Unlocking Google's Gmail CAPTCHA

We’ve all used a CAPTCHA but few understand it or know what they do. CAPTACHA is the acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”

In a nut shell CAPTCHAs are those weird looking characters that we’re forced to type in when trying to get to the next step of a form. It’s a clever way of ensuring that the person filling out the form is an actual human and not a computer or “bot”. Google as do many other companies, rely on CAPTCHAs to add an added measure of security.

A not so common problem can occur when trying to access your G Suite email account with Outlook, Apple Mail or similar email client using POP or IMAP. When a user makes too many unsuccessful attempts to access an email account using POP or IMAP, Google may consider the account as being attacked or about to be compromised.

When this happens, G Suite and Gmail users may not be able to send mail using their email client. To fix the problem, Google suggests “Unlocking the CAPTCHA.”

To begin, make sure you are already signed into your Google account in one tab. Next open a new tab within your web browser, preferably Google Chrome then click on the link below then continue reading this article.

https://accounts.google.com/b/0/UnlockCaptcha

Depending on whether or not you have invoked Google’s 2-Step Verification, you might see this message:

If you do have 2-Step Verification enabled, then please watch this video which covers how to create an application specific password.

If you don’t have 2-Step Verification enabled (big mistake), then the screen you should see looks like this:

At this point you’re done and you’ve Unlocked the CAPTCHA for your Google account. The message you see is now asking you to retry the application you’re having an issue with.

It usually takes Google several minutes for the email account to start working as normal. It’s important to note that just because you’ve unlocked the CAPTCHA once for a particular Google account, that’s not to say that the same problem may not occur again.

To avoid issues which may cause Google to be concerned about an account, try not to connect using Outlook, Apple Mail or other email client from too many IP addresses within a short period of time. Jumping from one Hotspot to another or cruising the neighborhood to find an open wireless connection to check your email, are just some of the reasons which can cause a problem. Increasing the “timeout” setting within your Outlook advanced settings for a particular email account may help as well.

The best solution however is to stop using Outlook, Apple Mail or any other email client completely and instead, simply use your web browser to access your email. Remember, your web based email will run circles around any email client and you’ll be using email the way Google intended. If you haven’t done so already, we suggest watching our video on understanding the difference between POP and IMAP.

If you have yet to enable 2-Step Verification, then please go watch this in depth video on how to enable Google’s 2-Step Verification. Using 2-Step Verification is the best way yet to protect someone from hacking into your Google account.

Remember to bookmark this page or Google’s Unlock CAPTCHA page in the event you ever need to Unlock your Google CAPTCHA.