28 ms·

Google disabled my husband's account

• Eyas 6y ago
  This story is just absolutely ridiculous: The poster _works at Google_ and even tried to escalate internally for days, to no avail.
  • duxup 6y ago
    Well IMO it kinda makes sense that internally of all places you might actually make it hard to address it along that specific path to avoid any kinda of local shenanigans.
    • dredmorbius 6y ago
      There's ... some daylight between "internal escalation through channels" and "shenanigans".
  • arthurcolle 6y ago
    I would lose my mind if this happened to me. Can't imagine how frustrating this would end up being.
    • EForEndeavour 6y ago
      Me too. This anecdote is the latest grim reminder to me that I really should be keeping my offline backups up to date, just in case.
    • mszcz 6y ago
      That's why you should have email on your own domain. If they lock you out you can quickly-ish migrate to a different provider without losing your email address. Not a solution but definitely softens the blow. Google allows this for GSuite at $5/mo I think.
      • jeremyjh 6y ago
        That is my arrangement and I've had it in place so long I don't even have to pay the $5, I have a free private GSuite on my own domain (yes they offered this to everyone 10+ years ago). What I realized today though while reading this story, is that my DNS account is backed by this same GMail account. What if I'm attacked and someone locks out my DNS account at the same time they take the sort of criminal actions in my account that that would get Google to shut it down? I could lose my domain and all my email forever. I think I'm moving to Fastmail.
        • qwertox 6y ago
          Thank you for bringing this onto my radar. I will do that this weekend, get a good email address for the most important services.
        • spydum 6y ago
          i actually think it's useful to create a flow graph of all your most critical accounts, and how you might recover them if lost. If you find many of them flow back to an account you cant control and may be shut down for arbitrary reasons, may want to reconsider your recovery/hierarchy.
      • arthurcolle 6y ago
        yeah I have ProtonMail with 2 custom domains. It's decent I have gotten blocked from sending emails to Google custom domains. Total bullshit IMO, I think they do it on purpose.
      • TedShiller 6y ago
        Yes. But make sure you don't use Google Domains to host your domain. Otherwise your domain will be locked too.
  • avipars 6y ago
    Seriously? I guess they get the same treatment
    • est31 6y ago
      IIRC there is a special user support forum for Googlers, so it's not the same treatment.
  • goldcd 6y ago
    I would have thought ensuring that workers at google, getting absolutely no special access to specific other accounts, is pretty much the most sacrosanct rule. i.e. Google's unlikely to hand over the dossier they've assembled on 'what your husband has been up to that we considered bad enough to shut down their account' Most definitely not saying this isn't a false positive - but the handling process for it it must assume it's a positive. Now why the poster's husband can't get the info - that is somewhat worrysome.
    • Eyas 6y ago
      Sure, to me the ridiculous part is: - it's weird to be mistreated by your employer's own product (just the irony bend to it) - if you want to appeal after a dead end, your choice is to make a huge public PR nightmare, or try to make an internal post/plea that gains traction. you'd be doing your own employer a service if you could have this issue resolved without a PR nightmare
      • jrockway 6y ago
        I guess Google's ToS is between the employee's husband and Google and not the employee, the employee's husband, and Google. So there is no authorization for some random employee to "check up" on their partner, even though it sounds like escalating internally should help. (It should at least trigger, "we'd better look into this very carefully", though. If it didn't, that sounds like a problem. If it did, and the result is "yeah, this is legit", that's a very awkward position for everyone.) I was in a similar situation when I worked at Google. My brother kind of disappeared, and my family asked if we could at least check if he logged into Gmail. I asked and was told no, and I understood why -- it's up to my brother to share what he's up to, not Google. (My brother was fine; just didn't like replying to email or answering his phone.)
        • Eyas 6y ago
          Oh certainly not "check up", but try to get a human to look at it and respond to the appeal with more than boilerplate.
        • 6y ago
  • mleonhard 6y ago
    Someone posted a video on YouTube showing them bullying and humiliating one of my friends. I helped her report it. YouTube ignored it. I worked at Google at the time. I filed an internal ticket and YouTube ignored that, too. Years later, the video is still online. Companies serve the shareholders. Shareholders want to spend as little money as possible on user support. I think new regulations are a good way to solve this problem for everyone. US consumer protection laws need updating for the Internet age.
• mtgx 6y ago
  I honestly believe companies making billions in dollars in profit every quarter should be legally required to provide proper human support to all of its customers and users. Both Google and Facebook have ridiculously poor levels of support for the money they make.
• sct202 6y ago
  I hate that they don't even tell you what you violated, like I'm sure this just causes more escalation and worse negative feelings for basically getting no additional information.
  • ProAm 6y ago
    This should be illegal if there is no way to contest/appeal.
    • gowld 6y ago
      It's the reverse. It's often illegal to divulge the content of a violation.
      • chrisshroba 6y ago
        Do you have a source for that? How could that possibly be illegal?
      • jeroenhd 6y ago
        Illegal? Unlikely. A bad business move? Definitively. As far as I know, the reason no company divulges information like this is to stop the endless protests and appeals from people. Dealing with people who believe they've done nothing wrong even though they have is tiresome and expensive and the more information you give them, the more ammunition they have to protest. The result is innocent people like (presumably) OP's husband getting shafted by a short email without any details, but it's finanicially unattractive to change the system so without court or legislative action I doubt Google will improve their services any time soon.
      • jagger27 6y ago
        I'm not lawyer, and I'm not an American, but doesn't this sorta fall under the 6th Amendment?
        • dragonwriter 6y ago
          No. The Sixth Amendment applies to criminal action by the government. Google isn’t the government, and even if we were to pretend they were, they are neither applying a criminal law nor imposing the kind of punishments which are inherently criminal no matter how the law authorizing them is characterized, so the Sixth Amendment is far from applicable. Were they the government, either 5th (federal) or 14th (state) Amendment due procesos rights might be an issue, but, again, Google is not the government.
• fred_is_fred 6y ago
  This is a good reminder to always backup your photos/docs elsewhere - if you have one Synology has a good Google integration that will do this automatically (I then send it up to Glacier for off-site). And also - eschew the convenience of OAUTH - just create an account at every site - it's annoying but at least you avoid you're entire life being locked out.
  • vidanay 6y ago
    I'm still pissed that Google disabled the Photo sync with GDrive. It makes backing up my photos 100x harder than it should be.
    • coffeeling 6y ago
      A red flag to get out.
  • izacus 6y ago
    Synology also allows you to run your own contacts, calendar service and has a Google Photos equivalent called Moments (which includes the mobile app to autobackup photos). The difference? You own the data on your own drive.
    • vetinari 6y ago
      Synology also allows you to run your own mail server, with a web app similar to Gmail, if you want to go down that rabbit hole (MailPlus/MailPlus Server).
  • thomasz 6y ago
    This is a reminder to get away from google services. It’s just not worth it. Give a few bucks Each month to a company where you are the customer and not the product.
• fred_is_fred 6y ago
  I will say that I can only imagine how annoying and frustrating this is, but the way he's approaching this on twitter is not going to win him any fans in his reporting chain. In a fight like this you need senior management as allies wanting to help, not as enemies as you stomp your feet and embarrass them.
  • FullyFunctional 6y ago
    Reporting chain wasn't helping him. This is obviously his last resort. I pay for Google services and stuff like this is motivating me to look into migrating away (the only thing I _actually_ care about is mail).
    • fred_is_fred 6y ago
      So he's going to piss away a $300k+ job over this. And then what? The account will still be locked out.
      • Causality1 6y ago
        Some people have principles. If my company took a shit on my whole life like this you bet I'd be out the door.
      • YawningAngel 6y ago
        People who can get $300k+ jobs at Google are exactly the people who can afford to piss away those jobs
        • dredmorbius 6y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_handcuffs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_handcuffs
      • FullyFunctional 6y ago
        Some people care about more than just money. Not trying to brag, but I did get an offer from a FAANG company which I turned down, suspecting that I wouldn't be as happy there. Personally ethics play a big role in my happiness, but I acknowledge and appreciate that being able to chose is a rare privilege. EDIT: Grammar
• godhatesfags 6y ago
  good ban all faggots
• duxup 6y ago
  I always figure they just 'rerun the script' and it produces the same results and there you go. With no new input from the user, how could anything change? Has anyone tried "Try to restore" and had it ... work?
• gojomo 6y ago
  Have they completed the official escalation procedure for resolving issues with Google products? It sounds like they're at the point where they are supposed to contact a friend who writes for the New York Times, or similarly prominent outlet, to have a story written about their predicament. This usually resolves the issue, but if it does not, they should run for and win a U. S. Senate seat, then forward the details of their issue on official Senate letterhead.
  • jeremyjh 6y ago
    Honestly Google can't entertain the requests of every single U.S. Senator. They'd spend literally hours on unpaid support every year.
    • rurp 6y ago
      Wait, what? There are only 100 US senators and Google already spends tens of millions of dollars per year lobbying them. I'm not saying I agree with the GP point, but if Google wanted to give those senators free personal tech support it would not be prohibitively expensive.
      • jeremyjh 6y ago
        Sorry, should have included /s I thought it would be implied since GP was not serious either.
• itg 6y ago
  Right now I have everything tied up to my Google account (primary email, drive, photos). Has anyone moved away and if so, to what?
  • speeder 6y ago
    Currently I am trying to figure out how to move e-mail away from google, not my personal one, but my company e-mail. Couldn't figure out yet... The reason is that despite being a corporate costuemer we don't pay enough to have access to support, and some issues we had, the only thing the FAQ and documentation did was redirect us to a page behind payment.
    • csdreamer7 6y ago
      Have you considered Zoho? They have a free tier and gdocs competitor.
      • blunte 6y ago
        I left Gsuite for Zoho (mail) a couple of years ago after reading so many of these Google account closure scares. I cannot speak to the quality of the Zoho office apps, but their email seems reliable and allows me to have over a dozen domains tied to one account at a tiny cost per month. Fastmail, as I recall, couldn't or wouldn't allow many domains tied to one account (otherwise I would have chosen them).
        • techsupporter 6y ago
          I don't know if your account was different, but I have 15 domains on my Fastmail account and almost a hundred specific aliases (in addition to the catch-all) and they've not complained one bit.
    • icf80 6y ago
      User https://www.thunderbird.net/ https://www.thunderbird.net/ to make a local backup copy, then you can sync it with other accounts.
• X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  Every time this happens I think about reducing my dependence on google, however I'd love to be able to make this decision by evaluating the actual risk of this happening. Does anyone know an estimate of how likely this is to happen to an individual on a per year basis? Obviously that risk will change as the organization changes, but if it's happening to a couple hundred good faith accounts a year I'd probably put it off for quite some time.
  • save_ferris 6y ago
    > Does anyone know an estimate of how likely this is to happen to an individual on a per year basis? There's zero chance Google would ever volunteer this information, anything you see on here is probably a WAG at best.
  • ffpip 6y ago
    7 billion people use Google. If you look at the likeliness of it happening to one guy out of 7 billion, it would be very, very small. But the problem is, once it is banned, you will probably lose a lot of important stuff permanently.
    • bigbubba 6y ago
      Worse: This sort of thing has happened to a lot more than just one guy. One in seven billion is way too optimistic.
      • ffpip 6y ago
        You may have misunderstood. I didn't mean to say the likeliness of it happening to X6S1x6Okd1st is one in seven billion.
    • Tipewryter 6y ago
      One guy out of 7 billion? I had exactly one Google account and I lost it - along with all data - too. So for me it is one out of one. No reason given. They just don't let me log in anymore.
    • 6y ago
• actuator 6y ago
  I have been thinking about this for a while. Considering I prefer to keep the important data/emails on Gmail or Google drive for security and I really consider it important. Would it help if Google had a paid tier? Say, if you can get into an annual plan, similar to what's there for hardware devices like Apple Care+. Just that, in this there is someone to help you through issues. We used to pay 10% of our AWS bill for the AWS support plan because when you needed the help, it really made sense to have someone looking at it with some SLAs. A second option is, Google can just make consumer Gmail as an ad free paid service and then provide support for it as well. Plenty of people are paying $10/month for email services, so we have a price point that works for people. Email is very crucial to online identity, and I would trust Google the most with security among the other providers so I would happily pay for it. Edit: As someone pointed out, they have Google One at least for storage. It has proper support. Maybe it makes sense to extend it for other services as well. https://one.google.com/about https://one.google.com/about
  • izacus 6y ago
    > I have been thinking about this for a while. Considering I prefer to keep the important data/emails on Gmail or Google drive for security and I really consider it important. Would it help if Google had a paid tier? It wouldn't, because Google is averse to any kind of customer support even for paying services. Even the "support" people that get attached to highly paid YouTube, GSuite, and other accounts get regularly stonewalled like this person and cannot help. The only solution? Make sure all of your data is always backed up somewhere else.
    • traveler01 6y ago
      To be fair I had a lot of trust in Google. Now, seeing these cases I'm thinking about starting moving my important stuff to other services...
      • Semaphor 6y ago
        Have you not seen all the similar things that happened over the years? This is not a new thing, it’s SOP. And though I think Google is especially bad, don’t ever have important data with a single company.
• martinko 6y ago
  This is one of the reasons why I've finally began migrating to a custom domain + proton mail. Can't imagine the time it would take me to get back all the accounts registered to my email, not to mention those to which access would be lost forever.
  • theandrewbailey 6y ago
    I've been wanting to migrate off Gmail since Snowden, but never looked closer. I need to get on that.
    • kelnos 6y ago
      I looked into this a bit a year or two ago, and wasn't happy with the alternatives. The main issue for me is that I never delete anything, and so I have nearly 500GB of email, dating back over 20 years (sadly I've lost earlier email due to the cost of even local storage back in those days). I don't want to deal with the data in any way, sorting through it, splitting it up, etc. I just want to dump it all into an email account and have it forever. Many of the alternatives that offer good privacy top out at 20GB or so for their most expensive plan (or less). Tutanota was the one service I found that let you add (IIRC) arbitrary amounts of storage to your plan, but I found their web interface to be kinda clunky, and let the account expire. I keep wanting to look into this again, but never get around to it.
      • dleslie 6y ago
        OneDrive is pretty damn cheap _and_ comes with access to Office on the web. 1tb per family member, with Office? Goodly. There's no official Linux client, but there are open source ones that perform well. You could drop your mbox onto a OneDrive sync and then use fetchmail or similar to rip it out of your provider. Each email could be individually encrypted, so you won't have to deal with a 500gb blob to sync.
      • jasonv 6y ago
        I recently culled a few of my larger gmail accounts. This is what it took: * Connect to Outlook and sync locally * Sort All Mail by sender * Delete All Mail per senders that aren't important It took me a day, and I'm glad I did it. Not that painful. Outlook was a champ through the whole process. Now I can move somewhere else, which I will.
• mixedCase 6y ago
  Daily reminder that you should not stake your digital identity/data on any Google service that you cannot pay support for. And even then, be wary.
• Causality1 6y ago
  Another example of why we need public internet services that aren't run by private companies. Imagine if your mailing address was run by a private company and they could take your mailbox, erase your address, and forever prevent you from receiving mail sent to that address ever again. Every human deserves an email account, linked to if not publicly exposing their real identity, access to which is not revocable except by court order.
  • swiley 6y ago
    > linked to if not publicly exposing their real identity, access to which is not revocable except by court order. Not too sure about that. There are some pretty poorly behaved people in the world that like hurting people for various reasons (including none.) I'd rather things stay on the anonymity side.
• fh973 6y ago
  They're begging for the European legislation to require mobility of email addresses as we have for mobile phone numbers.
  • weejewel 6y ago
    Well, you can just use your own domain in gmail and similar regulation applies.
  • Someone1234 6y ago
    How would that work on a technical level? Phone numbers are just sequential numbers, that are assigned to carriers, when consumers transfer numbers the carriers just re-assign ownership via an assignment swap. An email address by contrast is an undefined/minimally defined identifier in front of an @ and the message is just thrown to the domain to do something with. Which is to say, mobility is impossible, because there's no cross-vendor standard for the identifier part and even if there was, both parts make up an email address which would send it to the wrong vendor anyway. It is like having a phone number that ended with a network specific postfix and using it to route at the network level. It would make phone numbers non-transferable too.
    • dleslie 6y ago
      Basically it'd require a nameservice for individual identities; it couldn't rely on service-level redirects because the domain host might go kaput.
    • makomk 6y ago
      At least here in the UK, phone numbers are generally network specific - including mobile numbers. Companies don't just reassign ownership, the original owner of the number has to actively forward calls. This causes some issues when a provider goes out of business and Ofcom or whoever have to call around and ask nicely for someone to take on forwarding for their number ranges. (There's talk about fixing this with a big central database, but I don't think it's come to fruition yet.)
    • zaarn 6y ago
• andmarios 6y ago
  I am not fond of suggestions to break up big companies, but I do believe that FAANG should be treated as utility companies and not be allowed to deny service to anyone; any termination decision should be left to an independent 3rd party, ideally a public authority, so the big company will not be liable for any account misconduct.
  • jpxw 6y ago
    Hello from the UK, where we lock people up for jokes! Public authorities are just as corruptible.
    • dleslie 6y ago
      For jokes and for carrying deadly assault spoons. AFAICT, it looks to be sporting aftermarket tacticool rust. ;) https://www.foxnews.com/world/british-police-station-mocked-for-tweeting-photo-of-dangerous-knife-collection-that-includes-a-spoon https://www.foxnews.com/world/british-police-station-mocked-...
      • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        The spoon might be the most extreme part of that picture, but I wouldn't blink at seeing 90% of those in a kitchen - how are brits supposed to cut meat?
        • dleslie 6y ago
          It's hard to keep track because they keep encroaching on knife ownership. It's illegal to sell a knife to someone under 18! As a Canadian, I owned a half dozen pocket knives by the time I was 10, and took them camping and so forth. It's illegal for an adult to carry a knife without good reason! I carry one on me all the time, because I often need one. It blows my mind how far down the authoritarian rabbit hole they're going, rather than addressing the root causes of violence. https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives
    • 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jwineinger 6y ago
  This is why I pay for Amazon Photos as well and use double the data/time to upload to both. I don't want google's AI or employees nerfing my entire family photos archive.
  • supergirl 6y ago
    if you pay does it mean they will not kidnap your account like this? I think not. amazon does tend to have functional customer support though
  • ffpip 6y ago
    > I don't want google's AI or employees nerfing my entire family photos archive. What is different about Amazon? https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/furious-customers-say-theyve-been-mysteriously-locked-out-of-their-amazon-accounts-and-they-have-no-idea-why/articleshow/63632295.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/furious-customers-say-... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121022/07340420786/amazon-wipes-customers-account-deletes-all-ebooks-says-find-new-retailer-when-she-asks-why.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121022/07340420786/amazo...
    • jwineinger 6y ago
      Fairly light evidence of a similar problem with Google. Even if so, at least I have photos in two clouds and I would guess there's little chance of losing both accounts concurrently. And Amazon customer support can be reached.
• toss1 6y ago
  This is a fine example of why one should NEVER use a free closed (source or company) service for critical life or business functions. They can and sometimes will shut you off with no reason given, no access to your data, and no recourse (& NO, appealing when no charges are specified, and no info or reasoning for their decision other than "yup we confirmed you violated our TOS", is not recourse, even in a Kafka world). This guy can get nothing even though he works at Google. It isn't like these major companies are short of funds to provide actual customer service, they just refuse to do so, basically saying "what are you going to do about it?". It's a Devil's Bargain, and too many buy it.
  • toss1 6y ago
    Interesting, multiple downvotes in minutes, yet zero discussion or attempt to make the counter case. Seems plenty of people around here think it is a good idea to leave critical functions to a company where you are the product. Edit: minutes later some upvotes too, so controversial, it seems. If there's a counter-case (other than convenience and "low" risk, I'd like to see it
• x87678r 6y ago
  My Dad has all his photos on a PC and HD backup. If something happens to him I know I can recover it all, I'm glad he doesn't rely on Google Photos, dropbox or similar.
  • imhoguy 6y ago
    Unless the disk is stored offsite then better install him some simple automated backup anyway. I keep such in case of theft or fire, hope it is never needed.
    • x87678r 6y ago
      If something happened to him, how would I get access?
• jebronie 6y ago
  Maybe they detected highly illegal content and won't disclose it for those reasons (could be an ongoing investigation).
  • nichch 6y ago
    Would this not be paired with some kind of law enforcement agency action?
    • jeremyjh 6y ago
      It could be, and it is possible they are not allowed to inform you of that.
    • m00x 6y ago
      Maybe that action is to be ensued later as part of the investigation. Google banning accounts stories is usually a one-sided thing. Who knows if Google had a very good reason to ban his account.
  • pugworthy 6y ago
    Since you're bringing up the idea that perhaps the ban was legitimate, it really does need to be mentioned that one scenario here is that the user did actually fail to comply with the terms or policies. But even if this were the case, it is pretty unfair to not at least know what you are being accused of.
• ezconnect 6y ago
  I use OneDrive, iCloud, a couple HD for backup of my stuff. I also have duplicate of my OneDrive and iCloud stuff on another storage in case both company does something unexpected.
  • AlfeG 6y ago
    Do You know, is there a self hosted solution for automatic photos upload to own server?
    • mceachen 6y ago
      Resilio Sync and SyncThing are what I recommend to my beta users to backup phones and laptops to their home NAS/server.
• Tipewryter 6y ago
  I lost my Google account too. One day they just stopped letting me log in. They show me a text saying that to log in, I have to give them my phone number. Well, I don't want to give my phone number to Google. When I signed up, it was not stated anywhere that one day they might hold all my data randsom and blackmail me to give them my phone number.
• oconnore 6y ago
  Is anyone surprised though? This has been the Google status quo for over a decade now, and there is no indication of intention to change, ever.
• dqpb 6y ago
  This reminds me, is there going to be a Black Mirror season 6?
• theandrewbailey 6y ago
  If anyone has a Google account, you need to Takeout regularly. https://takeout.google.com https://takeout.google.com
  • AnssiH 6y ago
    If only it worked... https://i.imgur.com/FKFa2l7.png https://i.imgur.com/FKFa2l7.png I probably could try to bisect if there is a specific type of data that prevents Takeout on my account, but I haven't bothered as I think I have all the important data otherwise backed up.
    • Grollicus 6y ago
      If you live in the EU just send them a GDPR request, they'll have to give you a dump within some timeframe. If their bots redirect you to their download UI, contact your regulator.
      • AnssiH 6y ago
        I do. Seems like that would not be too much work, so I think I'll do just that. I'll try Takeout one more time, and after it fails (it takes a few days) I'll submit a request via their data access request form.
    • mceachen 6y ago
      Several Takeouts may work: a gmail-only archive, a photos-from-only-last-year archive, ...
    • Liquid_Fire 6y ago
      I had the same issue and bisecting it helped to find the culprit (although I don't remember which one it was right now)
  • swiley 6y ago
    You have a tiny window to download a huge archive and you can't restart the download. In theory it's great in practice you don't have access to it.
• tpoacher 6y ago
  I've been slowly trying to decouple myself from google in the last few years (/decades) ... but I have stuff that goes back at least 2 decades that I have been lazy / hesitant, e.g. contacts on the phone (since I doubt I would have the necessary patience to import / export / sync contacts manually anymore). But ... seeing this kind of thing, I need to reconsider and at least keep a monthly backup or something ... as far as you know, it's not even going to be your fault when you get locked out, so you shouldn't assume it just won't happen to you.
  • sz4kerto 6y ago
    Syncing contacts is really easy -- just use a different CalDAV server. Your own, Fastmail, whatever.
  • zeusflight 6y ago
    Local backup and sync for contacts and calendar can be made using vdirsyncer. mbsync or offlineimap does the same for mail. All of them can be deployed as services to do automatic sync. Some client software can use these local copies directly.
• breakingcups 6y ago
  It's incredibly Kafka-eqsue that you get banned for a supposed violation that you're supposed to appeal, but you don't know what you're being accused of doing. This is exacerbated by the fact that 9 out of 10 times a story like this appears it's an algorithm gone rogue which its billion-dollar shepherd assumes is infallible. The remaining 1 time it's because someone knows how to abuse reporting systems to get someone locked out on purpose. The only reason these tech companies managed to get so big is because they'll cheat at anything that requires human scale. Support, moderation, taking responsibility for the content they host. They somehow managed to skirt on that just as the web was transitioning from a wild west to a somewhat ingrained, regulated place and the world is worse off for it. Because they skirted on all this, they are now somehow the world's gatekeepers on modern communications. If you don't play ball with them, you're cut off from almost everyone. Their recklessness and callousness ironically put them in the position to rule over the rest.
  • jeremyjh 6y ago
    Its only 9 times out of 10 when the story is escalated to the front page of Hacker News. For all we know, 99,999 times out of 100,000 its a case of fraud or law enforcement action that is completely correct and valid, and you do not give those actors information on how you detected them.
    • nullc 6y ago
      It absolutely is, which is why what they're doing looks fine on internal metrics. Imagine I make a laser bug zapper and install them at every fast food joint in the US. 9999 out of 10000 times it zaps an insect. 1 out of 10000 times the laser fires it blinds a child. I could wax all I want want about the 99.99% accuracy, the _relative_ accuracy won't mean a thing to the million people blinded by it. When there is a mix of spambot garbage and human beings that being harmed the right metric isn't the ratio. Blinding a million children wouldn't go from unacceptable to acceptable just because the level of insects swarming around a restaurant increased by a factor of 10. The harm stands alone, and there is a level of harm which could not be justified by any amount of boring spambot influx.
• PieUser 6y ago
  The victim probably did some shady things that the husband didn't know about... Something so terrible that Google would disable their account :O
• kissgyorgy 6y ago
  Every time something like this comes up either with Dropbox, Google, or whatever big corp who owns your data, I suggest everybody to try out Nextcloud! I use it for years, because it's a very liberating feeling to OWN YOUR DATA and not be in a risk of something like this. It's even more convenient than any cloud drive I tried.
• sim_io 6y ago
  What is a good way to move from Google Photos to iCloud? i have a library over 300GB, is there any product that handles this?
  • motoboi 6y ago
    If you have the space on your device, you can takeout.google.com the photos out of there and them upload to iCloud.
  • Daniel_sk 6y ago
    I have done this and it depends. There were several ways provided by Google how to export the pictures and upload them and they killed them all. The last good way was to link your Google Drive with Google Photos and then install it on desktop and let it download the whole library (and then install iCloud and let it upload everything). Google Takeout isn't without issues, a lot of people including me had problems generating the takeout link, it failed for several tries and took days. And then they break Live Photos take on iPhone which were backed up by Google Photos, Takeout doesn't export them in a proper way (maybe it does now, I don't know). There is just no simple way how download Google Photos. Compare this with iCloud which does this by default. So what I did was kind of stupid - but it allowed me to transfer all pictures from Photos to iCloud in full quality and including Live Photos. I downloaded Google Photos on iPhone and then I selected as many pictures as I could by dragging the finger and then click "Save to Photos". iCloud will back it up. Rinse and repeat. You can't select more than few hundred, so it took me a while to upload 70 GB. Totally worth it - I am never going back to Google Photos.
• joshAg 6y ago
  this is exactly why i think oauth for personal use for most people is nightmare fuel.
• kelnos 6y ago
  Does Google also disable access to Google Takeout when they disable accounts? If so (and I assume they do), IMO that's really the worst of it. It's bad enough that they arbitrarily and capriciously disable accounts, but then to also deny you the ability to take out your personal data... that's reprehensible.
  • dade_ 6y ago
    Everything is locked away. Happened to a movie director. Lost all of his YouTube, blogger, business email, everything. Never recovered any of it. It was why I switched away from them and will never trust them with anything important / irreplaceable.
  • Rebelgecko 6y ago
    I think whether or not takeout is disabled depends on what happened with the account. If the account has content with legal problems, it could be really really bad if someone used Takeout as a free image host with Dropbox/Onedrive integration
• maxharris 6y ago
  Has he done anything to raise the ire of the American intelligence services? The agencies that gave us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO and the like still exist. Google is not ultimately in control over matters like that. Getting information on this stuff is difficult, given the blank check the NSA has had from 1959 onwards: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/516064-state-sanctioned-secrecy-nsas-criminality-shield https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/516064-stat... Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address is misinterpreted by many and totally forgotten by others. Please listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU
• hipnoizz 6y ago
  I remember that long time ago I thought that using Google account to authenticate in other services is nice because, hey, I don't need to remember some many passwords. Luckily after so time I decided that it may not be such a good idea ;). Somehow related - long, long time ago in one of Google services I've used an account bound to my 'external' email that I've been using actively back then. Just few days ago I had a need to login to this service. I know my login (and I still have access to those e-mail), I know my password, but since I haven't used that account for a few years Google wants to send me a verification code on some phone number. Even that the last 2 digits displayed by Google on the verification screen match my phone number apparently I've made a mistake back then and provided a wrong phone number. There is a zero possibility to contact a human person at Google support and their docs in general provide a gentle 'fuck off'. I understand (somewhat...) the scale they operate at, security concerns and hey, I'm not a customer really here. Still it is rather infuriating that I cannot do anything. Fortunately the account and that service is not that important... :/ I've started to untangle myself from Google services some time ago and this incident will only accelerate this. Unfortunately - in general - our dependency on digital services will only increase anyway. With so many services providing some kind of 'free' tiers and all the effort needed to backup your stuff spread across so many accounts it will only get worse.
• mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Reminds me of Amazon. After I listed my own book for sale there, the account can no longer go anywhere near any page related to sales of other products, returning a "Not Authorized". To even read about the subject, I have to log out first. My account with twenty years of trust history has been reduced to buy only. Should I abandon it? I'm not sure.
• supergirl 6y ago
  make gdpr request to download all your data and photos?
• racl101 6y ago
  I remember my buddy using his gmail account as an SMTP server and spammed people with it then got locked out of Google and they cited this as violation of their terms.
• redler 6y ago
  There is a simple three-step process to resolving these recurring problems: (1) Surface the complaint on the front page of Hacker News; (2) Stimulate at least 100 comments on the submission; (3) Wait for someone at Google to sheepishly revert the change, possibly without comment.
• m00x 6y ago
  Before laying down judgement on Google, this is standard procedure for any kind of legal matter / fraud. I work at a bank and it's absolutely critical that we do not let anyone know of our reasons for banning/suspending accounts while there's fraud investigations on the account. Investigations take a long time since we need to determine if the fraud/criminal actions were 100% done by the user of the account, or if the account was compromised and was used as a proxy. 90% of the times we find it's a third party takeover and the user is cleared. There's a good chance his husband's account was taken over and someone was using his Drive to host pirated movies. Think about the other side when thinking about a situation like this. I'm sure Google is taking this very seriously.
  • drivebycomment 6y ago
    Mob doesn't care about reason. They don't care about real possibility that Google has banned the account for the right reason and not divulging is the correct thing to do. It is entirely possible that this is due to a much more severe issue like production or distribution of child pornography or similarly egregious criminal activity that they can't divulge other than to the authorities.
• daotoad 6y ago
  So, the thing that google has that I value most is broad single sign-on support. Is there a service (other than Facebook) that has this capability? Is there a technology that we should be driving adoption of that would allow me to host my own SSO?
  • mdavidn 6y ago
    Use a password manager like 1Password instead. Don't tie your accounts together.
    • Daniel_sk 6y ago
      Yes. I don't see ANY advantage of SSO if you are using a password manager like 1Password which autofill strong passwords and even 2FA if you want. Why would I want to use Google Sign In in this case? It's a single point of failure and you are making it easy to link all your services to a single identity.
      • daotoad 6y ago
        I personally like being able to establish one identity across multiple services.
  • Denvercoder9 6y ago
    > Is there a technology that we should be driving adoption of that would allow me to host my own SSO? OpenID was that technology, but it didn't really get any adoption. OpenID Connect seems to be the replacement based upon OAuth, and seems to be pretty easy to implement if you already support OAuth.
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Sure, there are standards for SSO, like OpenID Connect. Your biggest problem is just that most websites and apps refuse to support open standards, preferring to give people the choice of Google, Facebook, or Twitter. So you can easily set up your own SSO, but nobody will let you use it to log in.
• bilalq 6y ago
  It's so incredibly frustrating that no one at Google seems to care about this. They don't even acknowledge this as an issue to be addressed. It amazes me that their callousness still hasn't backfired further. I was on the receiving end of a similar issue with Google Pay Support for Android and it took weeks for Google to unblock in-app-purchase transactions, even via internal escalations from friends who work there. I guess I should count my blessings that it got cleared up at all. The casual cruelty and opacity is just ridiculous. Surreal and bizarre that this extends even to their own employees. I really do hope this finally serves as a wakeup call for Google, but I'm not holding my breath.
  • brainfog 6y ago
    OP works at google, so at least one person at Google cares about it.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    I have a good friend at Google. The motto they go by is that unless 10000 people are impacted by an issue, it's really not worth their time to investigate. Just create a new account - no one is ever going to care.
• Animats 6y ago
  Sue in small claims court. Costs about $50 to file, plus $100 or so for a process server. Check Google's terms of service.[1] They're not too bad. There's no forced arbitration. You can go to Small Claims Court in Santa Clara County, CA. Google lists the reasons they can terminate an account. It's not a "sole discretion" thing; they have specific reasons listed. So Google will have to show in court that you violated those terms. Definitely go. Google will have to send someone, or they lose. In practice, you'll probably have your problem fixed shortly after your process server delivers the subpoena to 1600 Amphitheater Parkway. California small claims court instructions: [2] [1] https://policies.google.com/terms https://policies.google.com/terms [2] https://www.courts.ca.gov/1007.htm https://www.courts.ca.gov/1007.htm
  • smallnamespace 6y ago
    Being in the same small claims venue as the company is actually a nice side benefit to living in the Bay Area, otherwise you potentially be looking at thousands to hire a lawyer in normal court.
    • ceejayoz 6y ago
      Not necessarily. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/small-claims-book/chapter9-2.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/small-cla... > Most large national businesses can be sued in any state, but smaller businesses that are headquartered in another state, do no business in your state, and have no physical presence in your state can be sued only in the states where they operate.
    • alex_young 6y ago
      Assuming you actually have been wronged Google will wind up paying all of your costs right?
      • ceejayoz 6y ago
        Not necessarily. The court would have to specifically include that in their ruling.
• tobltobs 6y ago
  Everybody not living under a rock knows that some day you might get banned/destroyed by some amok running script from Google. Are we supposed to be enraged that this can happen to buddies from Google employees also?
• DesiLurker 6y ago
  reminds me of the old google-opt-out cartoon https://www.walyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/google-opt-out-village-parody.png https://www.walyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/google-opt... seriously I just checked the google takeout page and saw a looong list of services. I would be devastated if somebody were to 'disable' my google account.
• keb_ 6y ago
  Yikes. This prompted me to quickly find a way to backup my years worth of photos on Google Photos. Was looking to move over to a self-hosted Piwigo instance anyway.
• fraXis 6y ago
  If someone wants to move away from a Google free account, is there a way to see of list of all sites/apps that they have previously granted OAuth access to? I found a way to view this if you have a paid admin account for your organization, but I don't see a way to view a list of previous OAuth granted requests for a free Google account.
  • thedanbob 6y ago
    I think the list is here: https://myaccount.google.com/permissions https://myaccount.google.com/permissions I'm not sure if it's a complete list however, as I use "sign in with google" for almost nothing (for exactly this reason).
    • fraXis 6y ago
      Thanks for this. My list of sites that I have used my Google account to sign in instead of creating a dedicated account is over 4 pages long! I didn't realize that I use "sign in with Google" for so many sites. :-(
• xibalba 6y ago
  I understand this is frustrating, but reading through this person's thread, it reads as an absolute temper tantrum. A few choice quotes: > Our lives are in a bind because of this BULLSHIT > I am out of office reconsidering whether I should work at a company that continuously escalates its attacks towards my family. > [looking for]... A company that provides a steady salary and respects me, my nationality, culture, ethnicity, sexuality and my family It's very hard to take this stuff seriously when someone is claiming lack of access to to their emails and photos is an attack on their life, family, sexuality, etc.
  • benmller313 6y ago
    Not sure about the race / sexuality stuff but my life would be in turmoil if google took away my google account. I have possibly hundreds of accounts linked to it, as well as correspondence and billing info for 10s of physical services.
  • cbsks 6y ago
    He never said that Google attacks his life or sexuality, only his family.
    • xibalba 6y ago
      No. https://twitter.com/miguelytob/status/1316569887175778304?s=19 https://twitter.com/miguelytob/status/1316569887175778304?s=...
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  • jasonv 6y ago
    Pretty much how I'd feel if I worked at G and they locked out my partner's account. There's emotion there, but I don't see their words as being beyond the pale.
  • svrb 6y ago
    The problem is, public temper tantrums have become an effective way of receiving support from tech giants. So you can hardly blame him.
• justinlloyd 6y ago
  I had a Google Pixel phone. Less than a year old old. Treated with kid gloves. Always kept in a case. Pristine condition. An approved Google software update bricked it. This was, by all accounts, a known issue. The phone was under warranty. I sent it back. They shipped me a scratched up refurbished phone. It ran fine for a week then bricked itself due to the same software update. I sent that back. They sent me another, even worse scratched up refurbished phone. That too bricked after a week due to the software update. I've got $3,000 worth of hold charges on my CC whilst Google are playing footsie with my phones. I sent that phone back. They "lost" it and claimed I sent back a different phone. Then that became that I sent back a phone with a different serial number. Then a different model of phone. I pressed for details but they could never tell me any details about the phone I had allegedly sent back. They wanted me to pay for all the phones, then eventually just the one phone that was missing. Finally Google admitted "we lost the phone but that's your problem." After a month I said "fine, you fix this shit or I am doing a charge back." They didn't fix it. I did a credit card charge back for the thousands of dollars currently on hold on my card. Google decided to disable my Google payments account so I couldn't use the Playstore. Or buy groceries using Google Pay. Or process any subscription items attached to the Google payments account. Or access my store rewards cards stored in my Google Pay wallet. Google still owed me for the cost of the original phone that was a brick that I no longer possessed after it was sent to Google. I took Google to small claims, and won. Google decided that wasn't to their liking and disabled the Google account attached to the phone. Fuck Google. P.S. Please stop up-voting. This is not a vote-worthy post. It is simply a "this is what happened." Save your attention for something that is worthy. Save your anger for things that matter.
  • coder543 6y ago
    > Google decided that wasn't to their liking and disabled the Google account attached to the phone. Did you decide to go for Round 2 in small claims court and get the account un-disabled?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • 6y ago
• Jabbles 6y ago
  I remember, long, long ago (2011) there was a similar story about a Google account that was banned, and Matt Cutts himself looked into it and came back with a boring, corporate, legalease answer that was most unlike him. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2795465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2795465 The underlying reason in that instance, was the mistaken identification of childporn. https://nhwn.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/the-thomas-monopoly-affair/ https://nhwn.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/the-thomas-monopoly-af...
  • blntechie 6y ago
    > Matt Cutts That’s some nostalgia for me, used to read almost every post of his blog. I see his last post was about an year back.
• fapi1974 6y ago
  This happened to me. Luckily on a gmail account I don't use much - but it's a wakeup call for sure. Moving out of Google, finally, after years of being on the fence.
• cosmotic 6y ago
  I hope this is fixed by finding and fixing the cause of the erroneous lockout and not just "account restored, problem solved".
• wooptoo 6y ago
  This is why having email service using your own domain is important. Should Gmail decide to suddenly terminate your account you can point the MX records to a new provider and be up and running in an hour or two. I would argue that any free email service is a liability. It's one of the things that's very important & worth paying for.
  • justinlloyd 6y ago
    I run my own mail servers on my own domains. I use my own private "cloud" server for storing photos, documents, file sync, contacts, emails, events and everything else. I have minimized my contact with anything Google as much as I can. I have a couple of different Google accounts because I _need_ to have those accounts for work, or a developer account, but I have reduced any connection with Google to just background noise at this point.
    • wooptoo 6y ago
      Owning and running an email server is a great undertaking. However a lot of email providers will give you the option to use your own domain with their service. Gmail (Workspace) and Fastmail have it and it's pretty straightforward to setup. Even setting up DKIM and SPF is pretty easy. Also having a backup of the email messages is very handy.
      • justinlloyd 6y ago
        Agreed, it isn't for most people. I have a mail server running on my main hosting server that I have complete control over, with certificates and so forth to make it trustworthy. Then I have an in-home mail server that acts as a proxy, which pulls in all the email from the main server, so that when I type in mail.justinlloyd.domain I end up on a page that looks very much like Google's gmail. And of course, multiple backups of the servers in multiple locations. But this isn't for everyone.
• theontheone 6y ago
  The entire thread is full of people jumping on the hate train, did anyone even stop to consider that Google is right on this? https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/40695?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/40695?hl=en There are two points here: first, they claim to provide a reason for closing your account when you log in to your google account (not google service). The OP provided what looks like google service notification on his mobile, but could be on desktop (thanks to reply for noticing this). Second, after escalating the issue internally, decided to email (internally) people saying this is an attack on his family. He is also publicly looking for a job. This seems like a severe overreaction for a google account ban... I think there is reasonable doubt here to suspect something is wrong here more than "Google decided to arbitrarily ban a specific account among billions in order to target one of their employees."
  • Denvercoder9 6y ago
    > The OP did not provide this, only the generic google service notification on his mobile Are you sure? The image in the tweet linked seems to me like the login screen you get on desktop, not a mobile notification.
    • theontheone 6y ago
      That's my bad. Because the gmail link later in the thread is very likely to be mobile, I assumed as the first screenshot was so centered that it was also mobile. But it could be on desktop, so I edited my response
  • sethaurus 6y ago
    > "Google decided to arbitrarily ban a specific account among billions in order to target one of their employees." Nobody is claiming that. Malice is not the issue here; the issue is the effect of having an account banned without recourse or transparency.
    • theontheone 6y ago
      The OP is claiming that. It is the purpose of their most recent tweets. What I'm saying is there shouldn't be outrage until we figure out that the OP isn't lying, which there seems like there is reasonable doubt for. Because for very evil circumstances I wouldn't expect there to be transparency either for legal reasons.
• rootusrootus 6y ago
  This is the part that everyone overlooks when they're basking in the glow if their fancy new free email account. You're not really a customer in the traditional sense, so you have very little leverage. Don't rely on such an account to be the center of your digital life. Don't rely that way on a paid account, either, but still, especially not a free one provided by a huge megacorp.
• bobbob1921 6y ago
  Issues like this- are why I jump’d through hoops to have a somewhat secure , somewhat reliable, and somewhat consistent- on-Prem back up of my Google (gsuite) data. It’s not as easy and robust as it should be, but it helps me sleep a tad bit better at night.
  • reggieband 6y ago
    I just had that same panic realization. Turns out it is pretty easy to do manually. From GSuite click the 9 grid dot application menu and choose Account. Go to "privacy & personalization". Find "Download or delete your data" section and click the "Download your data" link. Seems to be a comprehensive download system including everything I could imagine (including my gmail history which is probably most important). If anyone knows how to automate this, (e.g. to my local machine using a script, or iCloud/Dropbox) I would love to hear it.
    • stevewodil 6y ago
      Use Puppeteer to automate it
• andreicek 6y ago
  I moved away from Google two years ago after using it for close to 7 years. Still didn't manage to move away from Google Photos.
• logicalmonster 6y ago
  Do Google employees realize how disgustingly evil their customer service is? Forget their free services for a second: you can even be spending big bucks with them every month and be randomly blocked by algorithm with no human recourse. I understand that Google can’t feasibly provide free tech support for the entire Internet as they’d probably have to have a million employees just answering phones and emails all day long. What they need to do is find some number (whether it’s $5, $25, $50, or more I have no idea) where they can charge for real customer service. Businesses get shut down and people lose their jobs because of some ad issue they can never find a way to get a solvable problem resolved. It’s sick that Google has gotten away with this for so long.
  • Gibbon1 6y ago
    When I've talked to google employees what I get is they think customers that have issues are trying to scam something. And that allowing a human to try and sort the problem would just enable that. The amount of money you need to pay google a year to change that attitude runs in the six digits.
    • logicalmonster 6y ago
      I can understand being wary of social engineering and scams, and at Google’s scale it’s almost impossible to imagine how many problems they have to deal with every day, but I think that’s an excuse to duck out of solving the problem because it’s not sexy enough for a Google employee to get a promotion for solving. Google wants to provide Here’s the reality. Cable companies have methods of verifying their customers identity when they deal with support requests for private services. Banks have a very good verification process. Phone providers use tools like pin codes and other methodology (see https://www.removemyphone.com/learn/prevent-your-phone-number-from-being-stolen-in-sim-swap-fraud https://www.removemyphone.com/learn/prevent-your-phone-numbe... for instance) to solve this problem. Domain name services (even Godaddy and the like) have figured out how to largely solve this verification problem despite their numerous other shady business practices. Are you telling me that Google with their many geniuses can’t find a technical approach to dealing with this? We have multi-factor authentication and other tools. People are willing to pay money for human support. I can’t believe that Google can’t figure out some means of providing this. Their refusal to me is one of the most evil business practices on the Internet while they pretend that they’re the paragon of virtue. It’s really sick to me and hopefully this case is a wake up call to at least one Google employee how backward and customer unfriendly their overall practices are.
• holoduke 6y ago
  My account at ads.google.com is suspended because of suspicious payments. I never did any payments. I am running a full-scale business using admob and other Google services. I don't see any impact from the suspension on the other Google services luckily. I send numerous appeals. Not even a single response. Already for 3 months now.
• comeonseriously 6y ago
  "What am I being punished for? " "Not going to tell you. But if you apologize, I might unpunish you." Hmmm... Abusive relationship much Google?
• pgib 6y ago
  I just can't understand why Google, Apple, and such companies can't share the specifics around what the violation actually was.
  • tlogan 6y ago
    Because it just creates more problems and work. In our small SaaS we were saying to users why they are banned: spam, abuse, fraudulent cc, etc. and that created just more work for us because these users will then write ‘reviews’, emails, etc how they are not spammers and how we are bad company. Better to lock them out and move on. Of course, we are small SaaS and not Google but sadly I’m not aware of a better solution.
• georgeecollins 6y ago
  No one will read this, but as a public service I have to say: Storing data you need without backup, or maintaining a channel of communication that you can't replace, with a company you don't pay money on a regular basis, is a recipe for disaster. Tech companies love to be roach motels for your data. They want to lull you into dependence on their platform for mostly innocent reasons. If they have something you need make sure you have your own copy.
• gkanai 6y ago
  We, the users of Google's services, are not Google's customers, even though we think we are. The advertisers are google's customers. So when you reassess the 'relationship' this way, Google abusing users is totally fine- Google has billions of users they can treat poorly. They can't treat advertisers poorly.
• dusted 6y ago
  I fucking HATE thinking about E-Mail. This made me rant about it in my blog: http://dusted.dk/pages/phlog/2020-10-15.txt http://dusted.dk/pages/phlog/2020-10-15.txt
• gerash 6y ago
  This is absolutely terrible. All these other companies deal with fraud and abuse in a more humane way. Why can't Google do the same. If someone's actually in charge there, they need to really do a big shake up in whatever team deals with these fraud and account closures as they've been ruining the brand
• jedberg 6y ago
  Every time a "Google banned my account" thread comes up, I like to point out that my Google Adwords account was banned once. I filed an appeal. It's been 20 years this month, I'm still waiting for a response.
  • smileybarry 6y ago
    I've read so many AdSense horror stories that, whenever I thought to use AdSense, I just gave up out of fear of "tainting" my account. Between the fraud false-positives and accounts getting locked (or even lost), it never looked like it was worth the trouble.
  • throw_m239339 6y ago
    Same here, and they owe me quite some money. They absolutely know it because they then had the audacity to send to my physical address a voucher for adsense after banning me for allegedly clicking on ads, which I never did. Now every time I have the opportunity to make a case against using any Google service in a business I'm working in... and I worked in a few big Telecom and IT businesses for the past 15 years, like the first internet provider in my country.
    • jedberg 6y ago
      That's what they denied me for too. Claimed I was clicking on my own ads.
  • nucleardog 6y ago
    We were spending around $800k/yr just for a single group of car dealerships through AdWords. We registered Google accounts for each dealership, we added them to each dealerships' AdWords account so they could see where and how their money was being spent. One account from the middle of the batch, while I was the _only_ one with access and definitely had not done anything unusual with it (and certainly nothing we hadn't done with the other half dozen accounts) was banned before we could provide it to the client. I opened a ticket with the accounts team and didn't get a reply. I escalated through our AdWords contact since account support was, as expected, useless. Figured given overall our company spent millions a year maybe they could at least get this looked at. They were apologetic, but realistic in telling us that there was basically nothing that could be done and it was unlikely anyone would ever respond to the ticket so we should probably just register another Google account and cross our fingers that one didn't get banned. Found the old email the other day. Just passed 6 years with no response from the accounts team.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• g42gregory 6y ago
  I was planning to move away from Gmail, once I ran through 15GB of free quota. After reading this, I am thinking that I need to move to Fastmail sooner. I did not realized that my logins throughout the Internet depend on Google. I can not have anything critical in my life to depend on Google. I guess it’s just risk management.
• grandtheft6uto 6y ago
  I'd be willing to pay a small monthly fee for using Gmail, and get proper support.
• amanzi 6y ago
  My approach with Google and these other big companies is to use their free services but treat them as disposable. For example: I use Google Photos all the time, but my photos are also synced to OneDrive which, in turn, is synced to my computer giving me offline copies as well as another cloud-based backup. I use Gmail (and old Google Apps accounts) for email, but I have MS Outlook continually running on my desktop PC syncing all email accounts to offline PST files. The key takeaway is to not to get reliant on any service (free or paid) without having a backup plan if it went away.
• ketralbin 6y ago
  That really sucks. Since its from google, im not that surprised.
• thordenmark 6y ago
  If you are using Google drive will you lose the data on your local as well? I have a huge amount of work, it would be devastating to lose access to it. I do have backups on storage disks, but still...
• arexxbifs 6y ago
  "Hey, I'm going to leave the control of all my personal files to a faceless third party who can arbitrarily lock me out of access without due process." No. Don't use the cloud for that. "But maybe we can fix the cloud by adding more cloud to the cloud, so that we can back up the cloud to the cloud?" No. Stop using the cloud. "But I have (hundreds of gigs of photos|twenty years of emails) there! I was going to pour a glass of nice Chablis and gingerly sift through them all on a Tuesday evening!" No. Stop using the cloud. "But I'm working on the next Great American Novel and I couldn't possibly be tasked with syncing a backup of it to a USB stick!" No. Stop using the cloud, damnit! How hard is it to understand?
• TedShiller 6y ago
  Gmail is great as long as this doesn't happen to you.
• Shorel 6y ago
  I was very happy to get one of the first Gmail accounts in my country, when it was by invitation only. But this is a distant memory, and nowadays I avoid relying on any single big corporation for anything. Particularly I avoid Google. My main email is in my own domain(s) (paid in intervals of ten years) with gandi.net. Using Duck duck go everywhere I can. I have an Android phone by necessity and because there is no real alternative. I download all my pictures and store them with pCloud instead. No G-drive or Dropbox, as I can't trust these services at all. My Gmail account is used for things that can get spam. All important accounts are in the email of my domain(s). If Google decides to cancel my Google account, it would be a minor nuisance, mainly related to reinstalling the smartphone apps with another account, and that's it.
• paride5745 6y ago
  I honestly moved my main email to Microsoft outlook and I have a ProtonMail for more private communications. Gmail is not that great anyway, it’s too heavy to use their webmail and using IMAP is a major pain due to their stupid labels and not having real folders.
• blntechie 6y ago
  Every time I see these, I get reminded to buy some hard drives and get all the data out of Google but keep forgetting it. Time to follow through.
• mickotron 6y ago
  This year I have completed by goal of being mostly google free. I have yet to replace the Chromecast. Other than that, the transition is complete. I don't want to be held hostage by a single monolithic company with more resources than most nation states.
• 43423434 6y ago
  > In the meantime I tried to escalate internally and they're being a brick wall even tho I work there > And this is how it ends. No one fucking tells me to assume good intent ever again. Fuck all of this. Our lives are in a bind because of this BULLSHIT Tiniest violin. Too many Googlers like him (and here on HN) mistakenly believe they're not evil, just because of that motto (which Google removed) and because the workforce is full of progressive agitators.
• 43423434 6y ago
  > And all his data , some very important and irreplaceable (including personal photos) is held hostage with no explanation #googleaccountdisabled The final response from them just says it was a ToS violation: https://twitter.com/miguelytob/status/1315988742545514496 https://twitter.com/miguelytob/status/1315988742545514496 So all of his husband's data, including "very important and irreplaceable" personal photos, are inaccessible due to a presumed ToS violation. I wonder that violation could be...
• bebelove 6y ago
  Regieconcha@yahoo.com