I was flirting with someone who stole my phone and locked me out of Google. It destroyed my digital life and years of work.

• A thief stole Gary Nunn's phone in São Paulo and was able to lock him out of Google.
• Nunn tried for weeks to regain access to the account but has so far failed.
• He's now resigned to having lost 15 years of contacts, data, and emails.

I was days away from sending my agent the 35,000-word proposal for my second book when I decided to treat myself with a three-week adventure in Brazil.

There, locals repeated three words ad infinitum: mind your phone.

I was warned I'd be pickpocketed or mugged at gunpoint for it. For the first week in Rio de Janeiro, my phone barely left my Airbnb. While it was occasionally inconvenient to walk around without it, it was also refreshing; I'd long craved a digital detox.

Be careful what you wish for.

We then went to São Paulo, which I wanted to visit because of its huge LGBTQ+ Pride event. But my travel buddy and I were on high alert after hearing robbery stories. We needed a drink to settle our nerves.

We agonized about taking our phones. Should we risk being robbed while hailing a cab on a dangerous street? Or risk having our phones taken while trying to order an Uber? We decided to take them.

At the bar, there was disco music, a mirror ball, cocktails, and some friendly-seeming men dancing. I exhaled.

A man walked in. I thought his large neck tattoo made him look attractive; my buddy thought it made him look dodgy.

We got chatting, using Google Translate to navigate my poor Portuguese. I bought him a drink, we kissed, then returned to where my friend was and continued talking for the best part of an hour.

Suddenly, he grabbed my phone and ran out of the bar at breakneck speed.

I gave chase but tripped, grazing my leg. The thief was gone. I felt humiliated. I didn't report it to the police. I'd heard this crime was so rife that they were unlikely to be able to do anything. My friend got us an Uber home; I passed out.

The next morning, I found out just how much he'd violated me.

I fired up my laptop. To my alarm, the thief had hacked into my Google account and changed the password, locking me out.

I never imagined a thief would rob my phone and hack my Google. I suspect he had experience doing this because he'd changed the phone's password before it could lock while Google was still open via the translator.

I then received a panicked call from my flatmate back home in Sydney. The thief had tried to remove all the money from a joint account with which we pay the mortgage. Luckily, he was unsuccessful. I've now triple-checked that I have Face ID set up for all my banking apps.

I bought a new smartphone the day after the theft; you can't survive more than 24 hours in the modern world without one. At the Apple store in São Paulo, the staff said they often saw people buying phones because their previous one was stolen the day before.

At first, I tried to get back into Google, but when that didn't work, decided to wait a few days before trying again. In the meantime, I changed every account linked to Google, from Spotify to Skype, on the new phone. I battled bad reception, endless identity questions, and admin to get them back. It was stressful and required a level of patience I don't usually have. After lots of huffing and swearing, I managed to update most accounts.

Then I just needed Google back.

To recover an account, you need a recovery email or phone number and the Google Authenticator app. I thought I had all three.

But I then realized my recovery number had been permanently disconnected days before, after six months of me not using it while I had been traveling.

My recovery email was from a job I'd left in 2017. My travel buddy said I was dreaming if I thought they'd reopen a seven-year-old email just to send a former employee a recovery code.

Miraculously, they did.

The head of IT support must have sensed my desperation. He got on a Zoom call, asked some identification questions, and dug the account out from the digital ether. It seemed to work.

But it didn't. After receiving a code to get into it, the next step was "click yes on Google Authenticator app," which is device-specific. It was on the stolen iPhone.

You have to pay for a Google One account to chat online with Google agents. I paid 5 Australian dollars, about $3.35, for one.

One told me I'd never recover the account without access to Google Authenticator. As I entered the "bargaining" phase of grief for my digital life, I logged out and back on again to ask another agent. They told me to try again from a familiar device, location, and internet connection once I was home.

I cycled through the stages of grief — denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance — over the next two weeks. For two days, I barely slept because of the stress. At first, I stayed in the apartment. Only the Pride event tempted me back out; even then, I was extra cautious and alert. The new phone stayed at home.

I had to go through bank statements to contact airline companies to resend my tickets and itineraries. Whenever I thought I'd done all the admin, another nightmare popped up.

Two months later, I'm still locked out, with scant hope of ever getting back in. My former employer has re-fired up my old email three times. Each time, Google has said it cannot verify the account belongs to me.

I've lost access to my Gmail, Google Docs, and contacts.

That's 15 years of connections and all the essential information in emails — pitches, stories, data — all gone. I did all my work on Google Docs. There was no backup; Google was the backup. I have lost every piece of work I've written for the last 15 years, including the book proposal that took four months to write.

I try to be grateful to keep myself from slipping into despair. At least the robbery wasn't violent. I'm at acceptance now. I certainly got the digital detox I craved.

Life's about coming back from adversity. I'll rebuild the contacts and rewrite the book chapters. It will take discipline and graft, but I'll do it. I'll work hard to recreate my digital life.