the SMS account recovery feature to recover the Google account password.

By linking your Google Account to the phone number, you enable a backup option to regain access to it in case you forget your password but also when your account gets hacked as you can still regain access to it using the feature.

Since this is a useful feature, users from other countries wanted access to it as well but could not gain access due to country restrictions.
While the new feature has its uses for all Google users, it is of special importance to business users and users who use Google Adsense, Adwords or Gmail due to the direct link to money or indirect link to domain names if GMail has been used to register an account at domain registrars.

The option to enter a cell phone number and recover the Google account password by SMS has only been available to US users up until now. Google seems to have changed this frequently as German users (and probably users from other countries such as the UK, France or Canada) can now add a cell phone number to their account as well to use the SMS for password recovery.

The option is available after logging in (at any Google service), selecting the My Account link on the top right corner of the screen and the Change password recovery options link under Security. Please let us know where you are from and if you are seeing the SMS option under security.

Update: The feature changed a bit in recent time. While it is still necessary to add a phone number to make use of the feature, a phone number you select is set as the recovery phone for the Google Account now.

You can access that feature on the new My Account page on Google. There you can also set a recovery email if you prefer that, check account activity, and define when you receive notifications and alerts.

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