9 ms·

Google banned me from Google Voice

248 points by petemilly 2y ago

elmerfud 2y ago
While people like to scream and lose their mind about who the president is and what they're blathering on about today it's this situation that I never see any politician talk about in a meaningful way and I never see get attention. This situation impacts the average person and has the potential to impact the average person more than who the president is at any given time. Because at least with governmental politics there is actual recourse. Until we demand that our government begin to prioritize consumer rights against these modern-day robber barons this kind of stuff will continue to happen. Unfortunately until it happens to you nobody seems to care. Often times the person that happens to gets blamed because their actions definitely must have caused this. This would actually be a fairly simple thing for the FTC to correct if they wanted to. They're already empowered to do this kind of stuff and wouldn't need any new powers granted to them. They could simply say when an account is suspended or disabled or you are banned including a shadow ban that you must provide the specific details of what caused the ban and what specific provisions were violated in the terms of service. Because when you're the size of Google you effectively are a monopolistic common carrier. So being able to say something like we can do this at any time for any reason is not appropriate at that scale. Because denying you access to phone service is denying you access to a basic utility. It would actually be interesting to see state boards of utilities begin to pull things like this under their control. This would give enormous consumer rights to people. Because while your landline carrier can deny you service and remove your service they must have very strict documented reasons for that and there is an actual transparent appeal process as part of it. Filing an appeal and not being able to be part of the appealed discussion is not an appeal at all.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    I'm the first to dogpile on the Democrats in a lot of areas but I feel they have done very well with the FTC in the past 4 years and it is a shame they did not do a good job at highlighting their accomplishments. This short-lived era of attempting to hold corporations accountable is likely done though now that Republicans are in complete control.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      I'm well aware of it, but if it can be undone entirely on the first day of the next admin, then it's not progress, it's band-aids and we've had too damn many band-aids from the Democrats for decades. Are band-aids good? Sure. Are they a replacement for a cast and splint? No.
      - BadHumans 2y ago
        You can get a cast off tomorrow and I can break your arm again same day so I'm not sure what your analogy is trying to say about longevity.
  - elmerfud 2y ago
    Power shifts back and forth all the time and despite whether they have an R or a D beside their name how they view a particular issue seems to be very fluid on their political beliefs of the moment. Also considering that 80% of the government is reelected at the federal level every two years. If the people cared it would change. Politicians primary goal is to continue to remain in power the problem is that the people are not unified enough in having their expectations conveyed and then sticking to them. Even outside of that the FTC is fully empowered to implement the protections that are needed right now without congresses involvement or the president. It's certainly not as strong as passing a law but they have the authority to regulate this stuff. As do state level utility boards. I don't know how to make people care until it happens to them. Maybe someone on the inside who feels like we do that there should be better consumer protections around this will start banning some very popular politicians or other very famous people who can bring wide scale attention to this problem. I fear without the attention of someone famous getting knocked off and having to fight to get it back there will never be a change.
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  Actually who you vote for determines this a great deal. A democratic president actually brought some bite back to the FTC. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-regulation-consumers-tech-pharma https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-...
- reaperducer 2y ago
  Until we demand that our government begin to prioritize consumer rights against these modern-day robber barons this kind of stuff will continue to happen. Imagine what could happen if the modern-day robber barrons end up on the president's cabinet, making policy decisions. Oh, wait… https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/19/trump-suggests-he-would-give-elon-musk-a-cabinet-position-in-second-term/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/19/trump-...
- kypro 2y ago
  > They could simply say when an account is suspended or disabled or you are banned including a shadow ban that you must provide the specific details of what caused the ban and what specific provisions were violated in the terms of service. I think you're misunderstanding why this happens. Banning without a clear explanation or shadow banning users is a feature, not a bug. It grants platforms the ability to arbitrarily make decisions about who can use their platform without having to apply a consistent standard that would be questioned and challenged. Governments don't want to change this because it benefits them. It means when they're able to tell a platform to ban a user and that user can be banned for "violating the ToS", instead of telling the truth and saying the user was "banned on order of the government". The reason why governments don't care about this issue is because no one with power would benefit from this transparency.
- rssoconnor 2y ago
  > I never see any politician talk about in a meaningful way and I never see get attention. I grew up before number portability. Let me tell you that phone number portability is among the greatest visible government mandated boons in my lifetime (though I suspect there many other less visible ones). The fact that the user in question in this post was able to reassign his phone number at all is basically a modern anti-corporate miracle. I don't really mean to detract from your point. Certainly much more could and should be done. But we have to acknowledge that, miraculously, more than nothing has already been done.
oreoftw 2y ago
The author should consider himself lucky. Just one google service has been suspended. I got my account banned for no reason and lost access to more than 10 years worth of emails, documents, single sign ons to different apps, etc. Only invoking GDPR and the ownership of a domain name allowed me to regain access and restore email service. Without GDPR I would've got nothing at all.
- wetpaws 2y ago
  Could you please share how did GDPR help in this case?
  - oreoftw 2y ago
    Invoking the right to retrieve and correct information helped me to get Google’s attention to my case and unban me.
- rmonvfer 2y ago
  Could you provide a little bit of detail about how you did that? Just in case…
  - oreoftw 2y ago
    Find google data protection officer email. State your request to get the data with a mention of escalation to the Irish Data Protection Officer if no action is taken within a reasonable timeframe. This has magically unbanned me in less than two days. In contrast to two months of tweeting, emailing support, nagging my google eng friends and even support folks via linkedin.
    - einsteinx2 2y ago
      Are you an Irish citizen? Or can anyone contact the Irish DPO because Google is “based” there for taxes or whatever? I’m wondering if I can use this as a US citizen.
      - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
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PaulKeeble 2y ago
If you use Google services eventually this is going to happen, its common and widespread and they aren't interested in fixing the problem. You never get an answer as to what you did wrong and likely it was just an algorithm error anyway. Avoid anything of substance on a google account and what you do use assume it could disappear tomorrow.
sbuttgereit 2y ago
Not to address the author of the article specifically, but only all readers generally.... I would suggest that the moment you chose to have a critical dependency on someone else's services, it becomes incumbent on you to have a disaster recovery plan should that service suddenly become unavailable to you. How formal or intense such a plan is may depend on if you're an individual or a small/mid-sized business that's too small to command the respect of your vendor in the event of a problem (real or imagined on the part of the vendor). You have to take a defensive approach to these relationships even if part of the reason you buy these services is not to worry about such issues: you may have moved and transformed what you have to worry about, but you have not freed yourself from any worry. We can hand-wave that away muttering about, "most people won't understand"... but at the end of the day it's the modern, connected world we live in and failing to be properly educated about that world is fraught with peril. Those that respect that reality will do better than those that don't.
- causal 2y ago
  You are right that this is wise, but it's too much to ask the average user to do. At least in the US, most people lack the technical literacy to do anything but depend on big tech. What we really need is legislation to regulate big tech services as the utilities they really are.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mafuy 2y ago
    That we can just rely on some basic, useful properties is, in my mind, one of the key differences to "third world countries". I don't need to check if my tap water has lead in it because I know that I won't, so I can use this time more effectively to "increase the GDP". I've lived in Vietnam for a year and learned there how impactful these guarantees can be. It is absolutely possible to deal with the problems, but especially in sum it wastes a lot of time and money. In the west, I should not need to check that my utility or email provider is trying to screw me over. I should be able to rely on clean water coming out of the tap all the time, with minimal effort (paying fair bills) on my part. The provider cannot claim that is would be too expensive, or that it would scale worse - that's a solvable problem. If it is more expensive, then that's the true cost that just has to be paid. Yes, the company cannot just dump your waste in the river. Yes, the company cannot just deactivate an email account with sending a paper letter.
kuczmama 2y ago
I have been using Google voice for 10+ years, and it's always been something that concerns me. I've been worried about Google either banning me or dropping the service. Does anyone know of a good alternative, I'm happy to pay for something but the main thing is it needs to be able to work from the browser like Google voice.
- CharlesW 2y ago
  One option is to buy an Ooma ($80) and port your number to it ($40). The my.ooma.com site isn't responsive, but otherwise works fine on mobile.
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    I had never heard of them, but FWIW their "simplysafe competitor" says it comes with phone service, so that one-stop-shopping may interest this audience https://www.ooma.com/home-security/diy-security-system/#:~:text=Includes%20phone%20service https://www.ooma.com/home-security/diy-security-system/#:~:t... ed: however, unlike Google Voice it does not appear this service supports SMS/MMS so it's for sure not a one-to-one replacement :( It _seems_ that Asterisk supports SMS, but from the wording I can't tell if they mean only in Europe or what https://docs.asterisk.org/Configuration/Applications/Short-Message-Service-SMS/Introduction-to-SMS/ https://docs.asterisk.org/Configuration/Applications/Short-M...
- miloignis 2y ago
  I've been playing around with https://jmp.chat/ https://jmp.chat/ (SMS and Voice over XMPP) and might make the switch for my main number soon.
- wiredfool 2y ago
  I've been pondering something based on twilio or similar, but haven't found anything. Don't really need the web calling, but web sms would be useful at times. jmp.chat doesn't really fill me with confidence, but it might be an option in an emergency.
  - 2y ago
worble 2y ago
> Maybe I should actually try to vote with my wallet and switch to that iPhone, move my files from Google Drive to iCloud or Dropbox, and migrate to Fastmail. But I know Google can afford to simply not care. Companies will quite literally treat you like dirt and people continue to use them. I understand there are certain things you're locked into (I very much use android despite google; not like there's much choice in a duopoly) but if they've already shown they don't care about you and you still use google search, chrome, gmail, GCP, storage, etc then that's on you. Why would they change when you're willing to pay despite their crappy practices?
- DoctorOW 2y ago
  Also, even if switching away doesn't send a message to Google. Why would you rely on products that you consider a risk? I didn't switch away from Google because I thought it was a huge financial blow, but because I didn't want to have anything important to me deleted with no notice.
jtbayly 2y ago
He should be more mad, in my opinion. It’s ludicrous that Google can simply kill your phone number and nobody bats an eye. It’s such a fundamental part of life at this point. At the minimum, users should get a “We are no longer willing to provide you service. You have two weeks before service will end. Please switch your number to another provider if you want to keep it.” Other than non-payment, are there other phone companies that simply disable your account without warning and without giving any reason? I can imagine something like, "You are required to live in this geographic range, but the majority of the time you are outside of it.” Or “You are too expensive to continue to support” or any number of other things. But man, no warning, no reason, no recourse, disappear your phone access? That’s just plain bad.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  > It’s ludicrous that Google can simply kill your phone number and nobody bats an eye. It is Google’s phone number. What is ludicrous is not having a federal US identity verification API such that phone numbers are not the end all be all. Or that if the US government wants to use phone numbers for identity verification, they enact legislation to provide legal protections from losing it. But I think leaders like the extrajudicial ability to nuke someone’s life if they need to. Same with bank accounts and know your customer laws that can lock you out for unknown reasons. You wouldn’t want people to have access to a constitutionally protected electronic money account. Then they have less fear. And if you are someone important, then you contact someone in your network to help you out.
  - jtbayly 2y ago
    It’s actually not Google’s phone number, as evidenced by the fact that he could have gone to the FCC and gotten it back if Google refused to release it to him. Edited to add: Also, it’s not true that phone numbers are only so important because of identity verification. That is one reason, but solving that doesn’t let my children’s school call me if Google shuts my number down, just to give one example. Edited to add again: It’s unclear to me now if the FCC actually requires Google to release the number or if Google voluntarily does it (eg to avoid problems with the FCC getting more involved).
shombaboor 2y ago
the best way to get customer service is to be famous and tweet about it. Getting famous is the hard part.
larme 2y ago
Try jmp.chat, you can use an XMPP client to receive phone calls and sms. I use the following services: - phone number: jmp.chat and a textnow number as backup - email: fastmail - search: kagi - map: apple map
- superkuh 2y ago
  I tried kagi for a while. Did you ever notice that kagi image search is just a wrapper around google image search? The results are exactly the same, just in a slightly randomized order.
  - larme 2y ago
    I didn't use google's image search for a long time so I don't know that. But I think kagi pays to use google's data as one of their source. So it's possible the image search results are the same. However the different order/ranking is what separated kagi and google.
lazyeye 2y ago
And at the end of all that he still doesnt know why he was banned. And this was a paying customer. What a truly despicable company google is.
- toast0 2y ago
  > And this was a paying customer. This doesn't really matter to Google; they offer uniform service regardless of means. Maybe if you're a big advertiser it helps; but as a paid GSuite customer, I got no real help when I asked either --- yes, someone answered the phone, but they can't even put in a feature request; and when my employer was acquired and wanted to integrate the two GSuites, that's not possible either; my employer had a small number of accounts so sure, ignore them, but the acquirer is large enough that I would have expected support requests to result in at least a roadmap entry. The only reliable way to get support from Google is to have an employee champion your issue.
bravura 2y ago
IANAL, but my understanding is that EU Digital Services Act (DSA) protects EU consumers against this lack of transparency for moderation/bans. https://freedomhouse.org/article/eu-digital-services-act-win-transparency https://freedomhouse.org/article/eu-digital-services-act-win... "Providers of hosting services, including online platforms, now have an express legal obligation to provide clear and specific statements of reasons for their content moderation decisions. The DSA also empowers users to challenge such decisions through an out-of-court dispute settlement mechanism." https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/16/24074933/european-union-digital-services-act-expansion-moderation-advertising https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/16/24074933/european-union-d... "When it comes to content moderation, sites will have to provide a reason to users when their content or account has been moderated, and offer them a way of complaining and challenging the decision. There are also rules around giving users the ability to flag illegal goods and services found on a platform."
- tantalor 2y ago
  This has nothing to do with content moderation.
umaar 2y ago
Was the number used to sign up for, and receive communications from credit card companies? Is the ban related to signing up for +100 cards? https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/my-credit-and-debit-card-collection https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/my-credit-and-debit-card-colle...
- throwaway313373 2y ago
  Is it a violation of any of the policies?
  - umaar 2y ago
    I imagine it's not, but can also see automated systems flagging the number as being the recipient of messages for over a hundred different financial institutions.
  - qwerpy 2y ago
    Maybe not but I bet that this many unique credit card emails eventually tripped over some threshold in a risk model. It’s too hard to adjust the model for one person, and putting in an exception for this one person means they take on additional risk if that person then goes on to actually do bad things. To be clear I’m not saying it’s ok. Google should make it right and then invest in a scalable way to not keep doing this.
- dguo 2y ago
  Author here. That's a good hypothesis! But I have a strong preference for email over SMS for communication from companies, so I receive almost no texts from credit card companies. It's pretty much limited to an occasional authentication code for logging in (since TOTP-based two-factor is so unfortunately rare).
rty32 2y ago
That's exactly why I have been de-Googling for the past year. I have lost all trust in Google. I still use some of their products, but I make sure I never got in a situation where losing my Google account means losing important data or getting myself into serious trouble.
ein0p 2y ago
Folks, do not use Voice for anything critical. It has all the hallmarks of a "destaffed" project - no significant updates in years, nobody even bothers to rename it every 6 months. For all we know it's a purely volunteer effort at Google, like Reader was shortly before it got canned. I only use it in the cases where I need to leave a phone number and I know I'll get spammed.
- BenjiWiebe 2y ago
  The Android app actually started getting updates again sometime in the last couple of years, including a complete re-do of the GUI.
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
Thankfully when I signed up for Google Voice I had a few friends send me text messages and none of them came through. I wrote it off as unreliable and never thought about it again. Scary to think I almost let myself become reliant on a Google service back when I was naive enough to think that was a good idea.
josefresco 2y ago
>Sure I never paid for Google Voice, but Google never gave me an option to pay for it. Pretty sure you can pay for Google Voice: https://support.google.com/a/answer/9229433 https://support.google.com/a/answer/9229433 While this sucks, I know that my free Google accounts (including Voice) could go poof at any time and I don't really have recourse. For this reason, my Google Voice number is only used for likely spammers. It's also part of my sales pitch or "branded email" to web clients: "You don't want to operate your business on a free email address".
deleted 2y ago
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peterfisher 2y ago
My strategy for this class of issue is paying Google. I pay for Google Apps (now rebranded to workspace). I have so much of my life tied up into the Google Ecosystem I see no problem paying per month for their services. This also provides me a number to call when shit doesn't work.
- michaelt 2y ago
  From the article: > And I directly pay Google by subscribing to Google One, YouTube Premium, and Google Workspace (just for my custom domain email). [...] > I subscribe to a Google One plan. I knew that one of the more understated benefits is the ability to get live support from an actual person, [...] When I brought the conversation back to the Google Voice suspension, they were unable to access the ticket that was created when I submitted my appeal.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  Reminds me of how Google banned a game developer trying to port a popular title to Stadia
- einsteinx2 2y ago
  They also ban people that pay them.
transcriptase 2y ago
I’m getting sick of the “take no responsibility for human or computer mistakes by creating automated processes where fixing the mistake manually can’t be done or hurts a KPI”. FedEx lost my package. Apparently there’s no process to flag it missing without being able to physically scan the missing item (???). It’s permanently marked as “out for delivery”, so all of their systems tell you everything is fine and actively work against you ever reaching a human. Meanwhile the sender has an automated system that checks the FedEx tracking number, sees “out for delivery”, and does the same thing. Even when I do reach humans at both FedEx and the sender it’s obvious they can’t do anything except sympathize with the situation. I feel like I’m part of some sort of psychological experiment at this point.
- freedomben 2y ago
  Yeah, this is especially maddening because drivers are just people, and people can easily make mistakes (or in some cases, straight up steal the package). And even if it does eventually get straightened out, it will be weeks and weeks until you get the replacement (or original). This has happened to me with very time sensitive things where I paid for expedited shipping. Well the re-shipment went out via slow-boat ground, and they wouldn't send it out until the original was fully returned to sender. And ... no refund on the expedited shipping.
nfriedly 2y ago
Damn, that one hits close to home. I have a custom domain for my email + a docker instance running Thunderbird, configured to keep an up-to-date local copy of my gmail. So if I lost access to gmail, it'd be a pain in the rear, but I wouldn't really loose that much. But I hadn't thought much about my google voice account. That's the phone number I usually give out, although some friends and family do have my verizon number. I suppose I need to figure out how to make regular backups of my google voice messages also.
causal 2y ago
This is why I ported my Google number away years ago, and I'm happy I did so. That said, phone is considered a utility, and I"m puzzled why Google Voice isn't regulated as such by now.
dansimau 2y ago
Yet another Google account/service-banning horror story. For this reason, I proactively migrated off Gmail earlier this year to Fastmail. Very happy that I did. The only important thing I have left on Google now is 15 years of Location History. I'm still figuring out where to move that to.
- Aachen 2y ago
  I didn't even know Google had this feature until people complained about it tracking you by default. I've always used OsmAnd for navigation and had automatic trip recording turned on as a gimmick, on rare occasions it would be interesting to look back where I went wrong and got rerouted or where the new road runs exactly to put it on OpenStreetMap. Now, with also some ten years of history, it actually makes for an exceedingly interesting plot of where I've been (around town as well as globally). I'm surprised OsmAnd manages to render millions upon millions of line segments from all the gpx files in a single map view Anyway, roundabout way of saying: self-"hosting" years of location history works for me directly on my phone, no first- or third-party service needed. If you don't need a big tech product that uploads everyone's location to generate traffic info, it's going to be a learning curve (it's chock full of features, so getting around the UI can be tricky) but I can recommend OsmAnd. Also hearing good stories of OrganicMaps but don't know if they do gpx tracking or displaying Importing should be a matter of figuring out how to convert whatever format Google uses into GPX files, which are just XML files with coordinates and timestamps in them. I'm confident someone will have made a converter given how ubiquitous as well as simple gpx is, if this is the route you want to go or try
  - einsteinx2 2y ago
    Thanks for the tip about OsmAnd! Google maps is one of the last Google services I use because for some reason Apple Maps doesn’t support directions/navigation in the country I live in even though it has full maps and even traffic. Just installed the iOS app and while it does look like the UI will take a little getting used to, this looks like a solid option!
    - 2y ago
yandrypozo 2y ago
Yet another "Google did this evil thing to me ..." article
stronglikedan 2y ago
Slightly OT, but since it was mentioned in the article, only slightly: > A silver lining is that with the new line, I was able to get a new iPhone 15 for almost free after bill credits. No, you just got free financing on the phone. If you compare their contract plan rates to their prepaid plan rates, you're paying more over the course of your contract for the same plan.
- trog 2y ago
  Heh this stood out to me as well for the same reason. It's wild to me that phone companies still get away with this trick.
gpspake 2y ago
Life pro tip (I believe that everyone should do this): - Buy a domain and set up a custom email that represents you like firstname@firstlast.com - you own this domain and email address and no company, with the exception of your registrar maybe, has any control over it or authority to take it from you. - Set up a dummy gmail/proton/whatever acct with a random address - this address will never be used or exposed publicly but it will represent your online email hosting acct. - Forward your custom email address to the email provider address and configure the web client to send from your custom address. - set your provider email account up in a local client like outlook that allows you to create a local backup. - continue watching your previous account and updating your accounts to your new lifetime address. At some point, you should be getting minimal emails to the old account, then you can forward it to your new one. The idea here is that you've decoupled your identity (your email address) from your webmail provider (gmail) So google inexplicably cuts your access. Now what? No problem. You have a local backup of all your emails in outlook. You repeat the process with a different service like proton (or a new gmail acct) with a new dummy email. Then you set the new acct up in outlook and drag all of the emails from your old acct in to the new one you haven't missed a beat. You're still sending and receiving emails to/from the same address and you can access all your historical emails in the new hosting acct because you migrated/synced them all over locally in outlook. Losing access to your email identity is arguably one of the most catastrophic scenarios you can think of in terms of being online. This guards against that about as much as possible. It doesn't cover other services like voice and stuff but you can follow similar strategies for things like documents and files.
- WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
  This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever. What then? Whoever owns your domain owns your email address. It's a good solution but it's got its faults too.
  - nobody9999 2y ago
    >This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever. What then? Whoever owns your domain owns your email address. It's a good solution but it's got its faults too. Yeah, this is great until you lose control of your home because you forgot to pay the mortgage or whatever. What then? The bank owns your home. So, obviously, you should never buy a home with a loan, right? A mortgage is a good solution, but its got its faults too.
Gemdation 2y ago
He was also targeted by Google's automated system? Odd, he was not so lucky. > My only worry has been that it seems like another product that Google could easily decide to kill off and send to the Google graveyard at any moment. I feel the same way about Blogger, and I even had a page on Blogger that was banned after I signed in on their Android app. This was around 2020-2021 and I only requested a manual approval by an email button IIRC, that got that page back up as fast as it got taken down. It is sad that Google Voice and Blogger are neglected enough for this to happen.
perryizgr8 2y ago
I've a very simple rule after multiple bad experiences dealing with google products: I'm never going to pay for any google service or product ever again. If its free I'll use it, and make sure i can move my data off it when (not if) they decide to shutter it.
textech 2y ago
Welcome to the club! My Adsense account was banned years ago with no explanation or anything. They even stole my balance. I've heard of similar horror stories of people losing years worth of email and other data with no recourse. As machine learning algorithms become more widespread, expect this to become even more common with a lot of services. Whether paid or free, you're just a number and can be disabled at anytime whenever their flawed algorithms flag you for any reason. I've been actively switching away from Google as much as possible and encourage others to do the same. For email, I use custom domain (still hosted on old Google Apps) so I can switch whenever needed.
cantsingh 2y ago
Yeah, this is a nightmare scenario for me and why I moved off of Google Voice after using it nearly my entire adult life (shoutout GrandCentral!). Google is just not reliable anymore.
andrewinardeer 2y ago
This guy is lucky they only banned his Google Voice account. Years ago I lost an entire Yahoo! account with paid hosting for my side gig at the time along with years emails because I apparently broke their ToS by asking a question deemed inappropriate on Yahoo! Answers.
- kylehotchkiss 2y ago
  > inappropriate on Yahoo! Answers. How can ANY question have been too inappropriate for Yahoo! Answers? That was a true treasure of the web RIP Am I Gregnant?
  - andrewinardeer 2y ago
    https://youtu.be/EShUeudtaFg?si=9WLkm-9ERWPyF51z https://youtu.be/EShUeudtaFg?si=9WLkm-9ERWPyF51z
bastard_op 2y ago
This is actually fairly terrifying, I have used google voice for around 15 years myself (since acquisition), and use it as my main inbound line for multiple numbers actually. After verizon screwed me too circa 2009, I treat cell phones like burners, and really only use GVoice as my main inbound. It is all my mfa, sms, professional identity number, etc, and has always been solid as such as I use it with a paid gsuite I run my life out of too. If they terminated my voice, I would be very much up a creek, and something I've considered as google tends to graveyard services enough and I can't imagine it is still high on anyone's give a shit list there. I'd be curious if anyone else uses a like methodology with another service out there today. I've looked for alternatives over the years, and find really none for my needs for everything Google Voice provides and the android integration I use.
- xethos 2y ago
  Oh hey, I've seen people like you. and it prompted me, several years ago, to do something similar with Voip.ms. My "one number" was ported from a telco, and has lived at this paid service, with customer support, for over six years now. One side affect of this is, because it started out as a telco number, on't blackball it like they might other VoIP numbers. Now all my SMS OTPs, real SMS, MMS, and transcribed voicemail all go to my email, which I consider impossibly convenient - real-time, but not dependent on a SIM card Outgoing calls are through the built-in Android SIP client [0], and so show up as my one number (and are recorded by defualt in my single-party consent nation) Incoming calls are forwarded to my SIM (for reliability). All in all, it works pretty well. There was a series of outages around 2019 or so, but that's been the worst of it. And the benefits of getting SMS to my home country during international travel, and calling too, for no extra charge, is worth it to me. Though given your setup, I doubt I have to tell you about why it's so handy [0] This was removed... I dunno, a few years ago? But I currently use a BlackBerry KeyOne that never made it past 8.1, because the battery life, repairability, and keyboard are exactly what I want.
  - bastard_op 2y ago
    Thanks for the tip with voip.ms! Interesting, usually most voip providers for what I would like require more than 1 user, hadn't really found anyone with all the features that would sell to an individual. I hadn't thought much about using android as a sip client raw, I forget it does that and never have used to know how good it is, but I'll take your word for it as usable. The rest is just having a suitable sms method to respond through it like a cell phone as natively as possible. Not sure I'd like dealing with sms as email fully. Back around 2015 I was using switch.co for my business, which was pretty awesome for like $15 a month. I setup a full IVR with voice prompts, had a great android client, web client, pretty much did everything too. Sadly they seem to have went poof when last I went looking for google voice alternatives, but was thinking of using them again for my personal line too. I'll certainly keep voip.ms in mind for if/when google puts the axe to voice finally.
trog 2y ago
Is there a simple small claims court approach to this that would serve as a more convoluted way to actually access support from Google and other large companies? I feel like if this happened to me I wouldn't even try getting in touch with Google support, having had enough experience myself and read enough of these stories to know it would be a frustrating waste of time. But if there was a legal hack to do it that forced them to reply and cost them more money, even if it cost me some, it might be worth it in cases where the downsides (like losing your phone number of 15 years!!) are so high.
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
This is why I export my emails to my laptop on a regular basis with GYB (https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back) even though I am a paying Google for Business customer. The real controversy here however is the dependency on a US phone number for securely transacting in so many ways. Carriers barely can hold onto a number for you with SIM swaps and there is no such concept as "owning" a phone number
beej71 2y ago
I went back to using my cell number for exactly this reason. My Google Voice number still works, but I don't want to risk it getting locked out for no reason. I have stopped using Gmail, Google One, and Google Voice. I still use photos, contacts, and calendar, but I frequently do takeouts of all those and can handle it if they die. It's trouble I just don't need. But I'm guessing Google doesn't notice if a few of us leave, so why should they change?
metalman 2y ago
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dicjsnw 2y ago
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cromka 2y ago
I use Google Voice with my number after having left the US for Europe. I don’t need any of the Voice features and could rely on VoWiFi when roaming instead, except maintaining even the most basic line in the US was costly, at least the last time I checked a few years back. Any idea if this has changed in any way? Are there any plans that cost little to none that won’t be cancelled with little use?
- einsteinx2 2y ago
  I’m in the same boat. When I was just recently back in the US, I looked for the cheapest prepaid cell phone plan that could activate a line with an eSIM from their app for instant sign up and supported WiFi for calls and texts. My reason was to have a “real” US number for SMS verifications that block VOIP services like Google Voice which causes me headaches. I ended up signing up for a $10/mo unlimited calls and texts plan from US Mobile with 2 gigs of data. If you use their low cost plan you can get the same for a little cheaper or you can cut down the number of calls, texts, and data per month and get it down as low as around $5/mo I think. For me the $10 was worth it and means I’ll always have data when traveling back to the US as well without buying a temporary data eSIM like I usually do so that cancels out some of the cost for me. So far it’s worked fine for me since I got back home outside the US, though I don’t use it much and usually keep the eSIM disabled so it doesn’t burn battery looking for a network it won’t find (plan doesn’t have roaming so it’ll always search). Also I don’t get the ability to get messages on my computer like with Google Voice, so I ended up keeping my GV line instead of porting it just in case I didn’t end up liking the idea. I’ll probably keep using my GV number as my main US number for now until I see if I want to stay with the mobile plan, but $120/yr seems reasonable to have a non-VOIP US number available to me and data when I travel home once or twice a year. There are other prepaid plans you can use as well, but it seemed like they all bottomed out around the $10/mo mark. I think you need to physically be in the US when you buy the service on any of these prepaid carriers to connect to the network once and activate the eSIM, but after that you can use it on only wifi or even cell data from your main line anywhere.
mediumsmart 2y ago
That sucks. Another non-dissenting voice silenced.

248 points by petemilly 2y ago

While people like to scream and lose their mind about who the president is and what they're blathering on about today it's this situation that I never see any politician talk about in a meaningful way and I never see get attention. This situation impacts the average person and has the potential to impact the average person more than who the president is at any given time. Because at least with governmental politics there is actual recourse. Until we demand that our government begin to prioritize consumer rights against these modern-day robber barons this kind of stuff will continue to happen. Unfortunately until it happens to you nobody seems to care. Often times the person that happens to gets blamed because their actions definitely must have caused this. This would actually be a fairly simple thing for the FTC to correct if they wanted to. They're already empowered to do this kind of stuff and wouldn't need any new powers granted to them. They could simply say when an account is suspended or disabled or you are banned including a shadow ban that you must provide the specific details of what caused the ban and what specific provisions were violated in the terms of service. Because when you're the size of Google you effectively are a monopolistic common carrier. So being able to say something like we can do this at any time for any reason is not appropriate at that scale. Because denying you access to phone service is denying you access to a basic utility. It would actually be interesting to see state boards of utilities begin to pull things like this under their control. This would give enormous consumer rights to people. Because while your landline carrier can deny you service and remove your service they must have very strict documented reasons for that and there is an actual transparent appeal process as part of it. Filing an appeal and not being able to be part of the appealed discussion is not an appeal at all.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
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- BadHumans 2y ago
  I'm the first to dogpile on the Democrats in a lot of areas but I feel they have done very well with the FTC in the past 4 years and it is a shame they did not do a good job at highlighting their accomplishments. This short-lived era of attempting to hold corporations accountable is likely done though now that Republicans are in complete control.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    I'm well aware of it, but if it can be undone entirely on the first day of the next admin, then it's not progress, it's band-aids and we've had too damn many band-aids from the Democrats for decades. Are band-aids good? Sure. Are they a replacement for a cast and splint? No.
    - BadHumans 2y ago
      You can get a cast off tomorrow and I can break your arm again same day so I'm not sure what your analogy is trying to say about longevity.
- elmerfud 2y ago
  Power shifts back and forth all the time and despite whether they have an R or a D beside their name how they view a particular issue seems to be very fluid on their political beliefs of the moment. Also considering that 80% of the government is reelected at the federal level every two years. If the people cared it would change. Politicians primary goal is to continue to remain in power the problem is that the people are not unified enough in having their expectations conveyed and then sticking to them. Even outside of that the FTC is fully empowered to implement the protections that are needed right now without congresses involvement or the president. It's certainly not as strong as passing a law but they have the authority to regulate this stuff. As do state level utility boards. I don't know how to make people care until it happens to them. Maybe someone on the inside who feels like we do that there should be better consumer protections around this will start banning some very popular politicians or other very famous people who can bring wide scale attention to this problem. I fear without the attention of someone famous getting knocked off and having to fight to get it back there will never be a change.
Mistletoe 2y ago
Actually who you vote for determines this a great deal. A democratic president actually brought some bite back to the FTC. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-regulation-consumers-tech-pharma https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-...
reaperducer 2y ago
Until we demand that our government begin to prioritize consumer rights against these modern-day robber barons this kind of stuff will continue to happen. Imagine what could happen if the modern-day robber barrons end up on the president's cabinet, making policy decisions. Oh, wait… https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/19/trump-suggests-he-would-give-elon-musk-a-cabinet-position-in-second-term/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/19/trump-...
kypro 2y ago
> They could simply say when an account is suspended or disabled or you are banned including a shadow ban that you must provide the specific details of what caused the ban and what specific provisions were violated in the terms of service. I think you're misunderstanding why this happens. Banning without a clear explanation or shadow banning users is a feature, not a bug. It grants platforms the ability to arbitrarily make decisions about who can use their platform without having to apply a consistent standard that would be questioned and challenged. Governments don't want to change this because it benefits them. It means when they're able to tell a platform to ban a user and that user can be banned for "violating the ToS", instead of telling the truth and saying the user was "banned on order of the government". The reason why governments don't care about this issue is because no one with power would benefit from this transparency.
rssoconnor 2y ago
> I never see any politician talk about in a meaningful way and I never see get attention. I grew up before number portability. Let me tell you that phone number portability is among the greatest visible government mandated boons in my lifetime (though I suspect there many other less visible ones). The fact that the user in question in this post was able to reassign his phone number at all is basically a modern anti-corporate miracle. I don't really mean to detract from your point. Certainly much more could and should be done. But we have to acknowledge that, miraculously, more than nothing has already been done.

oreoftw 2y ago

The author should consider himself lucky. Just one google service has been suspended. I got my account banned for no reason and lost access to more than 10 years worth of emails, documents, single sign ons to different apps, etc. Only invoking GDPR and the ownership of a domain name allowed me to regain access and restore email service. Without GDPR I would've got nothing at all.

wetpaws 2y ago
Could you please share how did GDPR help in this case?
- oreoftw 2y ago
  Invoking the right to retrieve and correct information helped me to get Google’s attention to my case and unban me.
rmonvfer 2y ago
Could you provide a little bit of detail about how you did that? Just in case…
- oreoftw 2y ago
  Find google data protection officer email. State your request to get the data with a mention of escalation to the Irish Data Protection Officer if no action is taken within a reasonable timeframe. This has magically unbanned me in less than two days. In contrast to two months of tweeting, emailing support, nagging my google eng friends and even support folks via linkedin.
  - einsteinx2 2y ago
    Are you an Irish citizen? Or can anyone contact the Irish DPO because Google is “based” there for taxes or whatever? I’m wondering if I can use this as a US citizen.
    - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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PaulKeeble 2y ago

If you use Google services eventually this is going to happen, its common and widespread and they aren't interested in fixing the problem. You never get an answer as to what you did wrong and likely it was just an algorithm error anyway. Avoid anything of substance on a google account and what you do use assume it could disappear tomorrow.

sbuttgereit 2y ago

Not to address the author of the article specifically, but only all readers generally.... I would suggest that the moment you chose to have a critical dependency on someone else's services, it becomes incumbent on you to have a disaster recovery plan should that service suddenly become unavailable to you. How formal or intense such a plan is may depend on if you're an individual or a small/mid-sized business that's too small to command the respect of your vendor in the event of a problem (real or imagined on the part of the vendor). You have to take a defensive approach to these relationships even if part of the reason you buy these services is not to worry about such issues: you may have moved and transformed what you have to worry about, but you have not freed yourself from any worry. We can hand-wave that away muttering about, "most people won't understand"... but at the end of the day it's the modern, connected world we live in and failing to be properly educated about that world is fraught with peril. Those that respect that reality will do better than those that don't.

causal 2y ago
You are right that this is wise, but it's too much to ask the average user to do. At least in the US, most people lack the technical literacy to do anything but depend on big tech. What we really need is legislation to regulate big tech services as the utilities they really are.
- deleted 2y ago
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- mafuy 2y ago
  That we can just rely on some basic, useful properties is, in my mind, one of the key differences to "third world countries". I don't need to check if my tap water has lead in it because I know that I won't, so I can use this time more effectively to "increase the GDP". I've lived in Vietnam for a year and learned there how impactful these guarantees can be. It is absolutely possible to deal with the problems, but especially in sum it wastes a lot of time and money. In the west, I should not need to check that my utility or email provider is trying to screw me over. I should be able to rely on clean water coming out of the tap all the time, with minimal effort (paying fair bills) on my part. The provider cannot claim that is would be too expensive, or that it would scale worse - that's a solvable problem. If it is more expensive, then that's the true cost that just has to be paid. Yes, the company cannot just dump your waste in the river. Yes, the company cannot just deactivate an email account with sending a paper letter.

kuczmama 2y ago

I have been using Google voice for 10+ years, and it's always been something that concerns me. I've been worried about Google either banning me or dropping the service. Does anyone know of a good alternative, I'm happy to pay for something but the main thing is it needs to be able to work from the browser like Google voice.

CharlesW 2y ago
One option is to buy an Ooma ($80) and port your number to it ($40). The my.ooma.com site isn't responsive, but otherwise works fine on mobile.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  I had never heard of them, but FWIW their "simplysafe competitor" says it comes with phone service, so that one-stop-shopping may interest this audience https://www.ooma.com/home-security/diy-security-system/#:~:text=Includes%20phone%20service https://www.ooma.com/home-security/diy-security-system/#:~:t... ed: however, unlike Google Voice it does not appear this service supports SMS/MMS so it's for sure not a one-to-one replacement :( It _seems_ that Asterisk supports SMS, but from the wording I can't tell if they mean only in Europe or what https://docs.asterisk.org/Configuration/Applications/Short-Message-Service-SMS/Introduction-to-SMS/ https://docs.asterisk.org/Configuration/Applications/Short-M...
miloignis 2y ago
I've been playing around with https://jmp.chat/ https://jmp.chat/ (SMS and Voice over XMPP) and might make the switch for my main number soon.
wiredfool 2y ago
I've been pondering something based on twilio or similar, but haven't found anything. Don't really need the web calling, but web sms would be useful at times. jmp.chat doesn't really fill me with confidence, but it might be an option in an emergency.
- 2y ago

worble 2y ago

> Maybe I should actually try to vote with my wallet and switch to that iPhone, move my files from Google Drive to iCloud or Dropbox, and migrate to Fastmail. But I know Google can afford to simply not care. Companies will quite literally treat you like dirt and people continue to use them. I understand there are certain things you're locked into (I very much use android despite google; not like there's much choice in a duopoly) but if they've already shown they don't care about you and you still use google search, chrome, gmail, GCP, storage, etc then that's on you. Why would they change when you're willing to pay despite their crappy practices?

DoctorOW 2y ago
Also, even if switching away doesn't send a message to Google. Why would you rely on products that you consider a risk? I didn't switch away from Google because I thought it was a huge financial blow, but because I didn't want to have anything important to me deleted with no notice.

jtbayly 2y ago

He should be more mad, in my opinion. It’s ludicrous that Google can simply kill your phone number and nobody bats an eye. It’s such a fundamental part of life at this point. At the minimum, users should get a “We are no longer willing to provide you service. You have two weeks before service will end. Please switch your number to another provider if you want to keep it.” Other than non-payment, are there other phone companies that simply disable your account without warning and without giving any reason? I can imagine something like, "You are required to live in this geographic range, but the majority of the time you are outside of it.” Or “You are too expensive to continue to support” or any number of other things. But man, no warning, no reason, no recourse, disappear your phone access? That’s just plain bad.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
> It’s ludicrous that Google can simply kill your phone number and nobody bats an eye. It is Google’s phone number. What is ludicrous is not having a federal US identity verification API such that phone numbers are not the end all be all. Or that if the US government wants to use phone numbers for identity verification, they enact legislation to provide legal protections from losing it. But I think leaders like the extrajudicial ability to nuke someone’s life if they need to. Same with bank accounts and know your customer laws that can lock you out for unknown reasons. You wouldn’t want people to have access to a constitutionally protected electronic money account. Then they have less fear. And if you are someone important, then you contact someone in your network to help you out.
- jtbayly 2y ago
  It’s actually not Google’s phone number, as evidenced by the fact that he could have gone to the FCC and gotten it back if Google refused to release it to him. Edited to add: Also, it’s not true that phone numbers are only so important because of identity verification. That is one reason, but solving that doesn’t let my children’s school call me if Google shuts my number down, just to give one example. Edited to add again: It’s unclear to me now if the FCC actually requires Google to release the number or if Google voluntarily does it (eg to avoid problems with the FCC getting more involved).

shombaboor 2y ago

the best way to get customer service is to be famous and tweet about it. Getting famous is the hard part.

larme 2y ago

Try jmp.chat, you can use an XMPP client to receive phone calls and sms. I use the following services: - phone number: jmp.chat and a textnow number as backup - email: fastmail - search: kagi - map: apple map

superkuh 2y ago
I tried kagi for a while. Did you ever notice that kagi image search is just a wrapper around google image search? The results are exactly the same, just in a slightly randomized order.
- larme 2y ago
  I didn't use google's image search for a long time so I don't know that. But I think kagi pays to use google's data as one of their source. So it's possible the image search results are the same. However the different order/ranking is what separated kagi and google.

lazyeye 2y ago

And at the end of all that he still doesnt know why he was banned. And this was a paying customer. What a truly despicable company google is.

toast0 2y ago
> And this was a paying customer. This doesn't really matter to Google; they offer uniform service regardless of means. Maybe if you're a big advertiser it helps; but as a paid GSuite customer, I got no real help when I asked either --- yes, someone answered the phone, but they can't even put in a feature request; and when my employer was acquired and wanted to integrate the two GSuites, that's not possible either; my employer had a small number of accounts so sure, ignore them, but the acquirer is large enough that I would have expected support requests to result in at least a roadmap entry. The only reliable way to get support from Google is to have an employee champion your issue.

bravura 2y ago

IANAL, but my understanding is that EU Digital Services Act (DSA) protects EU consumers against this lack of transparency for moderation/bans. https://freedomhouse.org/article/eu-digital-services-act-win-transparency https://freedomhouse.org/article/eu-digital-services-act-win... "Providers of hosting services, including online platforms, now have an express legal obligation to provide clear and specific statements of reasons for their content moderation decisions. The DSA also empowers users to challenge such decisions through an out-of-court dispute settlement mechanism." https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/16/24074933/european-union-digital-services-act-expansion-moderation-advertising https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/16/24074933/european-union-d... "When it comes to content moderation, sites will have to provide a reason to users when their content or account has been moderated, and offer them a way of complaining and challenging the decision. There are also rules around giving users the ability to flag illegal goods and services found on a platform."

tantalor 2y ago
This has nothing to do with content moderation.

umaar 2y ago

Was the number used to sign up for, and receive communications from credit card companies? Is the ban related to signing up for +100 cards? https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/my-credit-and-debit-card-collection https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/my-credit-and-debit-card-colle...

throwaway313373 2y ago
Is it a violation of any of the policies?
- umaar 2y ago
  I imagine it's not, but can also see automated systems flagging the number as being the recipient of messages for over a hundred different financial institutions.
- qwerpy 2y ago
  Maybe not but I bet that this many unique credit card emails eventually tripped over some threshold in a risk model. It’s too hard to adjust the model for one person, and putting in an exception for this one person means they take on additional risk if that person then goes on to actually do bad things. To be clear I’m not saying it’s ok. Google should make it right and then invest in a scalable way to not keep doing this.
dguo 2y ago
Author here. That's a good hypothesis! But I have a strong preference for email over SMS for communication from companies, so I receive almost no texts from credit card companies. It's pretty much limited to an occasional authentication code for logging in (since TOTP-based two-factor is so unfortunately rare).

rty32 2y ago

That's exactly why I have been de-Googling for the past year. I have lost all trust in Google. I still use some of their products, but I make sure I never got in a situation where losing my Google account means losing important data or getting myself into serious trouble.

ein0p 2y ago

Folks, do not use Voice for anything critical. It has all the hallmarks of a "destaffed" project - no significant updates in years, nobody even bothers to rename it every 6 months. For all we know it's a purely volunteer effort at Google, like Reader was shortly before it got canned. I only use it in the cases where I need to leave a phone number and I know I'll get spammed.

BenjiWiebe 2y ago
The Android app actually started getting updates again sometime in the last couple of years, including a complete re-do of the GUI.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

Thankfully when I signed up for Google Voice I had a few friends send me text messages and none of them came through. I wrote it off as unreliable and never thought about it again. Scary to think I almost let myself become reliant on a Google service back when I was naive enough to think that was a good idea.

josefresco 2y ago

>Sure I never paid for Google Voice, but Google never gave me an option to pay for it. Pretty sure you can pay for Google Voice: https://support.google.com/a/answer/9229433 https://support.google.com/a/answer/9229433 While this sucks, I know that my free Google accounts (including Voice) could go poof at any time and I don't really have recourse. For this reason, my Google Voice number is only used for likely spammers. It's also part of my sales pitch or "branded email" to web clients: "You don't want to operate your business on a free email address".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

peterfisher 2y ago

My strategy for this class of issue is paying Google. I pay for Google Apps (now rebranded to workspace). I have so much of my life tied up into the Google Ecosystem I see no problem paying per month for their services. This also provides me a number to call when shit doesn't work.

michaelt 2y ago
From the article: > And I directly pay Google by subscribing to Google One, YouTube Premium, and Google Workspace (just for my custom domain email). [...] > I subscribe to a Google One plan. I knew that one of the more understated benefits is the ability to get live support from an actual person, [...] When I brought the conversation back to the Google Voice suspension, they were unable to access the ticket that was created when I submitted my appeal.
anal_reactor 2y ago
Reminds me of how Google banned a game developer trying to port a popular title to Stadia
einsteinx2 2y ago
They also ban people that pay them.

transcriptase 2y ago

I’m getting sick of the “take no responsibility for human or computer mistakes by creating automated processes where fixing the mistake manually can’t be done or hurts a KPI”. FedEx lost my package. Apparently there’s no process to flag it missing without being able to physically scan the missing item (???). It’s permanently marked as “out for delivery”, so all of their systems tell you everything is fine and actively work against you ever reaching a human. Meanwhile the sender has an automated system that checks the FedEx tracking number, sees “out for delivery”, and does the same thing. Even when I do reach humans at both FedEx and the sender it’s obvious they can’t do anything except sympathize with the situation. I feel like I’m part of some sort of psychological experiment at this point.

freedomben 2y ago
Yeah, this is especially maddening because drivers are just people, and people can easily make mistakes (or in some cases, straight up steal the package). And even if it does eventually get straightened out, it will be weeks and weeks until you get the replacement (or original). This has happened to me with very time sensitive things where I paid for expedited shipping. Well the re-shipment went out via slow-boat ground, and they wouldn't send it out until the original was fully returned to sender. And ... no refund on the expedited shipping.

nfriedly 2y ago

Damn, that one hits close to home. I have a custom domain for my email + a docker instance running Thunderbird, configured to keep an up-to-date local copy of my gmail. So if I lost access to gmail, it'd be a pain in the rear, but I wouldn't really loose that much. But I hadn't thought much about my google voice account. That's the phone number I usually give out, although some friends and family do have my verizon number. I suppose I need to figure out how to make regular backups of my google voice messages also.

causal 2y ago

This is why I ported my Google number away years ago, and I'm happy I did so. That said, phone is considered a utility, and I"m puzzled why Google Voice isn't regulated as such by now.

dansimau 2y ago

Yet another Google account/service-banning horror story. For this reason, I proactively migrated off Gmail earlier this year to Fastmail. Very happy that I did. The only important thing I have left on Google now is 15 years of Location History. I'm still figuring out where to move that to.

Aachen 2y ago
I didn't even know Google had this feature until people complained about it tracking you by default. I've always used OsmAnd for navigation and had automatic trip recording turned on as a gimmick, on rare occasions it would be interesting to look back where I went wrong and got rerouted or where the new road runs exactly to put it on OpenStreetMap. Now, with also some ten years of history, it actually makes for an exceedingly interesting plot of where I've been (around town as well as globally). I'm surprised OsmAnd manages to render millions upon millions of line segments from all the gpx files in a single map view Anyway, roundabout way of saying: self-"hosting" years of location history works for me directly on my phone, no first- or third-party service needed. If you don't need a big tech product that uploads everyone's location to generate traffic info, it's going to be a learning curve (it's chock full of features, so getting around the UI can be tricky) but I can recommend OsmAnd. Also hearing good stories of OrganicMaps but don't know if they do gpx tracking or displaying Importing should be a matter of figuring out how to convert whatever format Google uses into GPX files, which are just XML files with coordinates and timestamps in them. I'm confident someone will have made a converter given how ubiquitous as well as simple gpx is, if this is the route you want to go or try
- einsteinx2 2y ago
  Thanks for the tip about OsmAnd! Google maps is one of the last Google services I use because for some reason Apple Maps doesn’t support directions/navigation in the country I live in even though it has full maps and even traffic. Just installed the iOS app and while it does look like the UI will take a little getting used to, this looks like a solid option!
  - 2y ago

yandrypozo 2y ago

Yet another "Google did this evil thing to me ..." article

stronglikedan 2y ago

Slightly OT, but since it was mentioned in the article, only slightly: > A silver lining is that with the new line, I was able to get a new iPhone 15 for almost free after bill credits. No, you just got free financing on the phone. If you compare their contract plan rates to their prepaid plan rates, you're paying more over the course of your contract for the same plan.

trog 2y ago
Heh this stood out to me as well for the same reason. It's wild to me that phone companies still get away with this trick.

gpspake 2y ago

Life pro tip (I believe that everyone should do this): - Buy a domain and set up a custom email that represents you like firstname@firstlast.com - you own this domain and email address and no company, with the exception of your registrar maybe, has any control over it or authority to take it from you. - Set up a dummy gmail/proton/whatever acct with a random address - this address will never be used or exposed publicly but it will represent your online email hosting acct. - Forward your custom email address to the email provider address and configure the web client to send from your custom address. - set your provider email account up in a local client like outlook that allows you to create a local backup. - continue watching your previous account and updating your accounts to your new lifetime address. At some point, you should be getting minimal emails to the old account, then you can forward it to your new one. The idea here is that you've decoupled your identity (your email address) from your webmail provider (gmail) So google inexplicably cuts your access. Now what? No problem. You have a local backup of all your emails in outlook. You repeat the process with a different service like proton (or a new gmail acct) with a new dummy email. Then you set the new acct up in outlook and drag all of the emails from your old acct in to the new one you haven't missed a beat. You're still sending and receiving emails to/from the same address and you can access all your historical emails in the new hosting acct because you migrated/synced them all over locally in outlook. Losing access to your email identity is arguably one of the most catastrophic scenarios you can think of in terms of being online. This guards against that about as much as possible. It doesn't cover other services like voice and stuff but you can follow similar strategies for things like documents and files.

WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever. What then? Whoever owns your domain owns your email address. It's a good solution but it's got its faults too.
- nobody9999 2y ago
  >This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever. What then? Whoever owns your domain owns your email address. It's a good solution but it's got its faults too. Yeah, this is great until you lose control of your home because you forgot to pay the mortgage or whatever. What then? The bank owns your home. So, obviously, you should never buy a home with a loan, right? A mortgage is a good solution, but its got its faults too.

Gemdation 2y ago

He was also targeted by Google's automated system? Odd, he was not so lucky. > My only worry has been that it seems like another product that Google could easily decide to kill off and send to the Google graveyard at any moment. I feel the same way about Blogger, and I even had a page on Blogger that was banned after I signed in on their Android app. This was around 2020-2021 and I only requested a manual approval by an email button IIRC, that got that page back up as fast as it got taken down. It is sad that Google Voice and Blogger are neglected enough for this to happen.

perryizgr8 2y ago

I've a very simple rule after multiple bad experiences dealing with google products: I'm never going to pay for any google service or product ever again. If its free I'll use it, and make sure i can move my data off it when (not if) they decide to shutter it.

textech 2y ago

Welcome to the club! My Adsense account was banned years ago with no explanation or anything. They even stole my balance. I've heard of similar horror stories of people losing years worth of email and other data with no recourse. As machine learning algorithms become more widespread, expect this to become even more common with a lot of services. Whether paid or free, you're just a number and can be disabled at anytime whenever their flawed algorithms flag you for any reason. I've been actively switching away from Google as much as possible and encourage others to do the same. For email, I use custom domain (still hosted on old Google Apps) so I can switch whenever needed.

cantsingh 2y ago

Yeah, this is a nightmare scenario for me and why I moved off of Google Voice after using it nearly my entire adult life (shoutout GrandCentral!). Google is just not reliable anymore.

andrewinardeer 2y ago

This guy is lucky they only banned his Google Voice account. Years ago I lost an entire Yahoo! account with paid hosting for my side gig at the time along with years emails because I apparently broke their ToS by asking a question deemed inappropriate on Yahoo! Answers.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago
> inappropriate on Yahoo! Answers. How can ANY question have been too inappropriate for Yahoo! Answers? That was a true treasure of the web RIP Am I Gregnant?
- andrewinardeer 2y ago
  https://youtu.be/EShUeudtaFg?si=9WLkm-9ERWPyF51z https://youtu.be/EShUeudtaFg?si=9WLkm-9ERWPyF51z

bastard_op 2y ago

This is actually fairly terrifying, I have used google voice for around 15 years myself (since acquisition), and use it as my main inbound line for multiple numbers actually. After verizon screwed me too circa 2009, I treat cell phones like burners, and really only use GVoice as my main inbound. It is all my mfa, sms, professional identity number, etc, and has always been solid as such as I use it with a paid gsuite I run my life out of too. If they terminated my voice, I would be very much up a creek, and something I've considered as google tends to graveyard services enough and I can't imagine it is still high on anyone's give a shit list there. I'd be curious if anyone else uses a like methodology with another service out there today. I've looked for alternatives over the years, and find really none for my needs for everything Google Voice provides and the android integration I use.

xethos 2y ago
Oh hey, I've seen people like you. and it prompted me, several years ago, to do something similar with Voip.ms. My "one number" was ported from a telco, and has lived at this paid service, with customer support, for over six years now. One side affect of this is, because it started out as a telco number, on't blackball it like they might other VoIP numbers. Now all my SMS OTPs, real SMS, MMS, and transcribed voicemail all go to my email, which I consider impossibly convenient - real-time, but not dependent on a SIM card Outgoing calls are through the built-in Android SIP client [0], and so show up as my one number (and are recorded by defualt in my single-party consent nation) Incoming calls are forwarded to my SIM (for reliability). All in all, it works pretty well. There was a series of outages around 2019 or so, but that's been the worst of it. And the benefits of getting SMS to my home country during international travel, and calling too, for no extra charge, is worth it to me. Though given your setup, I doubt I have to tell you about why it's so handy [0] This was removed... I dunno, a few years ago? But I currently use a BlackBerry KeyOne that never made it past 8.1, because the battery life, repairability, and keyboard are exactly what I want.
- bastard_op 2y ago
  Thanks for the tip with voip.ms! Interesting, usually most voip providers for what I would like require more than 1 user, hadn't really found anyone with all the features that would sell to an individual. I hadn't thought much about using android as a sip client raw, I forget it does that and never have used to know how good it is, but I'll take your word for it as usable. The rest is just having a suitable sms method to respond through it like a cell phone as natively as possible. Not sure I'd like dealing with sms as email fully. Back around 2015 I was using switch.co for my business, which was pretty awesome for like $15 a month. I setup a full IVR with voice prompts, had a great android client, web client, pretty much did everything too. Sadly they seem to have went poof when last I went looking for google voice alternatives, but was thinking of using them again for my personal line too. I'll certainly keep voip.ms in mind for if/when google puts the axe to voice finally.

trog 2y ago

Is there a simple small claims court approach to this that would serve as a more convoluted way to actually access support from Google and other large companies? I feel like if this happened to me I wouldn't even try getting in touch with Google support, having had enough experience myself and read enough of these stories to know it would be a frustrating waste of time. But if there was a legal hack to do it that forced them to reply and cost them more money, even if it cost me some, it might be worth it in cases where the downsides (like losing your phone number of 15 years!!) are so high.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

This is why I export my emails to my laptop on a regular basis with GYB (https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back) even though I am a paying Google for Business customer. The real controversy here however is the dependency on a US phone number for securely transacting in so many ways. Carriers barely can hold onto a number for you with SIM swaps and there is no such concept as "owning" a phone number

beej71 2y ago

I went back to using my cell number for exactly this reason. My Google Voice number still works, but I don't want to risk it getting locked out for no reason. I have stopped using Gmail, Google One, and Google Voice. I still use photos, contacts, and calendar, but I frequently do takeouts of all those and can handle it if they die. It's trouble I just don't need. But I'm guessing Google doesn't notice if a few of us leave, so why should they change?

metalman 2y ago

[flagged]

dicjsnw 2y ago

[flagged]

cromka 2y ago

I use Google Voice with my number after having left the US for Europe. I don’t need any of the Voice features and could rely on VoWiFi when roaming instead, except maintaining even the most basic line in the US was costly, at least the last time I checked a few years back. Any idea if this has changed in any way? Are there any plans that cost little to none that won’t be cancelled with little use?

einsteinx2 2y ago
I’m in the same boat. When I was just recently back in the US, I looked for the cheapest prepaid cell phone plan that could activate a line with an eSIM from their app for instant sign up and supported WiFi for calls and texts. My reason was to have a “real” US number for SMS verifications that block VOIP services like Google Voice which causes me headaches. I ended up signing up for a $10/mo unlimited calls and texts plan from US Mobile with 2 gigs of data. If you use their low cost plan you can get the same for a little cheaper or you can cut down the number of calls, texts, and data per month and get it down as low as around $5/mo I think. For me the $10 was worth it and means I’ll always have data when traveling back to the US as well without buying a temporary data eSIM like I usually do so that cancels out some of the cost for me. So far it’s worked fine for me since I got back home outside the US, though I don’t use it much and usually keep the eSIM disabled so it doesn’t burn battery looking for a network it won’t find (plan doesn’t have roaming so it’ll always search). Also I don’t get the ability to get messages on my computer like with Google Voice, so I ended up keeping my GV line instead of porting it just in case I didn’t end up liking the idea. I’ll probably keep using my GV number as my main US number for now until I see if I want to stay with the mobile plan, but $120/yr seems reasonable to have a non-VOIP US number available to me and data when I travel home once or twice a year. There are other prepaid plans you can use as well, but it seemed like they all bottomed out around the $10/mo mark. I think you need to physically be in the US when you buy the service on any of these prepaid carriers to connect to the network once and activate the eSIM, but after that you can use it on only wifi or even cell data from your main line anywhere.

mediumsmart 2y ago

That sucks. Another non-dissenting voice silenced.