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Four months ago a friend of mine had his Google account suspended with a vague message about a terms of service violation. He escalated and appealed it with my
by BMorearty 5y ago
Four months ago a friend of mine had his Google account suspended with a vague message about a terms of service violation. He escalated and appealed it with my help. It was no use. He lost everything. Files. Photos. Email. Calendar. Even his business domain registrations. He was paying for Google services like YouTube and storage. He couldn’t even get a download of his data.
This is why I never used Google Cloud. I’ve heard these stories for years. You can lose everything and have no recourse. It’s not worth it.
- IshKebab 5y agoI don't understand why they don't at least allow Google Takeout for banned accounts. They've already done all the hard work of implementing it!
- BMorearty 5y agoSeriously!
- skinkestek 5y agoAlso takeout is kind of underwhelming: It was probably one of the last things Google announced that I was enthusiastic about: The rest here is my personal feeling. It might be wrong. I might have missed something. ... only when trying to use it it is dark patterns in layers to prevent you from actually using it: - getting links to download stuff takes more than enough time to get you to forget it. - and they only last for a very limited time - archives are unwieldy
- londons_explore 5y ago> getting links to download stuff takes more than enough time to get you to forget it. Building takeout archives is incredibly expensive for Google. Do that just a few times and you might have wiped out years of profit Google made off you. Thats because most data in your Google account (eg. a random email or a photo you took in 2013) is only accessed once and then never again. Storage systems are designed for that. Yet when you go and try and access every single piece of data ever, you're putting more load on their storage systems than years of regular use. Thats part of why it takes so long to build the archive - they do it at low priority and slowly so as not to overload the service for other users.
- skinkestek 5y agoAha, that explains a lot of course. Still: why make it so hard to get the archives once they are generated?
- londons_explore 5y agoOnce the archive is generated it isn't hard to download it I don't think... Click the link in the email and it starts downloading... They even have an option to split into multiple files for ease of download if you have slow or unreliable internet, and their download links do support "download managers" which can resume failed downloads. Giving you 7 days to download it seems fine... Remember they are effectively giving you double storage capacity for those 7 days, and hundreds of gigabytes of network egress (which would cost $8 or so if I paid GCP network costs each time I takeout my account).
- skinkestek 5y agoYou defend Google better than any of their official spokespersons IMO :-) I still dislike Google intensely for a number of things but not for this anymore. (In case you are interested: - serving me insulting ads and not giving me good ones whenever I didn't have adblock activated for over a decade. (edit: I've lost count of how many times I've clicked "not interested" on semi nude pictures advertising for scammy dating sites) - causing me hours and hours and hours of frustration by breaking doublequotes - killing Google+ - keeping me worried that they will shut me down until I can migrate my last account off Google and a few weeks - almost killing Firefox - and the open web - scheming to make adblockers impossible - probably more)
- cbolton 5y agoThey send an email when the link is ready though... Also, you know have the option to have downloads prepared for you automatically at periodic intervals.
- pudmaidai 5y agoIt’s easier for them to just lock you out than give you any kind of limited access. But if you can’t login, you can’t request your data either.
- londons_explore 5y agoTwo reasons: * Some account bans are for illegal content - Child porn, bans so an account state can be investigated, copyright claims etc. In that case, letting a user download their data could violate the law/ethics. * Technically implementing this in Googles infrastructure is hard. The login session used by takeout has to have access to all data (so that takeout itself can get your data from each service and build an archive). Stopping you taking that same cookie and using it to access services directly isn't part of their auth model. Despite all this, I think they should try harder, both for the users, but also to save a potentially very expensive EU fine when someone with power in the EU gets impacted by this...
- varispeed 5y agoIf it is "hard" to let user download their data, then they shouldn't be in this business in the first place. It's like they want their cake and eat it too. > very expensive EU fine when someone with power in the EU gets impacted by this... Given how EU works, more likely scenario is money under the table after a period of sabre waving.
- IshKebab 5y agoNeither of those sound like remotely difficult problems. And honestly the first point sounds like an imaginary problem. 1. When banning people, include a field saying whether or not they should be allowed to access Takeout. 2. Include a one-time authentication token for Takeout in the ban email. I'm sure it would require some work to implement but so what?
- Sander_Marechal 5y agoIf he is in Europe he can probably force Google to allow him to download his data under GDPR
- pja 5y agoI believe Google deletes your data fairly quickly after they decide to ban you, so best get that GDPR request in fast.
- varispeed 5y agoHave you tried to use your GDPR rights and complain if they were not delivered? You are most likely get a template response, completely irrelevant to your complaint. Then few more templates when you try to "escalate" and finally you get no replies. That's how those big companies are serious about GDPR. Then if you try to complain to one of the body responsible for GDPR they'll likely say if you don't like the service, delete your account and no further action will be done. GDPR is one of those all sizzle but no stake.
- namibj 5y agoArticle 79 gives the data subject legal standing to bring a civil lawsuit against the data processor. It's been the case before GDPR that you had to at least threaten legal action to make corporations behave. Freedom of association does typically mean that a human can just ban you from ever being their customer again, but that's IMO an important freedom. The monopoly ISP in your municipality doing the same to you does not seem ok, however. And it might not be reasonable to ban ownership of a Google account that's used exclusively for "Sign in with Google".
- varispeed 5y agoBut these articles are largely toothless when it comes to big corporations. I am aware of only one case running against Facebook in the EU. Then it is unrealistic to expect that an average individual will have money to sue the data processor, as the cost is out of reach for most of people.
- 5y ago
- thiht 5y ago> Even his business domain registrations If true this is likely an ICANN violation, or a registry violation in case of ccTLDs. This needs to be reported and could cost them a lot.
- quickthrower2 5y agoIf you are on Google do a regular takeout [α] in preparation for a future ban. It exports everything. Easiest way to back it all up and gives you time to wean off Google. α: https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/
- ahofmann 5y agoThe problem is that Google behaves like an asshole. It doesn't help that you have the option to make a backup beforehand.
- quickthrower2 5y agoYes, I agree. But this does help people both mitigate AND move away from Google services. The main sticking point for me with Google is having all your history searchable and now it’s possible to set that up over your takeout data as you move to someone else for email, calendar etc.