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Has anyone else had experience with getting their Google account suspended? I literally use it for everything in my life, and without it I would probably lose a

by Mistri 7y ago

Has anyone else had experience with getting their Google account suspended? I literally use it for everything in my life, and without it I would probably lose access to a lot. I would change away from Google in a heartbeat but it just seems like too much effort if I can avoid getting my account suspended in the first place. If anyone has gotten their account suspended, what was it for and how can I avoid it?

dredmorbius 7y ago
Several times, several different accounts. Fortunately Google is (or more accurately, was) simply a convenience for me. I have not yet fully deactivated the several Gmail accounts I have still standing, though those are largely inactive, and most are strictly associated with specific nyms I'd created (one notably after a primary nym account was suspended). The best way to avoid having your Google account be suspended is to not have one. But moving to self-hosting, or increasingly, entirely offline, has been a goal and project of the past few years. I touch a few Google services directly: - Google Scholar: still amongst the best academic search engines I'm aware of. - Google Ngram Viewer and Google Trends: quite useful for tracking concepts over time. - Google Maps: There are times OpenStreetMap's search simply falls down even when specifying lat/lon coordinates directly, Because Reasons. Google Maps is my fallback, but I still rely on it far more than I'd care to. - Gmail: Secondary for several accounts. - YouTube: still the largest online video hosting service, though alternative interfaces (https://invidio.us/ https://invidio.us/) and alternate hosts (both centralised and federated or self-hosted) are increasingly viable. YouTube's UI tweaks and aggressive pre-roll ads over the past several months have been aggressively user-unfriendly. - Google Web Search. A very distant second to DuckDuckGo, but still necessary for 1) date-bounded search, 2) getting overall counts of results (occasionally useful), and 3) rare edge-cases where DDG doesn't turn up expected/desired results (GWS is ~50% successful here). I don't know if it's because I rely so heavily on DDG that I'm influencing its results, but I find that both searches and content that I've posted tends to turn up high-ranked on it. I'm not as aware of this with Google.
- rapnie 7y ago
  I like to self-host too, and there is a huge amount of awesome selfhosted [0] software to be had. Only problem is, you have to be willing to become a moderately good sysadmin and spend your time doing the chores to keep your systems up-to-date. This takes considerable amount of time. Dropping the ball once, and you may find yourself hacked (I had this recently when being slow in updating a nginx reverse proxy). [0] https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Self-hosting applies more to data. If I've got the bits, I can deploy them (or channel them) elsewhere. If I don't, I'm SOL. Self-hosted services -- Web, Mail, messaging, etc., -- remains more complicated. I really wish it weren't, I've been watching projects for a decade and more now to make it less so. I'm thinking that this won't happen. Simply based on skills distribution, some sort of federation or clustering at the level of 1 admin per 100 - 100k users is probably necessary. That's a scope at which regional or interest-based community hosting becomes viable. At the same time, it means thousands to millions of individual service providers, a scope at which at least some mechansisms of mass surveillance (state, capitalist, non-state actor, criminal) become less viable. Concentration is its own risk.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Can you reply as to the reason you had so many accounts flagged and disabled?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    2-3 instances over ~10 years. Access via Tor, new devices, and travel, generally. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2w618r/how_to_kill_your_google_account_access_it_via_tor/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2w618r/how_to_... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9060922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9060922) https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3mo7l6/that_google_identity_thing_again_who_are_you_is/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3mo7l6/that_go... This is a Hard Problem: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7qya12/information_security_peps_podesta_who_are_you/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7qya12/informa...
coffeefirst 7y ago
No, but I'm definitely paranoid about it. The difference is if any other service I rely on this heavily had a major issue, I could hop on the phone and get it fixed in a day. Google doesn't do customer support, which is fine for maps or search where I can just hop and nothing matters, but I'm starting to think it's too big of a risk for my primary email/calendar/contacts.
beowulfey 7y ago
Most times people get suspended for doing things that unsurprisingly go against the ToS. If you’re not developing software with googles API or anything a normal, everyday user doesn’t do you are probably fine. Of course it can still happen by random chance thanks to their algorithm going screwy but it’s not likely and if you’re still concerned Id consider at least starting the process.
- Simon_says 7y ago
  Or you just spam emojis in a YouTube chat because the host requested it.
- Mistri 7y ago
  I have an IoT device that pings the YouTube API every few days using my personal Google account API key, should I be concerned?
  - spc476 7y ago
    A snarky answer is "yes." A less snarky answer is "is the IoT device made by Google or has a Google license?" If yes, then "probably no," otherwise "yes." I have a theory as to why Google is so tight lipped about how their service works (and what actions will get you kicked off)---it's that Google employees have no idea. Google is so invested in AI and machine learning, that I suspect that their automated systems are as inscrutable to them as they are to us, but admitting such wouldn't look that great.
judge2020 7y ago
The ones I know of are: - saying you're under 13 on YouTube (probably elsewhere as well) - TOS violations that malware performed using your account (eg. using your google session to share malware using drive) - Using drive to share or store copyrighted content - spam, eg via gmail
- wolco 7y ago
  The one that caught a few was the not using real name on google+ ban.
- thebruce87m 7y ago
  Storing copyrighted material on drive? Seriously?
newscracker 7y ago
I've never had any of my Google accounts (none of which I use much any longer) suspended, but I'm guessing that if you add a phone number to your account and verify it, then the automatic algorithms that look for suspicious activity (or inactivity) may be a little more forgiving. If Google is truly critical for you, I'd suggest buying GSuite and becoming a paid customer.
achillesheels 7y ago
I had an account suspended that was linked to a YouTube account videoing marijuana cannabis dispensaries. April 2018 the site shut down non-Vice media cannabis content and suspended the Gmail account. It made it apparent how central my most sensitive email archive was housed on such a flimsy foundation.
gordon_freeman 7y ago
Along with the risk of account suspension, there is always a risk (although of a lesser degree) of Google killing a product that we rely on a daily basis. As much crazy as it sounds but what's the guarantee that one day Google won't kill Gmail, especially when considering the history Google has killing much-loved products like Google Reader?
Havoc 7y ago
>Has anyone else had experience with getting their Google account suspended? No but this is why I opted for own domain + paid g-suite. Just so that I can take my toys elsewhere if needed
- Mistri 7y ago
  Are you immune to the TOS if you're paying for G Suite?
  - Brian_K_White 7y ago
    "so I can take my toys elsewhere" You are immune in the sense that G can only kill the services and hosting, and your access to G's copy of any content. But the domain is still yours and your email is not @gmail even if it's hosted on gmail servers. So when G kills your account, it's only the hosting. You can switch your domain to any other hosting povider including self hosting, and all your old urls and email addresses resume working. It would still be up to you to maintain your own off-G backups of any content. Saved emails, website, gdrive, docs, photos. When the account dies you may lose access to G's copy of everything, so ensure all they ever have is a copy. Also probably don't use G for domain registrar. Even using them for dns host is ok, just not actual registrar. Might make for a crappy day if you have to do all that switching, but you can, and that is enough to provide the safety net against the small chance that you will ever need to. But if your email is actually @gmail, and that is say the "prove you own this account at life-savings-robo-advisor" email, then you are truly boned, and small risk is infinitely too-large risk.
    - Havoc 7y ago
      Exactly that. Thanks for writing that up. ...one big gotcha is gdrive, docs and GCP. Haven't worked out what to do about those yet, but priority is being able to salvage the email addr since everything is linked to it
Aeolun 7y ago
Good question, but I don’t think anyone knows since Google likely suspends the account without giving a reason. Since there is no recourse, it’s also hard to get clarification.
2ion 7y ago
> If anyone has gotten their account suspended, what was it for and how can I avoid it? For logging in from the wrong location (or network?). Most of the times you just get an email about log in attempts. This was for logging in from JP while usually logging in from DE/EU. How can you avoid it? Using a private VPN I suppose when using Google (avoid cloud IP address blocks though, else you'll get captcha hell).
toper-centage 7y ago
You can get suspended if you make an inappropriate comment on YouTube 8 years ago and it only gets flagged today. Also if someone from your IP does something that flags their account, you can get affected too. The main point is that Google never tells you exactly why you're being suspended because they don't want people figuring out the reasons and working around them.
dkersten 7y ago
Switching away from gmail was something I put off for years for the same reason as you but was ultimately painless and easy. Start off by forwarding your gmail to your new address and moving incrementally. Start by only replying from your new email and only giving out your new email. Then start switching automated emails (newsletters, mailing lists etc) over as you receive a forwarded email. I still have a google account but I don’t use it. Haven’t logged into google docs and such in years and while I still get the occasional gmail mail forwarded it’s typically spam (usually people who got my gmail address mistaken for mine).
fluffything 7y ago
I was suspended from using Google search last year for 48 hours. All because my query used the advanced search features that Google themselves document - like, I was just reading the Google docs, tried one query and boom "you have been blocked from Google search". I was 1 full day without Google search. I could not search for anything anywhere, not my phone, my laptop, nothing. That night I switched to DuckDuckGo. Two days later, I was unblocked from Google search and use it again. That was the moment where I started migrating all my services from google into independent providers. What if, instead of blocking my use of Google search, they block my GMail ? Calendar ? Google Home ? Android phone?.... I end up out of my house, without the ability to go in, without the ability to search for how to fix it, or to call somebody or message somebody with my home for help, maybe logged out of my car, etc. etc. etc. For me, avoiding such risks is more valuable than having a better search experience.

by Mistri 7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago

Several times, several different accounts. Fortunately Google is (or more accurately, was) simply a convenience for me. I have not yet fully deactivated the several Gmail accounts I have still standing, though those are largely inactive, and most are strictly associated with specific nyms I'd created (one notably after a primary nym account was suspended). The best way to avoid having your Google account be suspended is to not have one. But moving to self-hosting, or increasingly, entirely offline, has been a goal and project of the past few years. I touch a few Google services directly: - Google Scholar: still amongst the best academic search engines I'm aware of. - Google Ngram Viewer and Google Trends: quite useful for tracking concepts over time. - Google Maps: There are times OpenStreetMap's search simply falls down even when specifying lat/lon coordinates directly, Because Reasons. Google Maps is my fallback, but I still rely on it far more than I'd care to. - Gmail: Secondary for several accounts. - YouTube: still the largest online video hosting service, though alternative interfaces (https://invidio.us/ https://invidio.us/) and alternate hosts (both centralised and federated or self-hosted) are increasingly viable. YouTube's UI tweaks and aggressive pre-roll ads over the past several months have been aggressively user-unfriendly. - Google Web Search. A very distant second to DuckDuckGo, but still necessary for 1) date-bounded search, 2) getting overall counts of results (occasionally useful), and 3) rare edge-cases where DDG doesn't turn up expected/desired results (GWS is ~50% successful here). I don't know if it's because I rely so heavily on DDG that I'm influencing its results, but I find that both searches and content that I've posted tends to turn up high-ranked on it. I'm not as aware of this with Google.

rapnie 7y ago
I like to self-host too, and there is a huge amount of awesome selfhosted [0] software to be had. Only problem is, you have to be willing to become a moderately good sysadmin and spend your time doing the chores to keep your systems up-to-date. This takes considerable amount of time. Dropping the ball once, and you may find yourself hacked (I had this recently when being slow in updating a nginx reverse proxy). [0] https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Self-hosting applies more to data. If I've got the bits, I can deploy them (or channel them) elsewhere. If I don't, I'm SOL. Self-hosted services -- Web, Mail, messaging, etc., -- remains more complicated. I really wish it weren't, I've been watching projects for a decade and more now to make it less so. I'm thinking that this won't happen. Simply based on skills distribution, some sort of federation or clustering at the level of 1 admin per 100 - 100k users is probably necessary. That's a scope at which regional or interest-based community hosting becomes viable. At the same time, it means thousands to millions of individual service providers, a scope at which at least some mechansisms of mass surveillance (state, capitalist, non-state actor, criminal) become less viable. Concentration is its own risk.
koheripbal 7y ago
Can you reply as to the reason you had so many accounts flagged and disabled?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  2-3 instances over ~10 years. Access via Tor, new devices, and travel, generally. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2w618r/how_to_kill_your_google_account_access_it_via_tor/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2w618r/how_to_... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9060922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9060922) https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3mo7l6/that_google_identity_thing_again_who_are_you_is/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3mo7l6/that_go... This is a Hard Problem: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7qya12/information_security_peps_podesta_who_are_you/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7qya12/informa...

coffeefirst 7y ago

No, but I'm definitely paranoid about it. The difference is if any other service I rely on this heavily had a major issue, I could hop on the phone and get it fixed in a day. Google doesn't do customer support, which is fine for maps or search where I can just hop and nothing matters, but I'm starting to think it's too big of a risk for my primary email/calendar/contacts.

beowulfey 7y ago

Most times people get suspended for doing things that unsurprisingly go against the ToS. If you’re not developing software with googles API or anything a normal, everyday user doesn’t do you are probably fine. Of course it can still happen by random chance thanks to their algorithm going screwy but it’s not likely and if you’re still concerned Id consider at least starting the process.

Simon_says 7y ago
Or you just spam emojis in a YouTube chat because the host requested it.
Mistri 7y ago
I have an IoT device that pings the YouTube API every few days using my personal Google account API key, should I be concerned?
- spc476 7y ago
  A snarky answer is "yes." A less snarky answer is "is the IoT device made by Google or has a Google license?" If yes, then "probably no," otherwise "yes." I have a theory as to why Google is so tight lipped about how their service works (and what actions will get you kicked off)---it's that Google employees have no idea. Google is so invested in AI and machine learning, that I suspect that their automated systems are as inscrutable to them as they are to us, but admitting such wouldn't look that great.

judge2020 7y ago

The ones I know of are: - saying you're under 13 on YouTube (probably elsewhere as well) - TOS violations that malware performed using your account (eg. using your google session to share malware using drive) - Using drive to share or store copyrighted content - spam, eg via gmail

wolco 7y ago
The one that caught a few was the not using real name on google+ ban.
thebruce87m 7y ago
Storing copyrighted material on drive? Seriously?

newscracker 7y ago

I've never had any of my Google accounts (none of which I use much any longer) suspended, but I'm guessing that if you add a phone number to your account and verify it, then the automatic algorithms that look for suspicious activity (or inactivity) may be a little more forgiving. If Google is truly critical for you, I'd suggest buying GSuite and becoming a paid customer.

achillesheels 7y ago

I had an account suspended that was linked to a YouTube account videoing marijuana cannabis dispensaries. April 2018 the site shut down non-Vice media cannabis content and suspended the Gmail account. It made it apparent how central my most sensitive email archive was housed on such a flimsy foundation.

gordon_freeman 7y ago

Along with the risk of account suspension, there is always a risk (although of a lesser degree) of Google killing a product that we rely on a daily basis. As much crazy as it sounds but what's the guarantee that one day Google won't kill Gmail, especially when considering the history Google has killing much-loved products like Google Reader?

Havoc 7y ago

>Has anyone else had experience with getting their Google account suspended? No but this is why I opted for own domain + paid g-suite. Just so that I can take my toys elsewhere if needed

Mistri 7y ago
Are you immune to the TOS if you're paying for G Suite?
- Brian_K_White 7y ago
  "so I can take my toys elsewhere" You are immune in the sense that G can only kill the services and hosting, and your access to G's copy of any content. But the domain is still yours and your email is not @gmail even if it's hosted on gmail servers. So when G kills your account, it's only the hosting. You can switch your domain to any other hosting povider including self hosting, and all your old urls and email addresses resume working. It would still be up to you to maintain your own off-G backups of any content. Saved emails, website, gdrive, docs, photos. When the account dies you may lose access to G's copy of everything, so ensure all they ever have is a copy. Also probably don't use G for domain registrar. Even using them for dns host is ok, just not actual registrar. Might make for a crappy day if you have to do all that switching, but you can, and that is enough to provide the safety net against the small chance that you will ever need to. But if your email is actually @gmail, and that is say the "prove you own this account at life-savings-robo-advisor" email, then you are truly boned, and small risk is infinitely too-large risk.
  - Havoc 7y ago
    Exactly that. Thanks for writing that up. ...one big gotcha is gdrive, docs and GCP. Haven't worked out what to do about those yet, but priority is being able to salvage the email addr since everything is linked to it

Aeolun 7y ago

Good question, but I don’t think anyone knows since Google likely suspends the account without giving a reason. Since there is no recourse, it’s also hard to get clarification.

2ion 7y ago

> If anyone has gotten their account suspended, what was it for and how can I avoid it? For logging in from the wrong location (or network?). Most of the times you just get an email about log in attempts. This was for logging in from JP while usually logging in from DE/EU. How can you avoid it? Using a private VPN I suppose when using Google (avoid cloud IP address blocks though, else you'll get captcha hell).

toper-centage 7y ago

You can get suspended if you make an inappropriate comment on YouTube 8 years ago and it only gets flagged today. Also if someone from your IP does something that flags their account, you can get affected too. The main point is that Google never tells you exactly why you're being suspended because they don't want people figuring out the reasons and working around them.

dkersten 7y ago

Switching away from gmail was something I put off for years for the same reason as you but was ultimately painless and easy. Start off by forwarding your gmail to your new address and moving incrementally. Start by only replying from your new email and only giving out your new email. Then start switching automated emails (newsletters, mailing lists etc) over as you receive a forwarded email. I still have a google account but I don’t use it. Haven’t logged into google docs and such in years and while I still get the occasional gmail mail forwarded it’s typically spam (usually people who got my gmail address mistaken for mine).

fluffything 7y ago

I was suspended from using Google search last year for 48 hours. All because my query used the advanced search features that Google themselves document - like, I was just reading the Google docs, tried one query and boom "you have been blocked from Google search". I was 1 full day without Google search. I could not search for anything anywhere, not my phone, my laptop, nothing. That night I switched to DuckDuckGo. Two days later, I was unblocked from Google search and use it again. That was the moment where I started migrating all my services from google into independent providers. What if, instead of blocking my use of Google search, they block my GMail ? Calendar ? Google Home ? Android phone?.... I end up out of my house, without the ability to go in, without the ability to search for how to fix it, or to call somebody or message somebody with my home for help, maybe logged out of my car, etc. etc. etc. For me, avoiding such risks is more valuable than having a better search experience.