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And there is almost no way to talk to a human and get access back. I like Google's services, but I think their ability to deny service with no recourse is shame

by eloff 7y ago

And there is almost no way to talk to a human and get access back. I like Google's services, but I think their ability to deny service with no recourse is shameful. If I lost my gmail account with my last fifteen years of emails, linked to ask my other online accounts, plus all my documents and all my photos in drive, I'd be totally lost.

izzydata 7y ago
Perhaps it is time to export all your emails and start forwarding any new emails to a backup email service. As well as backup any documents regularly to another service or personal drive. As far as opening a google checking account goes I think I will be avoiding that one. Diversifying my critical online services might in some sense be a higher security risk, but safer from it all being wiped out in one go.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Agreed... been giving more and more time for thought on how I want to handle this myself.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    I've already setup a domain in front of Protonmail so I have email under my control. My next step is to use an email client to fetch all my emails under IMAP so I have them outside of any cloud service.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    Fastmail's import tool worked well for me and I have a big archive.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  I'm working on this right now. Google's level of control over my ability to communicate online is really scary. If I lost my gmail account because of a perceived TOS violation I would lose access to many of my accounts, and have to go through a huge inconvenience of going to physical stores, calling during business hours and submitting ID, etc. to reset passwords. If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta.
  - xvector 7y ago
    > If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta. 100% agreed. It was cool at the time. Now Google has so fundamentally changed and I don’t trust them with my data anymore, but it is a Herculean task to move everything off Gmail. Literally hundreds of accounts are bound to my Gmail.
crb002 7y ago
I’d sue them next day in State court for interference with my business contracts. Having a billion dollar data center in Iowa the judge has a lot of leverage.
- eloff 7y ago
  I don't think it would fly. Google would just argue you agreed to that in the terms of service. Plus it would be slower and more expensive than just getting Google to reinstate your access, even if you had to fly there in person to beg them.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    > Google would just argue you agreed to that in the terms of service. and any judge can tear that to shreds if they are sympathetic to the implementation
  - skyyler 7y ago
    Any idea where I should go to do that? I've been unable to access my google account for over two years. Their automated processes are never able to confirm my identity, and any humans I do manage to communicate with tell me to use the automated systems. I don't even care about my dignity any more, I'll beg for it back in person.
- daphneokeefe 7y ago
  But wouldn't they just delay the process, appealing forever?
  - jfoster 7y ago
    Wouldn't they just take a look at your account before deciding on their court battle strategy?
- LegitShady 7y ago
  And years later in court you might get access maybe not. Or just go with an email provider that isn't auditing your behaviour
craftkiller 7y ago
At the very least, you should be running isync[1] to keep a local copy of your emails. Losing access to future emails would still be devastating though. [1] http://isync.sourceforge.net/ http://isync.sourceforge.net/
KorematsuFred 7y ago
It is a bad idea to use vanilla gmail account for critical purposes. I highly recommend coughing up some money and getting a gsuite account. Once you do that all these problems disappear. You also get support and the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user.
- joecool1029 7y ago
  > You also get support No, outsourced call center with no escalation path doesn't qualify as support for anything but the most basic issues. Google 'support' means bitching on HN, getting upvoted, and having an engineer take notice and actually poke at it. > the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user. No, it signals that you are reliant on them. This means they can treat you as a second-class citizen from the free users! This recent issue happened to one of my clients (not anyone in this thread), https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en . Note, paid users can't request a free Google Voice account, have to pay for the same thing on Cloud Voice now. We had similar issues in the past where we couldn't delegate users from a Google Business panel inside our G Suite domain, we had to maintain personal GMail accounts to add business managers. I've been a reseller of this shit, deeply regret it. When it works for our clients, it works fine. When it doesn't, we're just as screwed with getting support as anyone else. I switched my primary accounts to Fastmail and O365, and haven't looked back.
  - jdgoesmarching 7y ago
    As a Gsuite user for 4-5 years, it's funny when I run up against Google services that work for free personal accounts but not my paid account. I've been meaning to migrate to Exchange/o365, it's in my backlog of projects that I'm procrastinating.
    - benhurmarcel 7y ago
      G Suite is now clearly oriented to companies, and the differences in tools compared to free accounts make sense in that context. Google cannot deploy to corporate customers tools that are not properly tested yet, and that they cannot guarantee will be supported for a long time. They use free users as beta testers and to see if ideas stick. They can't deploy those to actual customers.
djsumdog 7y ago
I am so glad I transitioned from Google services in 2012 (mostly spurred on by the domestic spying stuff). I did a dump of all my Gmail account and could not be happier (Gmail's IMAP implementation is hopelessly broken rubbish). I used Dropbox and now MEGA to sync photos off my phone, but I copy all that stuff to my NAS and backups. I use Drive for some things, but I wouldn't be screwed if it went away. I disable almost all the major Google apps on my Android phone and hope to switch out to Lineage + miniG soon. I use a self hosted TTRss currently (Google Reader was garbage and it dying was really good as I realized what good RSS readers were actually like). I need to set a reminder to do more regular Facebook exports/backups. No one should be in the situation where a single provider killing your access means you loose a huge chunk of your content. Self hosting has its own problems and yes, a lot of people don't have the knowledge/means/time to do it, but man I'm glad I made it a priority. My phone number is still on Goolge Hangouts. I need to find a better solution for that as well.
- ahsteele 7y ago
  What RSS reader are you using?
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    They said TTRSS, that’s this one: https://tt-rss.org/ https://tt-rss.org/ I use it myself :)
- jeanofthedead 7y ago
  Not Google Voice?
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Nope, still Hangouts. I'm so confused on the difference and their offerings now that I will probably avoid changing it until I can port my number off of it entirely.
mehdix 7y ago
Syncthing and DecSync have helped me a lot in this regard.
ratsmack 7y ago
I keep no email on Google. I have a Linux box that pulls down all email, for all my families email accounts, and stores it locally. Then we use Thunderbird and access it via IMAP. It is then easy to back it up with everything else onto external drives and my Backblaze account. With what is going on with big internet players censoring and deplatforming people, why would one trust these people with your money.

by eloff 7y ago

izzydata 7y ago

Perhaps it is time to export all your emails and start forwarding any new emails to a backup email service. As well as backup any documents regularly to another service or personal drive. As far as opening a google checking account goes I think I will be avoiding that one. Diversifying my critical online services might in some sense be a higher security risk, but safer from it all being wiped out in one go.

tracker1 7y ago
Agreed... been giving more and more time for thought on how I want to handle this myself.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  I've already setup a domain in front of Protonmail so I have email under my control. My next step is to use an email client to fetch all my emails under IMAP so I have them outside of any cloud service.
- bad_user 7y ago
  Fastmail's import tool worked well for me and I have a big archive.
jschwartzi 7y ago
I'm working on this right now. Google's level of control over my ability to communicate online is really scary. If I lost my gmail account because of a perceived TOS violation I would lose access to many of my accounts, and have to go through a huge inconvenience of going to physical stores, calling during business hours and submitting ID, etc. to reset passwords. If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta.
- xvector 7y ago
  > If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta. 100% agreed. It was cool at the time. Now Google has so fundamentally changed and I don’t trust them with my data anymore, but it is a Herculean task to move everything off Gmail. Literally hundreds of accounts are bound to my Gmail.

crb002 7y ago

I’d sue them next day in State court for interference with my business contracts. Having a billion dollar data center in Iowa the judge has a lot of leverage.

eloff 7y ago
I don't think it would fly. Google would just argue you agreed to that in the terms of service. Plus it would be slower and more expensive than just getting Google to reinstate your access, even if you had to fly there in person to beg them.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  > Google would just argue you agreed to that in the terms of service. and any judge can tear that to shreds if they are sympathetic to the implementation
- skyyler 7y ago
  Any idea where I should go to do that? I've been unable to access my google account for over two years. Their automated processes are never able to confirm my identity, and any humans I do manage to communicate with tell me to use the automated systems. I don't even care about my dignity any more, I'll beg for it back in person.
daphneokeefe 7y ago
But wouldn't they just delay the process, appealing forever?
- jfoster 7y ago
  Wouldn't they just take a look at your account before deciding on their court battle strategy?
LegitShady 7y ago
And years later in court you might get access maybe not. Or just go with an email provider that isn't auditing your behaviour

craftkiller 7y ago

At the very least, you should be running isync[1] to keep a local copy of your emails. Losing access to future emails would still be devastating though. [1] http://isync.sourceforge.net/ http://isync.sourceforge.net/

KorematsuFred 7y ago

It is a bad idea to use vanilla gmail account for critical purposes. I highly recommend coughing up some money and getting a gsuite account. Once you do that all these problems disappear. You also get support and the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user.

joecool1029 7y ago
> You also get support No, outsourced call center with no escalation path doesn't qualify as support for anything but the most basic issues. Google 'support' means bitching on HN, getting upvoted, and having an engineer take notice and actually poke at it. > the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user. No, it signals that you are reliant on them. This means they can treat you as a second-class citizen from the free users! This recent issue happened to one of my clients (not anyone in this thread), https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en . Note, paid users can't request a free Google Voice account, have to pay for the same thing on Cloud Voice now. We had similar issues in the past where we couldn't delegate users from a Google Business panel inside our G Suite domain, we had to maintain personal GMail accounts to add business managers. I've been a reseller of this shit, deeply regret it. When it works for our clients, it works fine. When it doesn't, we're just as screwed with getting support as anyone else. I switched my primary accounts to Fastmail and O365, and haven't looked back.
- jdgoesmarching 7y ago
  As a Gsuite user for 4-5 years, it's funny when I run up against Google services that work for free personal accounts but not my paid account. I've been meaning to migrate to Exchange/o365, it's in my backlog of projects that I'm procrastinating.
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    G Suite is now clearly oriented to companies, and the differences in tools compared to free accounts make sense in that context. Google cannot deploy to corporate customers tools that are not properly tested yet, and that they cannot guarantee will be supported for a long time. They use free users as beta testers and to see if ideas stick. They can't deploy those to actual customers.

djsumdog 7y ago

I am so glad I transitioned from Google services in 2012 (mostly spurred on by the domestic spying stuff). I did a dump of all my Gmail account and could not be happier (Gmail's IMAP implementation is hopelessly broken rubbish). I used Dropbox and now MEGA to sync photos off my phone, but I copy all that stuff to my NAS and backups. I use Drive for some things, but I wouldn't be screwed if it went away. I disable almost all the major Google apps on my Android phone and hope to switch out to Lineage + miniG soon. I use a self hosted TTRss currently (Google Reader was garbage and it dying was really good as I realized what good RSS readers were actually like). I need to set a reminder to do more regular Facebook exports/backups. No one should be in the situation where a single provider killing your access means you loose a huge chunk of your content. Self hosting has its own problems and yes, a lot of people don't have the knowledge/means/time to do it, but man I'm glad I made it a priority. My phone number is still on Goolge Hangouts. I need to find a better solution for that as well.

ahsteele 7y ago
What RSS reader are you using?
- Semaphor 7y ago
  They said TTRSS, that’s this one: https://tt-rss.org/ https://tt-rss.org/ I use it myself :)
jeanofthedead 7y ago
Not Google Voice?
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Nope, still Hangouts. I'm so confused on the difference and their offerings now that I will probably avoid changing it until I can port my number off of it entirely.

mehdix 7y ago

Syncthing and DecSync have helped me a lot in this regard.

ratsmack 7y ago

I keep no email on Google. I have a Linux box that pulls down all email, for all my families email accounts, and stores it locally. Then we use Thunderbird and access it via IMAP. It is then easy to back it up with everything else onto external drives and my Backblaze account. With what is going on with big internet players censoring and deplatforming people, why would one trust these people with your money.