8 ms·

The article seems only to focus on what happens if you lose your ways to authenticate, but another possibility is getting caught in some weird ban wave like spa

by tsbinz 6y ago

The article seems only to focus on what happens if you lose your ways to authenticate, but another possibility is getting caught in some weird ban wave like spamming emotes on a youtube stream when the streamer asks you to (https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtube-emote-spam-markiplier/ https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtub...) (most of these bans seem to have been reversed, but I don't know if that would have happened without the publicity that came from a popular youtuber calling out google for banning his fans ...)

grenoire 6y ago
It's still absurd to me that you can get a full account ban for anything, no matter how big or small. Why aren't these bans more fine-grained? Is it so difficult?
- jotm 6y ago
  But hey, everybody loves the single account login! /s
  - winter_blue 6y ago
    This just reminded me how dangerous and foolish it is to use Google as an OAuth sign-in method. I’ve idiotically done this for a bunch of major services, including freaking medium.com, among many others. Can’t believe I’ve been so careless. Now I worry and wonder how hard it will be get back to regular email & password.
    - robin_reala 6y ago
      Depends on the service. Sometimes you have to delete your account and start again unfortunately. But if you can, a password manager is a much better solution that generally doesn’t leak information about all systems an account uses to the account provider for the purposes of targeted advertising.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  There is talk of implementing per-service bans. They already exist for adsense and google pay. You can today be banned from adsense but allowed to use all other google services. Customers seem, if anything, more angry about that though...
  - jacobush 6y ago
    Yes, because they still have a voice left.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - realusername 6y ago
    They would probably be less angry if the adsense bans were not completely random & unjustified.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      Most people I speak to about the adsense bans claim their ban was totally unjustified, but then later reveal that they might have clicked on ads on their own webpage "just once or twice to test it"...
      - realusername 6y ago
        There's maybe a small proportion of people falling into this category but since the bans are automated and triggered on obscure rules outside of the account's owner knowledge, I would argue a that a good proportion of bans are just random. The fact that support is close to non-existent just makes it worse for sure. I had myself an account banned and I can assure you it's really totally random.
      - lonelappde 6y ago
        Google doesn't ban itself when they violate their own terms of service (Notification spam, mass WiFi network collection, Google Buzz) "just once or twice to test it"
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Why should they be, from Google’s perspective (which obviously skews towards “our algorithm is perfect”)? If you’ve done something banworthy on one of their properties you’re obviously not worth keeping around anyway as you’re likely to violate policies elsewhere.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    Well, if they want to be seen as grumpy asshats so be it.
  - iforgotpassword 6y ago
    That's the horrible part about it. You're spamming smileys on a Fortnite stream? No more access to your email, which you require to manage access to five dozen online services including PayPal, probably also stuff like insurance and whatnot. Considering how vital ones email account is today, it's time for laws that prevent providers from pulling stunts like this on your mail account, no matter whether it's free tier or not.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      Not sure if there might not be a legal recourse if they ban access to your email, at least if they don't give you the possibility of downloading an archive of its contents. Because, unless they have deleted it, they have your data in that email. So, under a GDPR reasoning https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ do you have a right to a copy of your emails even if they have blocked your account? Unless they have deleted all your data I think it would be a yes.
      - lonelappde 6y ago
        Have you tried downloading your data from Google? If you have a large data set (for being a loyal user for years) and a slow (non-business-class) internet connection, the server just expires your auth token before you can complete the download.
- 101404 6y ago
  And why aren't they regulated by laws? This isn't a ban on some small forum. It's basically revoking your passport for the internet.
  - josteink 6y ago
    It’s only a passport to your internet because you haven’t bothered looking outside its borders.
    - sbarre 6y ago
      This is probably the most HN comment ever. Congratulations on being a better Internet user that the rest of the world! You are clearly very proud. For the vast majority of people, their SaaS email (in most cases probably a Gmail account) is in fact their primary identity on the Internet, and that's not going to change because they wouldn't even know where to start looking for other options. Before you say "that's their own fault for not knowing better", I would ask you: did you get your own medical degree so that you can handle all your own medical problems? What about a car? Did you build your own car? Do you have a law degree? Do you grow all your own food? Are you a licensed electrician? How about a food safety engineer? An architect? No? So you rely on established and proven products, systems and service providers for these things? Of course you do, because that's how society works. Technology folks often forget that we happen to have specialized in a field that is now dominant and pervasive in everyday life, so we "get it" more than most, but that's not the case, sometimes not even an option, for most people..
      - quaquaqua1 6y ago
        What do you mean you don't hunt and kill your own food and grow your own grain? Businesses should absolutely have the right to not let you use their services for any arbitrary reason! It's a free market! Sucks to be you! </ sarcasm> ［Offer valid until the same thing happens to me, then I can scream and cry about it］
      - wolco 6y ago
        You seem helpfuless in the era self help. Informationless in the information age. Did you build your own car? Are you asking us to compare building a car to using a gmail account. The comparison is did you build your own google mail provider. Very few have. But most of us went to different dealships test drove different cars, looked up tech details and reviews. Reviewed recalls and decided for ourselves. What kind of special degree do you feel you need to pick a different email provider? And most people don't uses a sass. I would expect a slightly more tech enabled person to be using a sass (not too many grandmothers or average internet need a sass). Can those people figure out how to signed up without google if they want to? I would hope so. If your sass doesn't offer any other way to sign up it won't be around for too long anyhow. If you are going to put everything under your google services for your saas pay a few dollars and get a business account if it's important to your business.
- wpietri 6y ago
  If you spend some time on the other side of it, it'll make more sense. I've done anti-abuse work before and you would not believe the number of people who due to greed, malice, or some sort of perverse glee will spend massive amounts of time working to abuse your service. Especially when that service is free and effectively anonymous, it's just not possible to give each case a full and fair hearing. You know that you'll get false negatives and false positives. You can try to minimize them, but actual justice is expensive. Too expensive to pay for with ad sales, that's for sure.
winter_blue 6y ago
That screenshot of Google saying that in a short amount of time they’d be deleting all your data, plus the email where their “ban review” system just rejected them and said any further replies would be ignored, are really really worrisome and highlight to me the critical importance of minimizing my reliance on Google services (as much as possible).
cl3misch 6y ago
I would be interested how likely/severe such a ban is for a paying Google One costumer.
101404 6y ago
That's why I would never use any of Google's "social" functions. Never comment on anything controlled by Google. You never know when they change policies and some automated bot kills your account for it, years from now.

by tsbinz 6y ago

grenoire 6y ago

It's still absurd to me that you can get a full account ban for anything, no matter how big or small. Why aren't these bans more fine-grained? Is it so difficult?

jotm 6y ago
But hey, everybody loves the single account login! /s
- winter_blue 6y ago
  This just reminded me how dangerous and foolish it is to use Google as an OAuth sign-in method. I’ve idiotically done this for a bunch of major services, including freaking medium.com, among many others. Can’t believe I’ve been so careless. Now I worry and wonder how hard it will be get back to regular email & password.
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    Depends on the service. Sometimes you have to delete your account and start again unfortunately. But if you can, a password manager is a much better solution that generally doesn’t leak information about all systems an account uses to the account provider for the purposes of targeted advertising.
londons_explore 6y ago
There is talk of implementing per-service bans. They already exist for adsense and google pay. You can today be banned from adsense but allowed to use all other google services. Customers seem, if anything, more angry about that though...
- jacobush 6y ago
  Yes, because they still have a voice left.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- realusername 6y ago
  They would probably be less angry if the adsense bans were not completely random & unjustified.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    Most people I speak to about the adsense bans claim their ban was totally unjustified, but then later reveal that they might have clicked on ads on their own webpage "just once or twice to test it"...
    - realusername 6y ago
      There's maybe a small proportion of people falling into this category but since the bans are automated and triggered on obscure rules outside of the account's owner knowledge, I would argue a that a good proportion of bans are just random. The fact that support is close to non-existent just makes it worse for sure. I had myself an account banned and I can assure you it's really totally random.
    - lonelappde 6y ago
      Google doesn't ban itself when they violate their own terms of service (Notification spam, mass WiFi network collection, Google Buzz) "just once or twice to test it"
saagarjha 6y ago
Why should they be, from Google’s perspective (which obviously skews towards “our algorithm is perfect”)? If you’ve done something banworthy on one of their properties you’re obviously not worth keeping around anyway as you’re likely to violate policies elsewhere.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Well, if they want to be seen as grumpy asshats so be it.
- iforgotpassword 6y ago
  That's the horrible part about it. You're spamming smileys on a Fortnite stream? No more access to your email, which you require to manage access to five dozen online services including PayPal, probably also stuff like insurance and whatnot. Considering how vital ones email account is today, it's time for laws that prevent providers from pulling stunts like this on your mail account, no matter whether it's free tier or not.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    Not sure if there might not be a legal recourse if they ban access to your email, at least if they don't give you the possibility of downloading an archive of its contents. Because, unless they have deleted it, they have your data in that email. So, under a GDPR reasoning https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ do you have a right to a copy of your emails even if they have blocked your account? Unless they have deleted all your data I think it would be a yes.
    - lonelappde 6y ago
      Have you tried downloading your data from Google? If you have a large data set (for being a loyal user for years) and a slow (non-business-class) internet connection, the server just expires your auth token before you can complete the download.
101404 6y ago
And why aren't they regulated by laws? This isn't a ban on some small forum. It's basically revoking your passport for the internet.
- josteink 6y ago
  It’s only a passport to your internet because you haven’t bothered looking outside its borders.
  - sbarre 6y ago
    This is probably the most HN comment ever. Congratulations on being a better Internet user that the rest of the world! You are clearly very proud. For the vast majority of people, their SaaS email (in most cases probably a Gmail account) is in fact their primary identity on the Internet, and that's not going to change because they wouldn't even know where to start looking for other options. Before you say "that's their own fault for not knowing better", I would ask you: did you get your own medical degree so that you can handle all your own medical problems? What about a car? Did you build your own car? Do you have a law degree? Do you grow all your own food? Are you a licensed electrician? How about a food safety engineer? An architect? No? So you rely on established and proven products, systems and service providers for these things? Of course you do, because that's how society works. Technology folks often forget that we happen to have specialized in a field that is now dominant and pervasive in everyday life, so we "get it" more than most, but that's not the case, sometimes not even an option, for most people..
    - quaquaqua1 6y ago
      What do you mean you don't hunt and kill your own food and grow your own grain? Businesses should absolutely have the right to not let you use their services for any arbitrary reason! It's a free market! Sucks to be you! </ sarcasm> ［Offer valid until the same thing happens to me, then I can scream and cry about it］
    - wolco 6y ago
      You seem helpfuless in the era self help. Informationless in the information age. Did you build your own car? Are you asking us to compare building a car to using a gmail account. The comparison is did you build your own google mail provider. Very few have. But most of us went to different dealships test drove different cars, looked up tech details and reviews. Reviewed recalls and decided for ourselves. What kind of special degree do you feel you need to pick a different email provider? And most people don't uses a sass. I would expect a slightly more tech enabled person to be using a sass (not too many grandmothers or average internet need a sass). Can those people figure out how to signed up without google if they want to? I would hope so. If your sass doesn't offer any other way to sign up it won't be around for too long anyhow. If you are going to put everything under your google services for your saas pay a few dollars and get a business account if it's important to your business.
wpietri 6y ago
If you spend some time on the other side of it, it'll make more sense. I've done anti-abuse work before and you would not believe the number of people who due to greed, malice, or some sort of perverse glee will spend massive amounts of time working to abuse your service. Especially when that service is free and effectively anonymous, it's just not possible to give each case a full and fair hearing. You know that you'll get false negatives and false positives. You can try to minimize them, but actual justice is expensive. Too expensive to pay for with ad sales, that's for sure.

winter_blue 6y ago

That screenshot of Google saying that in a short amount of time they’d be deleting all your data, plus the email where their “ban review” system just rejected them and said any further replies would be ignored, are really really worrisome and highlight to me the critical importance of minimizing my reliance on Google services (as much as possible).

cl3misch 6y ago

I would be interested how likely/severe such a ban is for a paying Google One costumer.

101404 6y ago

That's why I would never use any of Google's "social" functions. Never comment on anything controlled by Google. You never know when they change policies and some automated bot kills your account for it, years from now.