29 ms·

Getting Google to ban our entire company

538 points by highace 8y ago

wruza 8y ago
But what is account association? Do my accounts associate when I log into one and then into another via google’s log in form (the one with stupid login/password separation)? Or did they connect all the accounts by hand via something like backup email? What if my buddy logs into gmail on my laptop, logs out, and then one of us violates ToS?
highace 8y ago
Alternative title: Today I realised why going all-in on Google's platform is maybe not a great business decision. Also note: this isn't me personally.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  The idea that one dude on his phone can torch your entire company with no apparent recourse is borderline insane. The fact that an issue with Google service x can cause you to lose access to Google services y and z is absolutely obscene. I don't understand why anyone could possibly take this sort of risk with their company. As long as Google remains the irresponsible company that it is, they simply cannot be engaged with for any business purpose whatsoever. It's possible, of course, this guy isn't actually what triggered the lockout, but it really wouldn't change the issue: That 150 Google accounts can get banned, including both personal and work accounts, and that Google can refuse to explain why. The OP's bosses should be looking for a good law firm, because there's money in this case.
  - tasubotadas 8y ago
    But Google is so diverse now...
  - agentdrtran 8y ago
    I work with G Suite and this story 100% did not happen.
- bsaul 8y ago
  Absolutely. The guy taking the blame on himself really is amazing to me. He has completely accepted the crazy automated rules google decided for their service, and thought he was the culprit. Guys, just because something is anounced and written in an EULA , doesn't mean you're actually to blame. Sometimes rules are insane and created by people for really bad reasons (such as not wanting to spend a correct amount of money on customer support for your services, in order to be even more profitable).
marticode 8y ago
These stories pop up on a regular basis. Someone from Google eventually reaches out and fixes it because of all the publicity. Meanwhile, the policy (which is insane, and compounded by the difficulty of reaching a human at Google support) never changes.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  As long as people still sign up to put their data and their businesses futures in Google's hands, they have no reason to get better. Money is flowing in, and fixing their problems would cost them a lot of that money.
- dx034 8y ago
  If this blows up enough I can believe it changes. Not because Google wants to, but because suddenly people getting fired realize that they can cause significant damage that way.. If this suddenly happens a few hundred times within a week, Google will have to act or will lose a lot of clients.
  - verbify 8y ago
    Standard practice when someone is fired is to remove all their access credentials during or before they're told they are being fired.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      How do you un-verify a recovery email address from outwith the account to be recovered?
      - verbify 8y ago
        You disable the account, which means it isn't active and therefore any employee action won't affect the company.
- askvictor 8y ago
  G-suite accounts have very responsive tech support (phone and email). Either they're not using G-suite or they're clueless about their tech-support contacts.
donttrack 8y ago
So on the last day at my shit job in the shit office, I should just go ahead and abuse the refund policy? Sounds crazy to me..
- unpopular42 8y ago
  First, you need to make your company rely on 200 consumer Gmail accounts for their business. I mean, if you can get them to that level of idiocy, nothing really helps, right?
  - xfer 8y ago
    Do you know there is a thing called Gsuite for business? Let me change your sentence to "First you need to make your company rely on 200 nodes on AWS for their busineess". I am not sure who looks really stupid here?
    - unpopular42 8y ago
      Except they didn't use Gsuite and this would never happen if they did.
      - chris_wot 8y ago
        Uh, didn't they say they were paying for the service? Sounds like they are using Gsuite...
        unpopular42 8y ago
        I don't see them saying that. If they were paying, they'd get support.
        Operyl 8y ago
        Said support is instantly worthless the moment you find yourself on the “you’re banned” wagon. That’s what this sounds like they’re stuck on.
realusername 8y ago
And people wonder why I don't want to use Google products... The fact that you might be locked of all your accounts for a random bullshit reason (with no support either) is completely insane. People reading this here on HN, please don't use Google products for any important matter or it might bite you back one day (basically only what you can afford to lose).
- dx034 8y ago
  I still love GMail, the interface works better for me than for others. Just use your own domain (with a third party registrar) and you can just swap the front-end if Google decides to ban you. Same with a small company, as long as you have control of your domains and regular backups of the emails, having a fail-over isn't that hard. In this case the real damage is personal accounts, the business accounts could probably be up within a few hours at another provider (plus some more hours until backups are restored).
  - realusername 8y ago
    That's a good advice, always have a backup plan for that (and custom domains + email backups are working great as a backup plan).
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      My personal recommendation is that your domain registrar, web host, and email service should all be different parties. Segregate your risk of losing control of all of these at once, it makes recovery drastically easier. Bear in mind, if someone's all in with Google, they might have their domain controlled by Google Domains.
      - martin-adams 8y ago
        This I agree with. I even run my nameservers different to my registrar, meaning that if my registrar has technical issues I can still control the domain routing. If the nameserver company has issues, I can still change nameservers.
dx034 8y ago
Question for those with a bit more knowledge in this area: How large does the company have to be so that you're excluded from those kind of enforcement actions? With most companies (e.g. Microsoft), large enterprise customers get very different terms and are excluded from all the usual "customer service". Is that the same with Google? Otherwise I couldn't imagine that this would make it into any large companies.
- jankotek 8y ago
  It is not about size. Google has horrible customer support.
  - dx034 8y ago
    I read recently that this is only the case if you don't pay for any of the products?
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      (you mean pay with money and not only with your data, I assume)
      - dx034 8y ago
        I don't like the notion of paying with your data. You pay with your attention (ad views) and your money (purchases off ads). Data helps making this more efficient but you don't pay Google at all. I also don't pay a TV station that shows me ads or a free newspaper.
        hutzlibu 8y ago
        And I don't like the notion of google offering free services, when they are a commercial company and not a charity. And "helps making this more efficient" ... well, a tiny bit more. Knowledge is power. Google posesses a lot of knowledge. But even "only the ads". There are worlds between showing someone random ads, or a highly tailored custom one, made out of all the online and much offline activity of that person. And knowing allmost all about what a company is doing and controlling their communication is potential valuable in various ways as well.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
And this is why I have my own domain, specifically for my email address. It doesn't have a website or anything, just a single email address, for my personal use. That way I have full control of my domain name, right up until the point where I forget to renew it, and a domain squatter takes it from me. There really must be something better than either of these systems. Being at the whims of Google isn't good, but having your own domain name has its own set of problems. This also highlights why companies need to ensure that their systems are platform agnostic. This is why I don't trust things like Slack for business critical applications. Once you're locked in, it's bloody hard to get out.
- pentae 8y ago
  How do you know the OP wasn't using his own domain? It's pretty much standard fare for G Suite.
  - sudhirj 8y ago
    Think GSuite only works on your own domain. If you want gmail.com that's just regular Gmail.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    I was meaning more for individuals, rather than businesses. If your business is in G Suite, it is possible to migrate off as you do have your own domain name, just point your DNS records to your new server, and generate new mail accounts. I was meaning more for personal use. I don't want my personal email address to be at the whim of Google, which it would be if I used an @gmail.com email address. Obviously my email hosting is still at the whim of the host, who, like Google, can just cut my service if they want, but that's always a risk. I could host my email on DigitalOcean, but DO could cut my service. So I could host it on my home computer, but (ignoring spam filtering problems and uptime) my ISP could cut my service.
- jore 8y ago
  I also think am own domain and email is the better option and I cannot understand why a company of 100-150 employees would use google mail. Is it because of searching, sorting options or something else that is much better with gmail?
notatoad 8y ago
having unrelated personal accounts locked because they're set as the recovery account for an account that was tangentially related to a ToS violation is absolutely unacceptable. there's no plausible reason for that other than to inconvenience as many people as possible.
- guessmyname 8y ago
  I read that and got genuinely preoccupied. I immediately started reviewing the recovery options of my corporate account and de-linked all my personal information (personal email address, personal phone number for two-factor authentication, etc). I prefer to have my corporate account hacked for not having 2FA enabled than to risk my personal Google account to be locked. I went ahead and created a non-personal account with another email provider for the recovery options and tomorrow morning I will request my employer for a corporate phone number to set-up 2FA.
  - dannyw 8y ago
    Don't worry. even if you don't have any recovery emails set up, Google's anti-abuse systems still link accounts that it believes are related (same cookies, same Chrome SafeSearch / phone-home headers and IDs, etc).
    - eh78ssxv2f 8y ago
      This seems pretty outrageous. Do you have any source for this?
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I had an interesting problem with my gmail account - I had a backup email address and my phone linked to it. Then I needed to reset my gmail password, but I no longer had access to my backup email (was at an organization I left). So, even though I still had access to my phone and even though I was still logged in to the gmail account, and even though I had many archived emails, I could never log in to it again and had to abandon it. Automated recovery didn't work and of course they wouldn't say why. Having a backup seems like a trap or catch-22 when it becomes the single point of failure.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
zawerf 8y ago
It's insane that a mere ToS violation (not even anything criminal or large scale) on a different Google product got not only his account banned, but all related accounts across all Google products banned also. It makes me really worry about things I have done that are truly against their ToS. For example after Google Cloud Platform announced a $300 credit promo for new users, I made another gmail account just to try them out. I don't think what I did is unethical or even against the spirit of their promo so I didn't bother to hide the connection back to my real gmail. Will google use this to ban my real google account one day? Probably not, but before this story I naively believed the answer was definitely no.
- jakeogh 8y ago
  They should offer it as a feature.
- sdhgaiojfsa 8y ago
  > It's insane . . . Yes. So insane one suspects it may not be true.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > not even anything criminal or large scale Yeah, engaging in corporate piracy, just a minor violation.
eh78ssxv2f 8y ago
Wait, are we sure that this really happened? Seems very unlikely, and even the OP did not present any evidence. I would be really surprised if Google would be scanning emails, and using that to ban the gsuite account of the entire company. A red flag for me is the claim that Google also blocked accounts that were set for recovery which seems almost close to impossible (or insane).
- pmlnr 8y ago
  This is not the first case like this: https://plus.google.com/+RichWarren/posts/QkKTxAbKGdq https://plus.google.com/+RichWarren/posts/QkKTxAbKGdq
  - falcon620 8y ago
    Personal gmail (which is used in your example) != gsuite (which is used in company settings)
  - eh78ssxv2f 8y ago
    I think the post that you linked to describes a much simpler case: One Google account violated the policies and could land Google in bad water (privacy laws around children as well as COPPA), so they blocked access to that specific account. It can be argued that it is reasonable. It can also be argued that Google should put more engineering effort in collecting less information especially when account holder is minor. However, blocking access of other co-workers as well as blocking access to personal accounts (which are simply set as recovery accounts, and could as well be accounts of spouses/partners) because of some other account holder's mistake is completely different. So, I would argue that the incident described in Reddit is indeed the first case.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  "A red flag for me is the claim that Google also blocked accounts that were set for recovery which seems almost close to impossible (or insane)." Why should that be impossible? They are clearly linked (you have to own to other account, to accept it beeing used as the recovery account of the first one). And the intention of google is probably to fight scammers etc. - and I can imagine it disrupts them a bit, if all associated accounts get banned. So I can imagine that it is a real case ... of collateral damage Edit: stating of how I see the situation from the perspective of google, does not mean I approve it, and neither collateral damage in general
jimrandomh 8y ago
I'd really like to hear Google's side of this story, since the story as-written doesn't seem plausible.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  Everybody wants to hear it, but Google can't tell it. One part of the fight with the bad guys is never to tell them how they got caught, so they never know how to protect themselves.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    There's a difference between telling someone what they did wrong and telling them how they got caught. The former should be a legal requirement. But I'm not sure what actually happened in this particular case. We don't even know if it concerns a G Suite account and what the company was or wasn't told about why they got banned.
    - gwerbret 8y ago
      Non-expert here, but I wonder if the obscurity actually points to an machine learning-based solution at Google's end. Let's say that Google has developed a deep learning paradigm to identify -- and ban -- low-value users who violate their ToS. The low-value group would probably include all non-paying users, as well as small G Suite accounts. Let's also say that the paradigm was deployed as an automated solution, since it was 99% accurate during testing at picking out ToS violators, though the exact percentage doesn't really matter. I would imagine that the relevant Google execs did a cost-benefit analysis, and figured that the PR hit and revenue loss associated with a liberal and fully automated use of the banhammer against all supposed ToS violators -- including the 1% that were false positives -- was justified by the benefits to Google's bottom line. Based on this possibility, it seems likely that Google employees would not _know_ why the banhammer fell in any particular instance -- nor would they care to know, since that would involve digging through the data to figure out which events triggered a positive hit in their machine learning implementation. It presumably wouldn't be worth Google's time and effort on behalf of users already classified as "low-value". This might also explain why, as mentioned in another post, it took a few days for the banhammer to fall on a start-up, after a dev with a "poisoned" Google account joined the team. Presumably it took those few days worth of traffic and usage data for ToS-Hammer(tm) to figure that the dev had spawned new accounts elsewhere. Again, I'm not an expert, so pardon any flaws in the relevant logic.
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
Things like these can happen with any service provider. The key difference is that no other company has so many popular services linked together. Using Google this way basically means putting all one's eggs in one basket. We all know it's an unwise thing to do. An yet, people do it every day, for convenience. Personally, I set up separate Gmail accounts for their different services. First, I don't want them to profile me automatically (they do it through correlation anyway, but let's not make it too easy), and second, in situations like these, only some of the eggs are broken.
- dgiol 8y ago
  That's unlikely to work. You are still putting all your eggs in one basket. This seems to be a variation of the setup this company has/had. Unless you are using different browser profiles or installations, and IP addresses for each account every single time you use them, it's very easy for Google to see that requests are coming from the same computer. If you were shut down, they would be able to do it as in the example, all accounts closed at once.
  - auslander 8y ago
    > different browser profiles or installations, and IP addresses for each account People underestimate power of IP tracking. Use VPN. Plus, a must, have uBlock Origin in medium blocking mode (3p-scripts and 3p-frames blocked). Today EVERY website makes several google*.com API calls.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    Well, it works somewhat. I keep my main email account separate from adwords, adsense, GA (although I now replaced it by Matomo, there is no reason whatsoever to use GA now), and Google Play. Ditto for their other services. I had a problem with one of the accounts a while ago - Google didn't "recognize the device" (this often happens as I have strict browser cleanup policies) and I lost access to the account because it was linked to a phone number I lost 10 years ago and forgot to change the number in the account settings. In this case, I lost access to just one account and I didn't care that much. If I used one account for everything I'd have gone mad.
auslander 8y ago
SkyNet, you signed up voluntarily. > and our boss is looking to migrate away from Google only if it is not too late. 'Don't be evil' was removed from the code of conduct's preface in 2018. I commented 2 days ago on other thread: Your kids share their assignments to it, your company uses it for all comms, you use it for private messages, you tell it your secret desires via searches, it knows who you're with at any point of time with android location ... Google Home? My home? SkyNet must be destroyed now.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  It's funny how GMaps is insisting to have me set a 'home and work' location as of lately. Thanks but no thanks. Of course they already might have an idea, but seems it's not enough for it to be certain.
  - auslander 8y ago
    If it prompts you to set it, it means your browser is Already logged in in some tab (Auth cookie set). That is Bad idea. Login only when necessary and Always use private browser windows and tabs, it kills all sorts of cookies/storages.
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  > only if it is not too late. 'Don't be evil' was removed from the code of conduct's preface in 2018. That is technically true but leaves the wrong impression. The code of conduct got reworded, leaving "Don't be evil" in a single prominent mention at the very end. "Removed" is only accurate for the preface; for the whole document, "deemphasized" is more correct (and that's only because many people don't read to the end where they'd now be left with "don't be evil" visible after doing so).
  - auslander 8y ago
    Impression is still right. While your clarification is technically correct :D, I was talking about the Trend of moving it to less prominent places over time.
ssijak 8y ago
I got my google account banned several times. Several years ago I had my account payment features banned with no explanation. That in turn basically banned me from most of Google services because I could not pay for them or use them because payments were banned. No adwords, adsense, no google cloud services, no buying android apps, nothing... With no explanation, no support, and I tried hard just to find out what I did wrong. After that I come to terms that I have to leave my email that I used for like 10 years and make a new one. But, this time I first bought a domain name and then started paying for google apps. This way if they ban me for whatever reason I could at least take my email address to some other email provider. Anyhow, sometime later youtube enabled Adsense on videos for my country. I enabled it out of curiosity, just to see what is the process of doing and using it. I don`t have videos on my channel except one random from the gym that I uploaded 1-2 years ago. So, I just enabled adsense poked at that for 1 day and left it unused. Sometime after that I got an email that my adsense and adword account is banned for violating policy (not saying which one). No explanation why, nothing!!! I tried to get an explanation like REALLY hard, but could not. You are just stuck in an endless loop of robot answers, or not getting answers at all. They even have google forms for complaints which point me to some URL that I am banned from viewing, lol. And there is some other form that no one answers when you fill it and I filled it 10 times. Long story short, I slowly started migrating from Google services. This is really maddening and scary that they can just cut you off from your data without explanation. I use Google Photos heavily and even a possibility that they could cut me off from my photos at any time is sickening. That is why I bought NAS which backups my Google Photos to physical drives in my apartment. Now I just need to find something comparable to Google Photos and leave that service for good...
jarym 8y ago
Where to begin with this.. hmm.. First you: "I have a friend who creates Android apps on the side. I do something similar to this, but instead my apps revolve around cloning .apk files and restoring them". Why not be clear and just admit you're pirating software off an App Store? Ok, not the smartest activity in the world BUT did you have to do it at work? Then Google: "We were all freaking out, our IT guys were trying to get a hold of Google but couldn't get in touch with anyone." - So yea, unless you're one of Google's 'poster' customers, good luck trying to get help when something goes wrong! "Their policy is to not share any information about what caused this and they will not reverse these actions." - Yup, that's Google. Unless you're one of the customers on this list: https://gsuite.google.com/customers/ https://gsuite.google.com/customers/ you are totally screwed when something goes wrong. I introduce the world to the ToS-DoS Attack - only a matter of time before this now gets exploited: - Hack into a companies GSuite account and create a new account. - Use the new account to commit a range of ToS violations. - Wait for Google to suspend the entire GSuite account.
- flukus 8y ago
  I got the impression that step 1 isn't needed, it was more: 1. Create a google account and set your recovery email to the victims. 2. Use the new account to commit a range of ToS violations. 3. Wait for Google to suspend the entire GSuite account and every linked account. For step 1 I don't think there is (or at least wasn't) any validation, I found out a family member had me as their recovery address when they changed passwords.
  - hknd 8y ago
    A "victim" would need to approve being used as a recovery account. (click link in mail etc.)
    - aritmo 8y ago
      No. Ironically, this is opt-out, not opt-in. That is, you (as recovery email holder) would need click the link ONLY if you want to unlink. The URL is in the footer of the email and it is easy to miss.
aogl 8y ago
This is when I really wish Amazon had a free email service to compete. Their customer service always rocks!
pdkl95 8y ago
When mission critical parts, tools, or infrastructure is moved to "the cloud" (aka computers owned by someone else that you do not control) - often replacing in-house tools with a SaaSS[1] - a second source[2] is rarely discussed as a requirement. The "cloud" doesn't magically solve path dependency. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source edit: my father once mentioned that when he was working at Honneywell in Minneapolis (making home automation in the 80s), some of the engineers frequented a local bar called literally "The Second Source". "Sorry boss, I'm busy this afternoon - I have a meeting at the second source!"
dbg31415 8y ago
Not the point of this post, but man... the new Reddit design is so bad. It's like someone new to HTML tried to re-create a Facebook page using a scan of a screenshot, and just changed it enough to try and say it wasn't a total knock off.
- ktpsns 8y ago
  It's just the layout of the particular subreddit. The overall reddit layout has not changed.
  - jwilk 8y ago
    There is a new Reddit layout, but it's not enabled for everybody yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16741867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16741867
- jwilk 8y ago
  Use old.reddit.com instead of www.reddit.com to get the old layout. If you use HTTPS Everywhere, you can abuse it to make redirects like this automatic.
  - RVuRnvbM2e 8y ago
    Firefox has this awesome plugin for exactly this purpose: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
- CryoLogic 8y ago
  In greasemonkey or tampermonkey: if (window.location.host.indexOf('old') === -1) { window.location.host = window.location.host.replace('www', 'old'); }
suhastech 8y ago
Similar thing happened to me. Google randomly disabled my account for no reason. There was absolutely no way to contact them. From that day onward, I do not trust Google or anyone to keep my data. At least, I got a small product out of the experience: https://thehorcrux.com/why-i-built-horcrux-app/ https://thehorcrux.com/why-i-built-horcrux-app/
megablast 8y ago
> As a joke, every time my friend releases an app (usually paid), I buy the app and clone it with my software, and then refund it. After that, I send him an e-mail with the cloned version through Gmail with something along the lines of: "Look at this cool app I found on the store, it was completely free! Try it out!", or stupid shit like that. It was a bit of a stupid inside joke that kind of stuck for a while and was only between us. This sounds so strange, and surely it wouldn't get you banned. Why would someone keep doing the same joke.
- dmak 8y ago
  Why not? You never had a family member or a friend who never lets you live down some silly thing that happened at a Christmas party?
dandare 8y ago
Stories like these document how immature Google is for the B2B market. No sane company can risk being obliterated by Google's bully ToS and ignorant support.
amelius 8y ago
Just call customer service ...
antocv 8y ago
Time to 1) grab/download the entire mailbox from Gmail 2) delete the mailbox at Gmail 3) export all gdrive data, use the export function 4) delete the gdrive data 5) register with fastmail, yandex or protonmail 6) start mailpile on your raspberry pi or similar 7) use mailpile as frontend for yandex/protonmail/other-imap account. 8) nextcloud as good enough but shitty replacement for gdrive Self-hosted ftw.
- jorgemf 8y ago
  yesterday was too late to make backups...
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  I'm still surprised there's no better alternatives to Nextcloud out there yet.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    There are. I use Sandstorm.io and Cloudron is also out there. They're modern containerized platforms you can run any number of other open source web apps on.
    - gsich 8y ago
      But how is that an alternative to Nextcloud? An example for that would be Seafile.
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        In Sandstorm.io's case, I use an app called Davros to store files (which is even compatible with some ownCloud sync clients, actually), and Cloudron.io has a few other options you can use to work with your files, including, actually just hosting Nextcloud or ownCloud on it. Where these sorts of platforms really excel is in the realm of other features, which Nextcloud tacks onto the existing platform, but a larger app platform can allow you to use a variety of alternatives which are more tailor-made to other specific types of web apps.
xugo 8y ago
Not up to date on Google Play developer terms but doesn't a customer requesting a refund makes the developer still liable for Google fees ? If so that's a very shitty thing to do to your friend.
yladiz 8y ago
To me, what's telling about this is not that it may or may not have happened, but that people could believe it happened (even through a skeptical lens), and that some people believe that this sort of thing wouldn't happen if you had Microsoft or Amazon accounts, at least not in the same way.
Spearchucker 8y ago
Using a service that can be withdrawn at random without recourse is irresponsible. Whoever makes a decision like that needs a lesson in risk management. Blows my mind.
telltruth 8y ago
OP said you can log in to banned accounts but can't do anything. I would expect an email from Google that tells me why account got banned and whom to contact. If they are not doing that then that's pretty dumb.
Nebasuke 8y ago
Re-reading the story, it seems to me they had a manual solution, linking personally made Google email accounts to serve as a corporate email (rather than using GSuite), which is probably why all the accounts were seen by the automated banning system as all owned by the reddit OP. If they actually got GSuite they might have had a semblance of support. Still a crap response from Google as usual.
Yizahi 8y ago
It not exactly new that Google has zero customer support and not the first (and for sure not the last) horror story about automatic bans on Google services. If anyone treats Google accounts in any way as permanent or reliable - "this" may happen to you too. It may even happen will no fault at all from your side - e.g. someone would have a linked youtube account and bigcorp will take it down for a copyright on a white noise video and then whole linked account structure will crumple down like house of cards. Or any of the thousands alternative reasons.
- sharecropper 8y ago
  I grew my vegetables on a neighbours allotment, he even lent me tools to make the process easier. After a while, out families crops were solely grown there. One day, we were kicked off the allotment, out access to the crops gone in an instant. I tried to remonstrate, but just got a waving hand in the face. I am hoping if I publicise it enough in the local gardening forums, the allotment owner might feel a slight bit of pressure to act in this case, but apparently others who used his land didn't dare so well without someone trumpeting their case. If only we had maintained the knowledge how to tend our own garden.
- josefresco 8y ago
  "It not exactly new that Google has zero customer support" It's also not true. Maybe for "free" services but paid G Suite accounts have telephone, live chat and email support. I've used it frequently.
- stordoff 8y ago
  I pay for a single user account, and have received good customer support relating to some DKIM issues (including multiple follow-ups months later when a related issue was fixed, without my prompting). Characterising that as "zero customer support" is unfair.
jk2323 8y ago
"some of their personal e-mails are also blocked as well. " Never, never ever use a gmail account for anything important. I learned it the hard way and once nearly lost a domain because of this. gandi.net offers domains with free IMAP email service infomaniak.com is also good for email. Switzerland based. " our IT guys were trying to get a hold of Google but couldn't get in touch with anyone." ROTFL.
znpy 8y ago
I wonder what would have happened if that guy's company also used Google Cloud (as in "Google Cloud Platform"). Would have google ketp all of their data and services hostage? This is freaking scary. Just one rogue employee and everything goes down.
dis-sys 8y ago
He didn't do anything wrong and the way and excuses how Google refuses to provide any support for their paying customers is just not acceptable. It is pretty clear that Google refuses to provide any support to actually minimize its own costs, it is so obvious.
jk2323 8y ago
By the way, the day I went off gmail, I used a script like this to download all my emails: http://taoofmac.com/space/projects/imapbackup http://taoofmac.com/space/projects/imapbackup
- duiker101 8y ago
  Pretty sure there's an option in the Google settings to download all your data from any of their services
  - sschueller 8y ago
    Yes, but you can use this script to make a continuous backup so you can keep using google but have your data when they decide to shut you off.
- josefresco 8y ago
  We use Thunderbird Portable.
mark_l_watson 8y ago
This is a potential problem for medium size businesses. Very large companies that use Google Office products have dedicated support people at Google. This also doesn’t have to be a problem for individuals. I often use gmail, but only by forwarding my fastmail to it. I can stop using gmail at anytime (which I do often when not travelling and don’t need the extra services). I also back up my Google data periodically, so the only absolute loss for getting locked out of my account would be the digital content purchased at Google Play. But, for small and medium businesses, beware.
gsich 8y ago
This is why you self-host as much as possible.
reza_n 8y ago
I pay $5 a month for a custom domain gmail account and last year I had an issue connecting to their POP3 service. Opened a support ticket and got extremely high quality support immediately. Basically, my experience was the opposite of all the horror stories which always get echoed in these support threads.
- pdkl95 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
tjpnz 8y ago
If this was indeed GSuite then it really seems like a lawsuit in the making. It wouldn't be hard for a judge to nullify Google's TOS either as they quite often include terms that are illegal in some jurisdictions. Will definitely be sharing this story with our team in the morning.
josefresco 8y ago
I don't buy the "we couldn't get a hold of Google" claim. I contact Google via telephone, chat and email all the time for clients - never had a problem making contact or having my issue resolved. Odd.
- billyjoejoe212 8y ago
  It seems the problem was, they were banned, so Google no longer considered them a customer. Which is a Kafkaesque nightmare scenario. But the thread (on reddit) was locked and the guy hasn't updated since yesterday. None of the people involved with Google (one guy at reddit said he worked with the GSuite team and would look into it, some guy on here said he was with Google services and is looking into it, etc.) will update out of the risk of losing their jobs. So I'm afraid the only hope we have for an update is if the original guy comes out and gives a play-by-play after this is resolved.
crazygringo 8y ago
None of this makes any sense, I simply don't believe it. G Suite for Business is an enterprise product costing $5-25/user/month with 24x7 phone support, escalation paths, contractual SLA's, etc. It competes heavily and directly with Microsoft. A company doesn't get "banned". This smells like black PR to me... playing on Google's lack of support/transparency around free consumer accounts and trying to get people to associate it with their Enterprise division. I mean come on, just the way it's written: "One of the girls at work was fucking bawling her eyes out since she couldn't access her e-mail either." and the final "I do not know why Google has a scorched-earth policy when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I fucked up and our boss is looking to migrate away from Google even though we just recently signed on not too long ago." It just feels too obvious. (Also, G Suite for Business accounts don't have recovery e-mails -- your admin takes care of your account -- so the supposed personal bans sound made-up too. EDIT thanks to ballenf below -- by default users can't set recovery e-mails, but a G Suite admin can enable that option for their domain.)
- ptero 8y ago
  I suspect the company was using the free consumer version. That comes with little escalation, etc. They probably should have used something different for business email for a company with 100+ people, but this is not the point. The valid point, if true, is that an action of one individual caused a major disruption for a lot of other people that are connected to him only via google algorithms or some other vague means. Banning non-violating business accounts from the business that breaks ToS is kind-of OK (but should be followed by a human interaction to check); banning personal accounts for folks because of their business ties is not. My 2c.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    The free edition was discontinued in 12/6/2012 and only supported 10 users. The new lowest tier, G Suite Basic, has 24/7 phone support.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      When Google bans your account, you no longer have 24/7 phone support.
tehwebguy 8y ago
Google’s “customer service” policies have always been trash. IMO it’s a part of the culture there that will never change. Good reminder to switch as many services as possible from Google before something irreversible happens to our entire company and all of our personal email accounts / domains.
phendrenad2 8y ago
> our IT guys were trying to get a hold of Google but couldn't get in touch with anyone. Try your legal team, if your badly-run company has one (I am not a lawyer). lol
kelvin0 8y ago
I've posted many times on HN an anecdote of mine regarding using Google (paid) services. Basically got my ex-employer (30 people) company on board to using google docs accounts to share documents. Since this is a corporation we decided to go with the 50$/user/year, which we duly paid each year. Things went swimmingly well, until a user reported seeing an error message, and then not being able to access the document at all. Escalation was a joke, and after a whole week of not having access to the critical google spreadsheet, Google was still fumbling around. Finally we got the document back, because one of the employees had kept the email containing the URL of the document (sent out when a document is shared with a group of people). If it wasn't for that old email kept by an employee, we'd probably never would have 'found' the document again. Google's support was at best incompetent. Beware dancing with the Dragon that is Google! Backup your files, keep important document URLS! Hope this helps a poor soul somewhere.
- dmak 8y ago
  Why couldn't you just search drive? It's not that big of an organization.
  - kelvin0 8y ago
    Just to be clear, ALL our documents were wiped out from view. We could not search anything.
    - crazygringo 8y ago
      Your original comment said it was one file, and finding the original URL found it. (Also BTW, everyone who is shared on the file can look in "Shared With Me" in Drive, no need to hunt for e-mails.) Now you're saying that your entire organization's files were all gone from Drive, in other words total and complete organization-wide data loss, and that Google wouldn't help you...? And yet finding one URL fixed all that again...?
      - kelvin0 8y ago
        We only had 3-5 documents online. 1 of those documents was a spreadsheet VERY important spreadsheet. All documents disappeared after the reported error occurred. Google wanted the document URLs to retrieve the 'lost' documents. We only were able to get a hold of 1 URL for the critical shared spreadsheet, which was finally recovered. All other documents were lost, but luckily they were not critical. But we still lost them. Hope this clarifies?
dmak 8y ago
I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned/promoted a product for decentralizing GSuite.
organicmultiloc 8y ago
I love how the default way to get an actual human to respond to a real problem at google is now: 1. Be famous 2. Make a stink on social media I feel like I'm back in high school.
imleft 8y ago
Google was recently asked to mandate diversity and equal pay. The mgt of Google is against it: https://i.redd.it/htqi8nuk6xx01.jpg https://i.redd.it/htqi8nuk6xx01.jpg
lgregg 8y ago
So, what are the best alternatives? I know about MS office and I think Zoho has email, who else is out there?
- GFischer 8y ago
  I'm using Zoho and have a good experience so far, they had some issues in the past but at least my experience with support is good. When I looked into it, there weren't many appealing options. I wanted to use Yahoo but they had just spun out and wasn't too friendly. I couldn't get a Microsoft platform for e-mail without them bundling Office365 and other stuff I didn't want, if not I'd have gone with them.
  - lgregg 8y ago
    What types of issues did you encounter?
    - GFischer 8y ago
      In particular, I remember an outage a year ago that was very ill-timed for me (as we were hyping our project) and they were a little slow to respond, it was literally a perfect storm as their offices in Chennai were hit by a Cyclone: https://www.zoho.com/service-updates/blog/zoho-customer-support-is-slow.html https://www.zoho.com/service-updates/blog/zoho-customer-supp... they have also had more outages than GMail (but OTOH they have way better customer support, I was even reached by the CEO once!). Outages list: https://twitter.com/nehemiahman/status/921378260583362560 https://twitter.com/nehemiahman/status/921378260583362560 I still think it's the best available option.
- flukus 8y ago
  If you think switching to other cloud solutions is the answer here then I think you missed the problem. The core problem with any of these services is that you no longer have control over your data.
  - lgregg 8y ago
alexdiacre 8y ago
Greetings. This is Alex Diacre here from G Suite Support. This has been flagged for my team and we’re looking into it. If anyone G Suite customer has trouble accessing their account they can always contact Google Cloud Support here: https://support.google.com/a/contact/admin_no_access https://support.google.com/a/contact/admin_no_access (this is a special form to use when you cannot access)
- danirod 8y ago
  Once again, it seems the only way to reach actual human support on the Google ecosystem is by having a "locked out of my account" thread trending on some social network. It simply blows my mind that one of the most powerful tech companies in the world is still doing these mistakes. Not even the G Suite tier, which I would assume it's a more professional tier than the free one. (Disclaimer: I'm assuming this Reddit post is true, which may or may not be the case here.)
  - alexdiacre 8y ago
    Hi danirod For G Suite Basic, Business and Enterprise customers we provide 24 x 7 support via chat, phone and email.
    - flukus 8y ago
      Does this extend to customers who have had their account suspended?
      - alexdiacre 8y ago
        Hi flukus Yes - you can create a case at https://support.google.com/a/contact/admin_no_access https://support.google.com/a/contact/admin_no_access
- profmonocle 8y ago
  Hi Alex, is there a chance we could get some follow-up on this? I manage the G Suite account at my company, and the idea that an irresponsible or disgruntled employee could take down our whole account is very worrying. (Especially since our G Suite accounts are tied to our GCP account.) Assuming the story isn't simply made up, I'd rest easier knowing whatever caused the problem (both the initial mass banning and Google's unwillingness to help) has been fixed.
pvtmert 8y ago
IMHO testing payment works and getting apk then sending it to owner (proving its working) is pretty ok situation. of coursw you will request refund... given these days deployment stuff can get infected easily (remember a framework contained malware in many apps in appstore) there is services providing testflights for such stuff, but if npm/yarn/pypi/insert pkg manager here loads infected package, you're done
mito88 8y ago
Why the toilet scene? :)
Fanmade 8y ago
I made a similar experience with Google, just on a way smaller scale. I still use their service on a very small scale, but I would newer use them for a larger scale. While their services are mostly very convenient to use, some of their rules are ridiculous and even if you make a small mistake, they will ban you for lifetime. One example I have is when we built a little website for a school project. It was an obvious fake site about smart homes by a company that was basically developing the terminator. I included a Google ad on the site just to make it look more realistic. When it showed ads for robotics (which I'm very interested in) I clicked on it and so did my classmates. We suddenly had about three Euros in ad-revenue, when I got banned by AdWords (or AdSense, I always confuse one with the other). I wrote an email apologizing and explaining everything and thought they would just reset the account to zero, but nope. I now have a lifetime ban from any Google Ads service. I even asked again several years later when I've had a bigger site that I wanted to put some ads on, but apparently my actions where so incredibly evil, that I will never be able to use those services ever again (if I don't create a new Gmail account that is). That doesn't keep them from sending me vouchers and ads to use those services, of course. Well, good thing there are a lot of alternatives which I am happily using without any incident and I learned my lesson soon enough.
miaklesp 8y ago
FastMail for mail Office 365 for office Don't use Google, diversify with better products in each category.
Rainymood 8y ago
The fact that this is/was upvoted so highly shows how deeply ingrained the "believe first, fact check later" mentality is in humans when the piece in question aligns with our personal worldview. This is exactly how fake news spreads.

538 points by highace 8y ago

But what is account association? Do my accounts associate when I log into one and then into another via google’s log in form (the one with stupid login/password separation)? Or did they connect all the accounts by hand via something like backup email? What if my buddy logs into gmail on my laptop, logs out, and then one of us violates ToS?

highace 8y ago

Alternative title: Today I realised why going all-in on Google's platform is maybe not a great business decision. Also note: this isn't me personally.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
The idea that one dude on his phone can torch your entire company with no apparent recourse is borderline insane. The fact that an issue with Google service x can cause you to lose access to Google services y and z is absolutely obscene. I don't understand why anyone could possibly take this sort of risk with their company. As long as Google remains the irresponsible company that it is, they simply cannot be engaged with for any business purpose whatsoever. It's possible, of course, this guy isn't actually what triggered the lockout, but it really wouldn't change the issue: That 150 Google accounts can get banned, including both personal and work accounts, and that Google can refuse to explain why. The OP's bosses should be looking for a good law firm, because there's money in this case.
- tasubotadas 8y ago
  But Google is so diverse now...
- agentdrtran 8y ago
  I work with G Suite and this story 100% did not happen.
bsaul 8y ago
Absolutely. The guy taking the blame on himself really is amazing to me. He has completely accepted the crazy automated rules google decided for their service, and thought he was the culprit. Guys, just because something is anounced and written in an EULA , doesn't mean you're actually to blame. Sometimes rules are insane and created by people for really bad reasons (such as not wanting to spend a correct amount of money on customer support for your services, in order to be even more profitable).

marticode 8y ago

These stories pop up on a regular basis. Someone from Google eventually reaches out and fixes it because of all the publicity. Meanwhile, the policy (which is insane, and compounded by the difficulty of reaching a human at Google support) never changes.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
As long as people still sign up to put their data and their businesses futures in Google's hands, they have no reason to get better. Money is flowing in, and fixing their problems would cost them a lot of that money.
dx034 8y ago
If this blows up enough I can believe it changes. Not because Google wants to, but because suddenly people getting fired realize that they can cause significant damage that way.. If this suddenly happens a few hundred times within a week, Google will have to act or will lose a lot of clients.
- verbify 8y ago
  Standard practice when someone is fired is to remove all their access credentials during or before they're told they are being fired.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    How do you un-verify a recovery email address from outwith the account to be recovered?
    - verbify 8y ago
      You disable the account, which means it isn't active and therefore any employee action won't affect the company.
askvictor 8y ago
G-suite accounts have very responsive tech support (phone and email). Either they're not using G-suite or they're clueless about their tech-support contacts.

donttrack 8y ago

So on the last day at my shit job in the shit office, I should just go ahead and abuse the refund policy? Sounds crazy to me..

unpopular42 8y ago
First, you need to make your company rely on 200 consumer Gmail accounts for their business. I mean, if you can get them to that level of idiocy, nothing really helps, right?
- xfer 8y ago
  Do you know there is a thing called Gsuite for business? Let me change your sentence to "First you need to make your company rely on 200 nodes on AWS for their busineess". I am not sure who looks really stupid here?
  - unpopular42 8y ago
    Except they didn't use Gsuite and this would never happen if they did.
    - chris_wot 8y ago
      Uh, didn't they say they were paying for the service? Sounds like they are using Gsuite...
      - unpopular42 8y ago
        I don't see them saying that. If they were paying, they'd get support.
        Operyl 8y ago
        Said support is instantly worthless the moment you find yourself on the “you’re banned” wagon. That’s what this sounds like they’re stuck on.

realusername 8y ago

And people wonder why I don't want to use Google products... The fact that you might be locked of all your accounts for a random bullshit reason (with no support either) is completely insane. People reading this here on HN, please don't use Google products for any important matter or it might bite you back one day (basically only what you can afford to lose).

dx034 8y ago
I still love GMail, the interface works better for me than for others. Just use your own domain (with a third party registrar) and you can just swap the front-end if Google decides to ban you. Same with a small company, as long as you have control of your domains and regular backups of the emails, having a fail-over isn't that hard. In this case the real damage is personal accounts, the business accounts could probably be up within a few hours at another provider (plus some more hours until backups are restored).
- realusername 8y ago
  That's a good advice, always have a backup plan for that (and custom domains + email backups are working great as a backup plan).
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    My personal recommendation is that your domain registrar, web host, and email service should all be different parties. Segregate your risk of losing control of all of these at once, it makes recovery drastically easier. Bear in mind, if someone's all in with Google, they might have their domain controlled by Google Domains.
    - martin-adams 8y ago
      This I agree with. I even run my nameservers different to my registrar, meaning that if my registrar has technical issues I can still control the domain routing. If the nameserver company has issues, I can still change nameservers.

dx034 8y ago

Question for those with a bit more knowledge in this area: How large does the company have to be so that you're excluded from those kind of enforcement actions? With most companies (e.g. Microsoft), large enterprise customers get very different terms and are excluded from all the usual "customer service". Is that the same with Google? Otherwise I couldn't imagine that this would make it into any large companies.

jankotek 8y ago
It is not about size. Google has horrible customer support.
- dx034 8y ago
  I read recently that this is only the case if you don't pay for any of the products?
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    (you mean pay with money and not only with your data, I assume)
    - dx034 8y ago
      I don't like the notion of paying with your data. You pay with your attention (ad views) and your money (purchases off ads). Data helps making this more efficient but you don't pay Google at all. I also don't pay a TV station that shows me ads or a free newspaper.
      - hutzlibu 8y ago
        And I don't like the notion of google offering free services, when they are a commercial company and not a charity. And "helps making this more efficient" ... well, a tiny bit more. Knowledge is power. Google posesses a lot of knowledge. But even "only the ads". There are worlds between showing someone random ads, or a highly tailored custom one, made out of all the online and much offline activity of that person. And knowing allmost all about what a company is doing and controlling their communication is potential valuable in various ways as well.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

And this is why I have my own domain, specifically for my email address. It doesn't have a website or anything, just a single email address, for my personal use. That way I have full control of my domain name, right up until the point where I forget to renew it, and a domain squatter takes it from me. There really must be something better than either of these systems. Being at the whims of Google isn't good, but having your own domain name has its own set of problems. This also highlights why companies need to ensure that their systems are platform agnostic. This is why I don't trust things like Slack for business critical applications. Once you're locked in, it's bloody hard to get out.

pentae 8y ago
How do you know the OP wasn't using his own domain? It's pretty much standard fare for G Suite.
- sudhirj 8y ago
  Think GSuite only works on your own domain. If you want gmail.com that's just regular Gmail.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I was meaning more for individuals, rather than businesses. If your business is in G Suite, it is possible to migrate off as you do have your own domain name, just point your DNS records to your new server, and generate new mail accounts. I was meaning more for personal use. I don't want my personal email address to be at the whim of Google, which it would be if I used an @gmail.com email address. Obviously my email hosting is still at the whim of the host, who, like Google, can just cut my service if they want, but that's always a risk. I could host my email on DigitalOcean, but DO could cut my service. So I could host it on my home computer, but (ignoring spam filtering problems and uptime) my ISP could cut my service.
jore 8y ago
I also think am own domain and email is the better option and I cannot understand why a company of 100-150 employees would use google mail. Is it because of searching, sorting options or something else that is much better with gmail?

notatoad 8y ago

having unrelated personal accounts locked because they're set as the recovery account for an account that was tangentially related to a ToS violation is absolutely unacceptable. there's no plausible reason for that other than to inconvenience as many people as possible.

guessmyname 8y ago
I read that and got genuinely preoccupied. I immediately started reviewing the recovery options of my corporate account and de-linked all my personal information (personal email address, personal phone number for two-factor authentication, etc). I prefer to have my corporate account hacked for not having 2FA enabled than to risk my personal Google account to be locked. I went ahead and created a non-personal account with another email provider for the recovery options and tomorrow morning I will request my employer for a corporate phone number to set-up 2FA.
- dannyw 8y ago
  Don't worry. even if you don't have any recovery emails set up, Google's anti-abuse systems still link accounts that it believes are related (same cookies, same Chrome SafeSearch / phone-home headers and IDs, etc).
  - eh78ssxv2f 8y ago
    This seems pretty outrageous. Do you have any source for this?
perl4ever 8y ago
I had an interesting problem with my gmail account - I had a backup email address and my phone linked to it. Then I needed to reset my gmail password, but I no longer had access to my backup email (was at an organization I left). So, even though I still had access to my phone and even though I was still logged in to the gmail account, and even though I had many archived emails, I could never log in to it again and had to abandon it. Automated recovery didn't work and of course they wouldn't say why. Having a backup seems like a trap or catch-22 when it becomes the single point of failure.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

zawerf 8y ago

It's insane that a mere ToS violation (not even anything criminal or large scale) on a different Google product got not only his account banned, but all related accounts across all Google products banned also. It makes me really worry about things I have done that are truly against their ToS. For example after Google Cloud Platform announced a $300 credit promo for new users, I made another gmail account just to try them out. I don't think what I did is unethical or even against the spirit of their promo so I didn't bother to hide the connection back to my real gmail. Will google use this to ban my real google account one day? Probably not, but before this story I naively believed the answer was definitely no.

jakeogh 8y ago
They should offer it as a feature.
sdhgaiojfsa 8y ago
> It's insane . . . Yes. So insane one suspects it may not be true.
ucaetano 8y ago
> not even anything criminal or large scale Yeah, engaging in corporate piracy, just a minor violation.

eh78ssxv2f 8y ago

Wait, are we sure that this really happened? Seems very unlikely, and even the OP did not present any evidence. I would be really surprised if Google would be scanning emails, and using that to ban the gsuite account of the entire company. A red flag for me is the claim that Google also blocked accounts that were set for recovery which seems almost close to impossible (or insane).

pmlnr 8y ago
This is not the first case like this: https://plus.google.com/+RichWarren/posts/QkKTxAbKGdq https://plus.google.com/+RichWarren/posts/QkKTxAbKGdq
- falcon620 8y ago
  Personal gmail (which is used in your example) != gsuite (which is used in company settings)
- eh78ssxv2f 8y ago
  I think the post that you linked to describes a much simpler case: One Google account violated the policies and could land Google in bad water (privacy laws around children as well as COPPA), so they blocked access to that specific account. It can be argued that it is reasonable. It can also be argued that Google should put more engineering effort in collecting less information especially when account holder is minor. However, blocking access of other co-workers as well as blocking access to personal accounts (which are simply set as recovery accounts, and could as well be accounts of spouses/partners) because of some other account holder's mistake is completely different. So, I would argue that the incident described in Reddit is indeed the first case.
hutzlibu 8y ago
"A red flag for me is the claim that Google also blocked accounts that were set for recovery which seems almost close to impossible (or insane)." Why should that be impossible? They are clearly linked (you have to own to other account, to accept it beeing used as the recovery account of the first one). And the intention of google is probably to fight scammers etc. - and I can imagine it disrupts them a bit, if all associated accounts get banned. So I can imagine that it is a real case ... of collateral damage Edit: stating of how I see the situation from the perspective of google, does not mean I approve it, and neither collateral damage in general

jimrandomh 8y ago

I'd really like to hear Google's side of this story, since the story as-written doesn't seem plausible.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
Everybody wants to hear it, but Google can't tell it. One part of the fight with the bad guys is never to tell them how they got caught, so they never know how to protect themselves.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  There's a difference between telling someone what they did wrong and telling them how they got caught. The former should be a legal requirement. But I'm not sure what actually happened in this particular case. We don't even know if it concerns a G Suite account and what the company was or wasn't told about why they got banned.
  - gwerbret 8y ago
    Non-expert here, but I wonder if the obscurity actually points to an machine learning-based solution at Google's end. Let's say that Google has developed a deep learning paradigm to identify -- and ban -- low-value users who violate their ToS. The low-value group would probably include all non-paying users, as well as small G Suite accounts. Let's also say that the paradigm was deployed as an automated solution, since it was 99% accurate during testing at picking out ToS violators, though the exact percentage doesn't really matter. I would imagine that the relevant Google execs did a cost-benefit analysis, and figured that the PR hit and revenue loss associated with a liberal and fully automated use of the banhammer against all supposed ToS violators -- including the 1% that were false positives -- was justified by the benefits to Google's bottom line. Based on this possibility, it seems likely that Google employees would not _know_ why the banhammer fell in any particular instance -- nor would they care to know, since that would involve digging through the data to figure out which events triggered a positive hit in their machine learning implementation. It presumably wouldn't be worth Google's time and effort on behalf of users already classified as "low-value". This might also explain why, as mentioned in another post, it took a few days for the banhammer to fall on a start-up, after a dev with a "poisoned" Google account joined the team. Presumably it took those few days worth of traffic and usage data for ToS-Hammer(tm) to figure that the dev had spawned new accounts elsewhere. Again, I'm not an expert, so pardon any flaws in the relevant logic.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

Things like these can happen with any service provider. The key difference is that no other company has so many popular services linked together. Using Google this way basically means putting all one's eggs in one basket. We all know it's an unwise thing to do. An yet, people do it every day, for convenience. Personally, I set up separate Gmail accounts for their different services. First, I don't want them to profile me automatically (they do it through correlation anyway, but let's not make it too easy), and second, in situations like these, only some of the eggs are broken.

dgiol 8y ago
That's unlikely to work. You are still putting all your eggs in one basket. This seems to be a variation of the setup this company has/had. Unless you are using different browser profiles or installations, and IP addresses for each account every single time you use them, it's very easy for Google to see that requests are coming from the same computer. If you were shut down, they would be able to do it as in the example, all accounts closed at once.
- auslander 8y ago
  > different browser profiles or installations, and IP addresses for each account People underestimate power of IP tracking. Use VPN. Plus, a must, have uBlock Origin in medium blocking mode (3p-scripts and 3p-frames blocked). Today EVERY website makes several google*.com API calls.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  Well, it works somewhat. I keep my main email account separate from adwords, adsense, GA (although I now replaced it by Matomo, there is no reason whatsoever to use GA now), and Google Play. Ditto for their other services. I had a problem with one of the accounts a while ago - Google didn't "recognize the device" (this often happens as I have strict browser cleanup policies) and I lost access to the account because it was linked to a phone number I lost 10 years ago and forgot to change the number in the account settings. In this case, I lost access to just one account and I didn't care that much. If I used one account for everything I'd have gone mad.

auslander 8y ago

SkyNet, you signed up voluntarily. > and our boss is looking to migrate away from Google only if it is not too late. 'Don't be evil' was removed from the code of conduct's preface in 2018. I commented 2 days ago on other thread: Your kids share their assignments to it, your company uses it for all comms, you use it for private messages, you tell it your secret desires via searches, it knows who you're with at any point of time with android location ... Google Home? My home? SkyNet must be destroyed now.

raverbashing 8y ago
It's funny how GMaps is insisting to have me set a 'home and work' location as of lately. Thanks but no thanks. Of course they already might have an idea, but seems it's not enough for it to be certain.
- auslander 8y ago
  If it prompts you to set it, it means your browser is Already logged in in some tab (Auth cookie set). That is Bad idea. Login only when necessary and Always use private browser windows and tabs, it kills all sorts of cookies/storages.
jkaplowitz 8y ago
> only if it is not too late. 'Don't be evil' was removed from the code of conduct's preface in 2018. That is technically true but leaves the wrong impression. The code of conduct got reworded, leaving "Don't be evil" in a single prominent mention at the very end. "Removed" is only accurate for the preface; for the whole document, "deemphasized" is more correct (and that's only because many people don't read to the end where they'd now be left with "don't be evil" visible after doing so).
- auslander 8y ago
  Impression is still right. While your clarification is technically correct :D, I was talking about the Trend of moving it to less prominent places over time.

ssijak 8y ago

I got my google account banned several times. Several years ago I had my account payment features banned with no explanation. That in turn basically banned me from most of Google services because I could not pay for them or use them because payments were banned. No adwords, adsense, no google cloud services, no buying android apps, nothing... With no explanation, no support, and I tried hard just to find out what I did wrong. After that I come to terms that I have to leave my email that I used for like 10 years and make a new one. But, this time I first bought a domain name and then started paying for google apps. This way if they ban me for whatever reason I could at least take my email address to some other email provider. Anyhow, sometime later youtube enabled Adsense on videos for my country. I enabled it out of curiosity, just to see what is the process of doing and using it. I don`t have videos on my channel except one random from the gym that I uploaded 1-2 years ago. So, I just enabled adsense poked at that for 1 day and left it unused. Sometime after that I got an email that my adsense and adword account is banned for violating policy (not saying which one). No explanation why, nothing!!! I tried to get an explanation like REALLY hard, but could not. You are just stuck in an endless loop of robot answers, or not getting answers at all. They even have google forms for complaints which point me to some URL that I am banned from viewing, lol. And there is some other form that no one answers when you fill it and I filled it 10 times. Long story short, I slowly started migrating from Google services. This is really maddening and scary that they can just cut you off from your data without explanation. I use Google Photos heavily and even a possibility that they could cut me off from my photos at any time is sickening. That is why I bought NAS which backups my Google Photos to physical drives in my apartment. Now I just need to find something comparable to Google Photos and leave that service for good...

jarym 8y ago

Where to begin with this.. hmm.. First you: "I have a friend who creates Android apps on the side. I do something similar to this, but instead my apps revolve around cloning .apk files and restoring them". Why not be clear and just admit you're pirating software off an App Store? Ok, not the smartest activity in the world BUT did you have to do it at work? Then Google: "We were all freaking out, our IT guys were trying to get a hold of Google but couldn't get in touch with anyone." - So yea, unless you're one of Google's 'poster' customers, good luck trying to get help when something goes wrong! "Their policy is to not share any information about what caused this and they will not reverse these actions." - Yup, that's Google. Unless you're one of the customers on this list: https://gsuite.google.com/customers/ https://gsuite.google.com/customers/ you are totally screwed when something goes wrong. I introduce the world to the ToS-DoS Attack - only a matter of time before this now gets exploited: - Hack into a companies GSuite account and create a new account. - Use the new account to commit a range of ToS violations. - Wait for Google to suspend the entire GSuite account.

flukus 8y ago
I got the impression that step 1 isn't needed, it was more: 1. Create a google account and set your recovery email to the victims. 2. Use the new account to commit a range of ToS violations. 3. Wait for Google to suspend the entire GSuite account and every linked account. For step 1 I don't think there is (or at least wasn't) any validation, I found out a family member had me as their recovery address when they changed passwords.
- hknd 8y ago
  A "victim" would need to approve being used as a recovery account. (click link in mail etc.)
  - aritmo 8y ago
    No. Ironically, this is opt-out, not opt-in. That is, you (as recovery email holder) would need click the link ONLY if you want to unlink. The URL is in the footer of the email and it is easy to miss.

aogl 8y ago

This is when I really wish Amazon had a free email service to compete. Their customer service always rocks!

pdkl95 8y ago

When mission critical parts, tools, or infrastructure is moved to "the cloud" (aka computers owned by someone else that you do not control) - often replacing in-house tools with a SaaSS[1] - a second source[2] is rarely discussed as a requirement. The "cloud" doesn't magically solve path dependency. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source edit: my father once mentioned that when he was working at Honneywell in Minneapolis (making home automation in the 80s), some of the engineers frequented a local bar called literally "The Second Source". "Sorry boss, I'm busy this afternoon - I have a meeting at the second source!"

dbg31415 8y ago

Not the point of this post, but man... the new Reddit design is so bad. It's like someone new to HTML tried to re-create a Facebook page using a scan of a screenshot, and just changed it enough to try and say it wasn't a total knock off.

ktpsns 8y ago
It's just the layout of the particular subreddit. The overall reddit layout has not changed.
- jwilk 8y ago
  There is a new Reddit layout, but it's not enabled for everybody yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16741867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16741867
jwilk 8y ago
Use old.reddit.com instead of www.reddit.com to get the old layout. If you use HTTPS Everywhere, you can abuse it to make redirects like this automatic.
- RVuRnvbM2e 8y ago
  Firefox has this awesome plugin for exactly this purpose: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
CryoLogic 8y ago
In greasemonkey or tampermonkey: if (window.location.host.indexOf('old') === -1) { window.location.host = window.location.host.replace('www', 'old'); }

suhastech 8y ago

Similar thing happened to me. Google randomly disabled my account for no reason. There was absolutely no way to contact them. From that day onward, I do not trust Google or anyone to keep my data. At least, I got a small product out of the experience: https://thehorcrux.com/why-i-built-horcrux-app/ https://thehorcrux.com/why-i-built-horcrux-app/

megablast 8y ago

> As a joke, every time my friend releases an app (usually paid), I buy the app and clone it with my software, and then refund it. After that, I send him an e-mail with the cloned version through Gmail with something along the lines of: "Look at this cool app I found on the store, it was completely free! Try it out!", or stupid shit like that. It was a bit of a stupid inside joke that kind of stuck for a while and was only between us. This sounds so strange, and surely it wouldn't get you banned. Why would someone keep doing the same joke.

dmak 8y ago
Why not? You never had a family member or a friend who never lets you live down some silly thing that happened at a Christmas party?

dandare 8y ago

Stories like these document how immature Google is for the B2B market. No sane company can risk being obliterated by Google's bully ToS and ignorant support.

amelius 8y ago

Just call customer service ...

antocv 8y ago

Time to 1) grab/download the entire mailbox from Gmail 2) delete the mailbox at Gmail 3) export all gdrive data, use the export function 4) delete the gdrive data 5) register with fastmail, yandex or protonmail 6) start mailpile on your raspberry pi or similar 7) use mailpile as frontend for yandex/protonmail/other-imap account. 8) nextcloud as good enough but shitty replacement for gdrive Self-hosted ftw.

jorgemf 8y ago
yesterday was too late to make backups...
giancarlostoro 8y ago
I'm still surprised there's no better alternatives to Nextcloud out there yet.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  There are. I use Sandstorm.io and Cloudron is also out there. They're modern containerized platforms you can run any number of other open source web apps on.
  - gsich 8y ago
    But how is that an alternative to Nextcloud? An example for that would be Seafile.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      In Sandstorm.io's case, I use an app called Davros to store files (which is even compatible with some ownCloud sync clients, actually), and Cloudron.io has a few other options you can use to work with your files, including, actually just hosting Nextcloud or ownCloud on it. Where these sorts of platforms really excel is in the realm of other features, which Nextcloud tacks onto the existing platform, but a larger app platform can allow you to use a variety of alternatives which are more tailor-made to other specific types of web apps.

xugo 8y ago

Not up to date on Google Play developer terms but doesn't a customer requesting a refund makes the developer still liable for Google fees ? If so that's a very shitty thing to do to your friend.

yladiz 8y ago

To me, what's telling about this is not that it may or may not have happened, but that people could believe it happened (even through a skeptical lens), and that some people believe that this sort of thing wouldn't happen if you had Microsoft or Amazon accounts, at least not in the same way.

Spearchucker 8y ago

Using a service that can be withdrawn at random without recourse is irresponsible. Whoever makes a decision like that needs a lesson in risk management. Blows my mind.

telltruth 8y ago

OP said you can log in to banned accounts but can't do anything. I would expect an email from Google that tells me why account got banned and whom to contact. If they are not doing that then that's pretty dumb.

Nebasuke 8y ago

Re-reading the story, it seems to me they had a manual solution, linking personally made Google email accounts to serve as a corporate email (rather than using GSuite), which is probably why all the accounts were seen by the automated banning system as all owned by the reddit OP. If they actually got GSuite they might have had a semblance of support. Still a crap response from Google as usual.

Yizahi 8y ago

It not exactly new that Google has zero customer support and not the first (and for sure not the last) horror story about automatic bans on Google services. If anyone treats Google accounts in any way as permanent or reliable - "this" may happen to you too. It may even happen will no fault at all from your side - e.g. someone would have a linked youtube account and bigcorp will take it down for a copyright on a white noise video and then whole linked account structure will crumple down like house of cards. Or any of the thousands alternative reasons.

sharecropper 8y ago
I grew my vegetables on a neighbours allotment, he even lent me tools to make the process easier. After a while, out families crops were solely grown there. One day, we were kicked off the allotment, out access to the crops gone in an instant. I tried to remonstrate, but just got a waving hand in the face. I am hoping if I publicise it enough in the local gardening forums, the allotment owner might feel a slight bit of pressure to act in this case, but apparently others who used his land didn't dare so well without someone trumpeting their case. If only we had maintained the knowledge how to tend our own garden.
josefresco 8y ago
"It not exactly new that Google has zero customer support" It's also not true. Maybe for "free" services but paid G Suite accounts have telephone, live chat and email support. I've used it frequently.
stordoff 8y ago
I pay for a single user account, and have received good customer support relating to some DKIM issues (including multiple follow-ups months later when a related issue was fixed, without my prompting). Characterising that as "zero customer support" is unfair.

jk2323 8y ago

"some of their personal e-mails are also blocked as well. " Never, never ever use a gmail account for anything important. I learned it the hard way and once nearly lost a domain because of this. gandi.net offers domains with free IMAP email service infomaniak.com is also good for email. Switzerland based. " our IT guys were trying to get a hold of Google but couldn't get in touch with anyone." ROTFL.

znpy 8y ago

I wonder what would have happened if that guy's company also used Google Cloud (as in "Google Cloud Platform"). Would have google ketp all of their data and services hostage? This is freaking scary. Just one rogue employee and everything goes down.

dis-sys 8y ago

He didn't do anything wrong and the way and excuses how Google refuses to provide any support for their paying customers is just not acceptable. It is pretty clear that Google refuses to provide any support to actually minimize its own costs, it is so obvious.

jk2323 8y ago

By the way, the day I went off gmail, I used a script like this to download all my emails: http://taoofmac.com/space/projects/imapbackup http://taoofmac.com/space/projects/imapbackup

duiker101 8y ago
Pretty sure there's an option in the Google settings to download all your data from any of their services
- sschueller 8y ago
  Yes, but you can use this script to make a continuous backup so you can keep using google but have your data when they decide to shut you off.
josefresco 8y ago
We use Thunderbird Portable.

mark_l_watson 8y ago

This is a potential problem for medium size businesses. Very large companies that use Google Office products have dedicated support people at Google. This also doesn’t have to be a problem for individuals. I often use gmail, but only by forwarding my fastmail to it. I can stop using gmail at anytime (which I do often when not travelling and don’t need the extra services). I also back up my Google data periodically, so the only absolute loss for getting locked out of my account would be the digital content purchased at Google Play. But, for small and medium businesses, beware.

gsich 8y ago

This is why you self-host as much as possible.

reza_n 8y ago

I pay $5 a month for a custom domain gmail account and last year I had an issue connecting to their POP3 service. Opened a support ticket and got extremely high quality support immediately. Basically, my experience was the opposite of all the horror stories which always get echoed in these support threads.

pdkl95 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

tjpnz 8y ago

If this was indeed GSuite then it really seems like a lawsuit in the making. It wouldn't be hard for a judge to nullify Google's TOS either as they quite often include terms that are illegal in some jurisdictions. Will definitely be sharing this story with our team in the morning.

josefresco 8y ago

I don't buy the "we couldn't get a hold of Google" claim. I contact Google via telephone, chat and email all the time for clients - never had a problem making contact or having my issue resolved. Odd.

billyjoejoe212 8y ago
It seems the problem was, they were banned, so Google no longer considered them a customer. Which is a Kafkaesque nightmare scenario. But the thread (on reddit) was locked and the guy hasn't updated since yesterday. None of the people involved with Google (one guy at reddit said he worked with the GSuite team and would look into it, some guy on here said he was with Google services and is looking into it, etc.) will update out of the risk of losing their jobs. So I'm afraid the only hope we have for an update is if the original guy comes out and gives a play-by-play after this is resolved.

crazygringo 8y ago

None of this makes any sense, I simply don't believe it. G Suite for Business is an enterprise product costing $5-25/user/month with 24x7 phone support, escalation paths, contractual SLA's, etc. It competes heavily and directly with Microsoft. A company doesn't get "banned". This smells like black PR to me... playing on Google's lack of support/transparency around free consumer accounts and trying to get people to associate it with their Enterprise division. I mean come on, just the way it's written: "One of the girls at work was fucking bawling her eyes out since she couldn't access her e-mail either." and the final "I do not know why Google has a scorched-earth policy when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I fucked up and our boss is looking to migrate away from Google even though we just recently signed on not too long ago." It just feels too obvious. (Also, G Suite for Business accounts don't have recovery e-mails -- your admin takes care of your account -- so the supposed personal bans sound made-up too. EDIT thanks to ballenf below -- by default users can't set recovery e-mails, but a G Suite admin can enable that option for their domain.)

ptero 8y ago
I suspect the company was using the free consumer version. That comes with little escalation, etc. They probably should have used something different for business email for a company with 100+ people, but this is not the point. The valid point, if true, is that an action of one individual caused a major disruption for a lot of other people that are connected to him only via google algorithms or some other vague means. Banning non-violating business accounts from the business that breaks ToS is kind-of OK (but should be followed by a human interaction to check); banning personal accounts for folks because of their business ties is not. My 2c.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  The free edition was discontinued in 12/6/2012 and only supported 10 users. The new lowest tier, G Suite Basic, has 24/7 phone support.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    When Google bans your account, you no longer have 24/7 phone support.

tehwebguy 8y ago

Google’s “customer service” policies have always been trash. IMO it’s a part of the culture there that will never change. Good reminder to switch as many services as possible from Google before something irreversible happens to our entire company and all of our personal email accounts / domains.

phendrenad2 8y ago

> our IT guys were trying to get a hold of Google but couldn't get in touch with anyone. Try your legal team, if your badly-run company has one (I am not a lawyer). lol

kelvin0 8y ago

I've posted many times on HN an anecdote of mine regarding using Google (paid) services. Basically got my ex-employer (30 people) company on board to using google docs accounts to share documents. Since this is a corporation we decided to go with the 50$/user/year, which we duly paid each year. Things went swimmingly well, until a user reported seeing an error message, and then not being able to access the document at all. Escalation was a joke, and after a whole week of not having access to the critical google spreadsheet, Google was still fumbling around. Finally we got the document back, because one of the employees had kept the email containing the URL of the document (sent out when a document is shared with a group of people). If it wasn't for that old email kept by an employee, we'd probably never would have 'found' the document again. Google's support was at best incompetent. Beware dancing with the Dragon that is Google! Backup your files, keep important document URLS! Hope this helps a poor soul somewhere.

dmak 8y ago
Why couldn't you just search drive? It's not that big of an organization.
- kelvin0 8y ago
  Just to be clear, ALL our documents were wiped out from view. We could not search anything.
  - crazygringo 8y ago
    Your original comment said it was one file, and finding the original URL found it. (Also BTW, everyone who is shared on the file can look in "Shared With Me" in Drive, no need to hunt for e-mails.) Now you're saying that your entire organization's files were all gone from Drive, in other words total and complete organization-wide data loss, and that Google wouldn't help you...? And yet finding one URL fixed all that again...?
    - kelvin0 8y ago
      We only had 3-5 documents online. 1 of those documents was a spreadsheet VERY important spreadsheet. All documents disappeared after the reported error occurred. Google wanted the document URLs to retrieve the 'lost' documents. We only were able to get a hold of 1 URL for the critical shared spreadsheet, which was finally recovered. All other documents were lost, but luckily they were not critical. But we still lost them. Hope this clarifies?

dmak 8y ago

I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned/promoted a product for decentralizing GSuite.

organicmultiloc 8y ago

I love how the default way to get an actual human to respond to a real problem at google is now: 1. Be famous 2. Make a stink on social media I feel like I'm back in high school.

imleft 8y ago

Google was recently asked to mandate diversity and equal pay. The mgt of Google is against it: https://i.redd.it/htqi8nuk6xx01.jpg https://i.redd.it/htqi8nuk6xx01.jpg

lgregg 8y ago

So, what are the best alternatives? I know about MS office and I think Zoho has email, who else is out there?

GFischer 8y ago
I'm using Zoho and have a good experience so far, they had some issues in the past but at least my experience with support is good. When I looked into it, there weren't many appealing options. I wanted to use Yahoo but they had just spun out and wasn't too friendly. I couldn't get a Microsoft platform for e-mail without them bundling Office365 and other stuff I didn't want, if not I'd have gone with them.
- lgregg 8y ago
  What types of issues did you encounter?
  - GFischer 8y ago
    In particular, I remember an outage a year ago that was very ill-timed for me (as we were hyping our project) and they were a little slow to respond, it was literally a perfect storm as their offices in Chennai were hit by a Cyclone: https://www.zoho.com/service-updates/blog/zoho-customer-support-is-slow.html https://www.zoho.com/service-updates/blog/zoho-customer-supp... they have also had more outages than GMail (but OTOH they have way better customer support, I was even reached by the CEO once!). Outages list: https://twitter.com/nehemiahman/status/921378260583362560 https://twitter.com/nehemiahman/status/921378260583362560 I still think it's the best available option.
flukus 8y ago
If you think switching to other cloud solutions is the answer here then I think you missed the problem. The core problem with any of these services is that you no longer have control over your data.
- lgregg 8y ago

alexdiacre 8y ago

Greetings. This is Alex Diacre here from G Suite Support. This has been flagged for my team and we’re looking into it. If anyone G Suite customer has trouble accessing their account they can always contact Google Cloud Support here: https://support.google.com/a/contact/admin_no_access https://support.google.com/a/contact/admin_no_access (this is a special form to use when you cannot access)

danirod 8y ago
Once again, it seems the only way to reach actual human support on the Google ecosystem is by having a "locked out of my account" thread trending on some social network. It simply blows my mind that one of the most powerful tech companies in the world is still doing these mistakes. Not even the G Suite tier, which I would assume it's a more professional tier than the free one. (Disclaimer: I'm assuming this Reddit post is true, which may or may not be the case here.)
- alexdiacre 8y ago
  Hi danirod For G Suite Basic, Business and Enterprise customers we provide 24 x 7 support via chat, phone and email.
  - flukus 8y ago
    Does this extend to customers who have had their account suspended?
    - alexdiacre 8y ago
      Hi flukus Yes - you can create a case at https://support.google.com/a/contact/admin_no_access https://support.google.com/a/contact/admin_no_access
profmonocle 8y ago
Hi Alex, is there a chance we could get some follow-up on this? I manage the G Suite account at my company, and the idea that an irresponsible or disgruntled employee could take down our whole account is very worrying. (Especially since our G Suite accounts are tied to our GCP account.) Assuming the story isn't simply made up, I'd rest easier knowing whatever caused the problem (both the initial mass banning and Google's unwillingness to help) has been fixed.

pvtmert 8y ago

IMHO testing payment works and getting apk then sending it to owner (proving its working) is pretty ok situation. of coursw you will request refund... given these days deployment stuff can get infected easily (remember a framework contained malware in many apps in appstore) there is services providing testflights for such stuff, but if npm/yarn/pypi/insert pkg manager here loads infected package, you're done

mito88 8y ago

Why the toilet scene? :)

Fanmade 8y ago

I made a similar experience with Google, just on a way smaller scale. I still use their service on a very small scale, but I would newer use them for a larger scale. While their services are mostly very convenient to use, some of their rules are ridiculous and even if you make a small mistake, they will ban you for lifetime. One example I have is when we built a little website for a school project. It was an obvious fake site about smart homes by a company that was basically developing the terminator. I included a Google ad on the site just to make it look more realistic. When it showed ads for robotics (which I'm very interested in) I clicked on it and so did my classmates. We suddenly had about three Euros in ad-revenue, when I got banned by AdWords (or AdSense, I always confuse one with the other). I wrote an email apologizing and explaining everything and thought they would just reset the account to zero, but nope. I now have a lifetime ban from any Google Ads service. I even asked again several years later when I've had a bigger site that I wanted to put some ads on, but apparently my actions where so incredibly evil, that I will never be able to use those services ever again (if I don't create a new Gmail account that is). That doesn't keep them from sending me vouchers and ads to use those services, of course. Well, good thing there are a lot of alternatives which I am happily using without any incident and I learned my lesson soon enough.

miaklesp 8y ago

FastMail for mail Office 365 for office Don't use Google, diversify with better products in each category.

Rainymood 8y ago

The fact that this is/was upvoted so highly shows how deeply ingrained the "believe first, fact check later" mentality is in humans when the piece in question aligns with our personal worldview. This is exactly how fake news spreads.