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Yeah. Gmail is an anti-pattern. I was paying $10/month for workplace and a couple days ago they froze my account because I was accessing it via IMAP. Fortuna

Yeah. Gmail is an anti-pattern. I was paying $10/month for workplace and a couple days ago they froze my account because I was accessing it via IMAP. Fortunately, I own the domain so I pointed it at amazon. I pretty much only use google apps to share docs I've written elsewhere, so I didn't really lose too much when I lost access to apps. It would be much cooler if there were a human I could talk to to find out what we did to trigger the account freeze. The only thing I can think of is I accessed my gmail account from a location I don't normally access it from (business trip) about a week after changing from SMS based 2FA to authenticator based 2FA. The cloud is someone else's computer. Sometimes they don't want you on their computer, even if you're paying them to be there. As a reminder, Google Takeout is your friend. We copy email off of gmail via IMAP, mostly so we can have a local backup. I use Takeout for my personal account. Had I thought google would freeze a paid account, I would have used Takeout every week or so to backup the few google apps docs I had up there.

planb 1y ago
I‘m paying for workplace too (ex-free account), can you share more details on why it was frozen? Did they give an explanation or do you just assume it was because you use IMAP? Do you never login to your account on the web and just had it in your mail client?
- OhMeadhbh 1y ago
  no explanation. no response to emails so I have no idea what we did.
  - samat 1y ago
    Did you try calling them?
taneq 1y ago
Can I use POP3 to access Gmail? No. Ah okay, IMAP then? Also no. Edit: Ohhh. According to other posts it’s about gmail not pulling email from other servers via POP3, not about accessing gmail.
ndr 1y ago
Are you saying that accessing a gmail exclusively via IMAP won't keep the account alive?
- archb 1y ago
  It doesn't seem to be the free Google account either. The fact it happened to a paid Google Workspace account is pretty concerning.
- OhMeadhbh 1y ago
  no, we also frequently accessed the webmail jnterface. or at least I did.
  - internet2000 1y ago
    > no, _we_ also frequently accessed the webmail jnterface We? Did you share an account? That's way bigger a red flag than using IMAP.
    - kwanbix 1y ago
      If he is using GWorkspace he is probably having more than one user.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
jsheard 1y ago
> I was paying $10/month for workplace and a couple days ago they froze my account because I was accessing it via IMAP. I used to pay for Workspace and left because a good chunk of features across all Google products simply didn't work with Workspace accounts, or were held back for a year or more after free Google accounts got them. It's a mess. Then they kept increasing the price for good measure, and there's no off-ramp, if you stop paying then the account is left in a zombie state with even less functionality than a free one until you start paying again. Do yourself a favour and use Fastmail or Proton or anything else for your vanity domain instead.
- Dennip 1y ago
  This is a super annoying quirk, lots of things don't work well if you're using workspace as a normal gmail account, and they don't quite warn you up front.
  - kevcampb 1y ago
    Google converted my mum's Gmail account to a workspace account automatically. Now she can't use her bedroom alarm clock because it's connected to my dad's Gmail account and you can't share access to workspace accounts. It's stupidly maddening. And yes I realise that an IoT alarm clock is ridiculous, but that's not the point.
    - bookofjoe 1y ago
      Off topic a bit: Facebook just converted my personal account to a professional account. I have no idea why. Although as I think about it for a moment, it might be related to the fact that I visit/use Facebook less than once a year....
    - mattzito 1y ago
      It was a proper Gmail account? Or was it an email@domain account that maybe was using her work email address? I’m asking because I used to work adjacent to this area, and I know of only a few scenarios where an account becomes a workspace account after being a consumer account.
_el1s7 1y ago
> they froze my account because I was accessing it via IMAP Stop being misleading, this is your assumption. And while I agree that Google support generally sucks, you can actually contact real humans as a workspace customer easily.
- YetAnotherNick 1y ago
  I don't know why you are downvoted or the parent is upvoted. Clearly the GP is not telling the details and it is highly doubtful that they freeze the workspace account ever without good reason. Unlike standard account, freezing worspace admin account for this definitely means huge customer loss.
  - nemetroid 1y ago
    Not really if they only ever do it for small, personal workspaces.
- LightBug1 1y ago
  Raises hand for another n=1 that I'm currently going through. My point being, it doesn't matter than you can get hold of someone because the bureaucracy is kafkaesque. WTF has happened to Google? We're a supplier being onboarded. We've been in on-boarding hell for about 2 months now. We've completed the job and are still being passed around teams in order to get paid. As an aside, one of the scourges of modern business is Ariba. Google use Ariba along with many other large organisations and it SUCKS. It feels like using Ariba forces big companies to map their bureaucracy around its structure rather than the other way around ... which means people getting bounced from team to team while different queries are raised and some random person somewhere raises another query, etc etc ... and even the internal staff struggle to make things happen. Whatever happens, it feels like the bureaucratic structure and use of Ariba has imprisoned staff at Google. They can't get beyond their own system now. The process was a real eye-opener as to what goes on when a firm becomes huge. In my experience, once a company implements Ariba, it's over and they're just cash-cowing it. The savings they make in automation are costs passed on to the consumer or supplier in the hassle factor of getting things done. I want to say "Never again", but that's not entirely my choice. /rant
e40 1y ago
As a paying customer you had the ability to get a human on the line. Whether or not they would tell you why the account was closed is another matter.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  I imagine their support is like UPS/Fedex, where they do everything possible to get you to hang-up, make you sit and wait between harrowing phone menus, all so that you can get a person in India who only can see the same tracking website that you see.
  - e40 1y ago
    That's not really true, in my experience, but for this issue, I suspect they will be mostly useless. Account closures via algorithm are rarely reversible via customer support. Citibank closed a 22 year account recently, via an algorithm, and I had to write an actual letter to get it reopened. And even then, the people on the other end were mostly useless, though they did reopen the account.
grapesodaaaaa 1y ago
I’ve had this happen to numerous friends. Haven’t you heard? The best way to contact gmail support is by posting about it on tech websites /s It’s sad that I often see resolutions happen here after an engineer scrolls through the comments. I agree that not having backups and your own domain is asking for trouble the way things are currently structured with online mail. I will say that I hosted my own servers for years, but it’s a lot of trouble and not for everyone (plus, I could never quite get the spam filtering tweaked how I wanted).
citizenpaul 1y ago
Google is absolutely notorious for freezing accounts with zero warning, zero explanation and zero recourse. I personally experienced this while working for a charity that used Google workspace. After 8 years they suddenly froze the account. The freeze lasted 32 days. During this period they could not operate and Google was completely unresponsive for the first 2 weeks. Google then started demanding various forms of proof of incorporation, various employee government ID's, things like that. We provided all this information. After another week of silence they started asking for ID's of people that did not even work there. We told them we could not provide this information, because of that. Silence. Finally at week 4 we got a call from someone in India that told us there was nothing they could do and the response team would continue to investigate. We are not allowed any contact with the investigation team. Then 32 days after being locked out,the account was silently unlocked again with no explanation. I cannot discourage people from using any google product for their business any more strongly than this story. They are a terrible company and do not care at all about their customers. They are too big to fail so they just stomp all over you. Remember google has no way to contact them other than an email form. Which we filled out 2-5 per DAY, which went mostly un-responded to. In the painfully rare case that you do get someone one the phone they will just be someone in India that tells you sorry, nothing we can do.
- qiine 1y ago
  crazy stuff, looks like youtube is the same
- kilroy123 1y ago
  I set a reminder on my calendar to do a take out every 3 months and keep my data backed up and refreshed.
  - citizenpaul 1y ago
    If you have a business on there sure take out will save the data. How are you going to restructure your entire business on a new platform that you now have to evaluate and purchase under duress. Not even including retraining everyone. There have been studies about what happens to business when this happens. They go out of business nearly without exception.
suka47856 1y ago
[dead]

planb 1y ago

I‘m paying for workplace too (ex-free account), can you share more details on why it was frozen? Did they give an explanation or do you just assume it was because you use IMAP? Do you never login to your account on the web and just had it in your mail client?

OhMeadhbh 1y ago
no explanation. no response to emails so I have no idea what we did.
- samat 1y ago
  Did you try calling them?

taneq 1y ago

Can I use POP3 to access Gmail? No. Ah okay, IMAP then? Also no. Edit: Ohhh. According to other posts it’s about gmail not pulling email from other servers via POP3, not about accessing gmail.

ndr 1y ago

Are you saying that accessing a gmail exclusively via IMAP won't keep the account alive?

archb 1y ago
It doesn't seem to be the free Google account either. The fact it happened to a paid Google Workspace account is pretty concerning.
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
no, we also frequently accessed the webmail jnterface. or at least I did.
- internet2000 1y ago
  > no, _we_ also frequently accessed the webmail jnterface We? Did you share an account? That's way bigger a red flag than using IMAP.
  - kwanbix 1y ago
    If he is using GWorkspace he is probably having more than one user.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

jsheard 1y ago

> I was paying $10/month for workplace and a couple days ago they froze my account because I was accessing it via IMAP. I used to pay for Workspace and left because a good chunk of features across all Google products simply didn't work with Workspace accounts, or were held back for a year or more after free Google accounts got them. It's a mess. Then they kept increasing the price for good measure, and there's no off-ramp, if you stop paying then the account is left in a zombie state with even less functionality than a free one until you start paying again. Do yourself a favour and use Fastmail or Proton or anything else for your vanity domain instead.

Dennip 1y ago
This is a super annoying quirk, lots of things don't work well if you're using workspace as a normal gmail account, and they don't quite warn you up front.
- kevcampb 1y ago
  Google converted my mum's Gmail account to a workspace account automatically. Now she can't use her bedroom alarm clock because it's connected to my dad's Gmail account and you can't share access to workspace accounts. It's stupidly maddening. And yes I realise that an IoT alarm clock is ridiculous, but that's not the point.
  - bookofjoe 1y ago
    Off topic a bit: Facebook just converted my personal account to a professional account. I have no idea why. Although as I think about it for a moment, it might be related to the fact that I visit/use Facebook less than once a year....
  - mattzito 1y ago
    It was a proper Gmail account? Or was it an email@domain account that maybe was using her work email address? I’m asking because I used to work adjacent to this area, and I know of only a few scenarios where an account becomes a workspace account after being a consumer account.

_el1s7 1y ago

> they froze my account because I was accessing it via IMAP Stop being misleading, this is your assumption. And while I agree that Google support generally sucks, you can actually contact real humans as a workspace customer easily.

YetAnotherNick 1y ago
I don't know why you are downvoted or the parent is upvoted. Clearly the GP is not telling the details and it is highly doubtful that they freeze the workspace account ever without good reason. Unlike standard account, freezing worspace admin account for this definitely means huge customer loss.
- nemetroid 1y ago
  Not really if they only ever do it for small, personal workspaces.
LightBug1 1y ago
Raises hand for another n=1 that I'm currently going through. My point being, it doesn't matter than you can get hold of someone because the bureaucracy is kafkaesque. WTF has happened to Google? We're a supplier being onboarded. We've been in on-boarding hell for about 2 months now. We've completed the job and are still being passed around teams in order to get paid. As an aside, one of the scourges of modern business is Ariba. Google use Ariba along with many other large organisations and it SUCKS. It feels like using Ariba forces big companies to map their bureaucracy around its structure rather than the other way around ... which means people getting bounced from team to team while different queries are raised and some random person somewhere raises another query, etc etc ... and even the internal staff struggle to make things happen. Whatever happens, it feels like the bureaucratic structure and use of Ariba has imprisoned staff at Google. They can't get beyond their own system now. The process was a real eye-opener as to what goes on when a firm becomes huge. In my experience, once a company implements Ariba, it's over and they're just cash-cowing it. The savings they make in automation are costs passed on to the consumer or supplier in the hassle factor of getting things done. I want to say "Never again", but that's not entirely my choice. /rant

e40 1y ago

As a paying customer you had the ability to get a human on the line. Whether or not they would tell you why the account was closed is another matter.

Workaccount2 1y ago
I imagine their support is like UPS/Fedex, where they do everything possible to get you to hang-up, make you sit and wait between harrowing phone menus, all so that you can get a person in India who only can see the same tracking website that you see.
- e40 1y ago
  That's not really true, in my experience, but for this issue, I suspect they will be mostly useless. Account closures via algorithm are rarely reversible via customer support. Citibank closed a 22 year account recently, via an algorithm, and I had to write an actual letter to get it reopened. And even then, the people on the other end were mostly useless, though they did reopen the account.

grapesodaaaaa 1y ago

I’ve had this happen to numerous friends. Haven’t you heard? The best way to contact gmail support is by posting about it on tech websites /s It’s sad that I often see resolutions happen here after an engineer scrolls through the comments. I agree that not having backups and your own domain is asking for trouble the way things are currently structured with online mail. I will say that I hosted my own servers for years, but it’s a lot of trouble and not for everyone (plus, I could never quite get the spam filtering tweaked how I wanted).

citizenpaul 1y ago

Google is absolutely notorious for freezing accounts with zero warning, zero explanation and zero recourse. I personally experienced this while working for a charity that used Google workspace. After 8 years they suddenly froze the account. The freeze lasted 32 days. During this period they could not operate and Google was completely unresponsive for the first 2 weeks. Google then started demanding various forms of proof of incorporation, various employee government ID's, things like that. We provided all this information. After another week of silence they started asking for ID's of people that did not even work there. We told them we could not provide this information, because of that. Silence. Finally at week 4 we got a call from someone in India that told us there was nothing they could do and the response team would continue to investigate. We are not allowed any contact with the investigation team. Then 32 days after being locked out,the account was silently unlocked again with no explanation. I cannot discourage people from using any google product for their business any more strongly than this story. They are a terrible company and do not care at all about their customers. They are too big to fail so they just stomp all over you. Remember google has no way to contact them other than an email form. Which we filled out 2-5 per DAY, which went mostly un-responded to. In the painfully rare case that you do get someone one the phone they will just be someone in India that tells you sorry, nothing we can do.

qiine 1y ago
crazy stuff, looks like youtube is the same
kilroy123 1y ago
I set a reminder on my calendar to do a take out every 3 months and keep my data backed up and refreshed.
- citizenpaul 1y ago
  If you have a business on there sure take out will save the data. How are you going to restructure your entire business on a new platform that you now have to evaluate and purchase under duress. Not even including retraining everyone. There have been studies about what happens to business when this happens. They go out of business nearly without exception.

suka47856 1y ago

[dead]