July 23: Google's answer to locking families out of their own photos — record a video of your face and give it to them

On July 23, Google launched selfie-video account recovery: you film yourself doing a series of guided head movements, and Google stores the encrypted video in your account so you can prove your identity later if you get locked out of your email, photos, and files. It's Google's own admission of how often people lose access to a lifetime of memories behind one account — and the new safety net excludes children's accounts, Workspace accounts, and Advanced Protection accounts entirely. The feature rolled out broadly after testing in Brazil, and the stored video is "only used for helping you sign in to your account, unless you opt to 'share it for additional purposes.'"