I recall reports of cases like this nearly every day at AWS, and that was a decade ago. It wasn't unusual, for first-time victims at least, that we'd a) waive

I recall reports of cases like this nearly every day at AWS, and that was a decade ago. It wasn't unusual, for first-time victims at least, that we'd a) waive the fees and b) schedule a solution architect to talk them through using signed URLs or some other mitigation. I have no visibility into current practice either at AWS or GCP but I'd encourage OP to seek billing relief nevertheless, it can't hurt to ask. Sustainable customer growth is the public cloud business model, of which billing surprises are the antithesis.