15 ms·

Dumped by Google

271 points by stkhlm 13y ago

betterunix 13y ago
People have been warned about relying on web services already: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
- baby 13y ago
  Alright but then how do you safely store your important data? Imagine if the same thing happened with Dropbox (if you're using it).
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    The same way you always used to: on media that you control in more than one location.
    - baby 13y ago
      I used to store my data on an external hard drive, which I don't control in more than one location.
  - ori_b 13y ago
    If it happened with Dropbox, you would still have a local copy. Keep a backup on media you own. Or, at the very least, mirrored across different providers.
    - Domenic_S 13y ago
      Until dropbox wipes their side and waits for you to sync...
      - a3n 13y ago
        This thing happened to my ex, although it's more likely she did the wipe. She had her home machine and two office machines synched with DB, and her stuff was gone at home and Office One. We went to Office Two, disconnected from the net, turned the machine on and copied her data to USB.
        Domenic_S 13y ago
        That's good if you know it's coming, but if they surprise you...
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Back it up on hardware you own. You can buy multiple terabytes at low cost, you can use duplicity/Deja Dup if you want secure remote backups (on a server of your choosing), etc. You can send people files without having to rely on any specific service provider -- there is email, there is rsync, etc. It is cheap and easy to set up a file server and dynamic DNS, assuming you have a broadband connection (surprisingly many people do not, but that is a separate issue). The problem with these web services is that they allow a single service provider to screw you over on a whim. Why put yourself in that situation? Why leave yourself vulnerable to unscrupulous competitors and governments who might try to copy your files without permission, because some service provider was more concerned about complying with warrants and monetizing your data than about security? Stay in control of your data, and you will not be posting these sorts of stories to HN.
    - theoretick 13y ago
      I think there is a much bigger issue here than the theoretical storage solutions. Everything you said is indeed entirely possible for most HN-readers and tech people but I sure can't talk my mother into switching to dynamic DNS and rsync. The only reason there was a happy ending to this story was that this guy was connected enough to know how to contact someone at Google, what about the other 300million users who barely know what OS they are running? There needs to be some kind of restructuring to protect the public, whether its simple awareness or legislation.
  - marssaxman 13y ago
    I keep my data safe by storing it on hardware I control and never depending on cloud-service providers.
    - baby 13y ago
      What if your apartment get robbed? This is the main reason I bought a Dropbox account.
    - greenlander 13y ago
      Any serious amount of data storage requires a hard drive (as opposed to flash), and hard drives are quite fragile. If you drop one on a hard floor it's probably done. And with time they fail for all kinds of other reasons. They are mechanical devices.
      - marssaxman 13y ago
        I seem to have had better than average luck with hard drives; it's been about 20 years since I've had one die while I was still using it. In any case, yes, I rely on a great big hard drive for backup, but it sits on the bottom shelf of a large cabinet; it's not falling any distance onto anything. What's more important is that I know exactly where it is and who has access to it, and I will continue to have access to it as long as I keep on feeding it electricity.
  - rsync 13y ago
    How do you safely store your data if you don't have access to dropbox ? As in, dropbox, that company that didn't exist until q3 2008 ? There is a "must be this tall to ride" limit on the Internet, and that is your own IP and the ability to act as a peer on the network. If you don't meet those requirements, you are just a consumer. You're eyeballs that someone else is renting out. You're a digital serf.
  - junto 13y ago
    Try http://owncloud.org/ http://owncloud.org/. Run your own cloud server. Files, contacts, calendars, loads of third party integrations (email via RoundCube: http://roundcube.net/ http://roundcube.net/). I'm running mine off a Synology DiskStation that sits at home. Mobile clients for Android and iOS. Sync clients for Windows, Mac and Linux (plus source code if you want to write your own): http://owncloud.org/sync-clients/ http://owncloud.org/sync-clients/ You could point OwnCloud at the same folder as Dropbox. Both monitor the same folder. Double backup. http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/04/how-to-set-up-your-own-private-cloud-storage-service-with-owncloud/ http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/04/how-to-set-up-your-own-... http://jamieflarity.com/technology/owncloud-and-email/ http://jamieflarity.com/technology/owncloud-and-email/
capo 13y ago
Same as every other “cloud provider”, yet somehow Google is the one subjected to these overwritten accounts and the almost mandatory pseudo law/policy musings that follow. You might want to take a look at some policies from others in the industry to get a more accurate picture of this landscape. These policies are constructed as such to mitigate litigation, which the author concedes. Regardless I'm glad this instance had a happy ending. It’s also worth mentioning the the paid tier of Google Apps operates under completely different TOS: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/premier_terms.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/premier_terms.html
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  Facebook gets its amount of beating too. Those too should be very careful to not get regulated by an angry mob. I'd say well deserved.
- ubersync 13y ago
  There is a need to decentralize email, social networking, cloud storage etc. FreedomBox is a step in the right direction. So is Diaspora Project.
  - sneak 13y ago
    There is already an effort underway to decentralize email. It's called SMTP and works really well. I think they started it sometime in the 80s?
    - ubersync 13y ago
      But it was again re-centralized in late 90s with the advent of hotmail and all. What I wanted to say was, we need to re-decentralize it.
      - sneak 13y ago
        Gmail and Yahoo Mail and Facebook Mail and my personal mail server all stand in contradiction to your claim. Stop making things up just because you want to complain about the Google. Nobody will fault you for a simple "Fuck Google, they're demonstrably evil and have access to way too much data now," which is what it seems to me you're driving toward.
jamesaguilar 13y ago
Kinda sucks that Google makes type 1 errors occasionally. OTOH, you keep sensitive data from your users in your personal gmail account and you're not paying for support? You crazy.
- wereHamster 13y ago
  It's not about sensitive data. It's about email, calendar, drive and other google services you use and rely on for your daily work.
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    You should not rely on services you're not paying for and don't own for your daily work. :-/ My point isn't about the nature of the data that was stored, my point was the economic reliability of the tool being used to store it. In other words, you want the provider to have some significant incentive not to screw you if your livelihood depends on it.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      It's a calculated risk. Chances of this happening to any given person so far has proven to be almost infinitesimal, so people (rationally) don't care and treat GMail like they treat electricity. But yes, if this indeed happens to you and you were depending on Google services for your work and life, you're completely screwed. Sometimes I feel afraid of this happening to me, but I don't know where to move some of my data to, as every other mail/calendar service I know sucks hard in comparison to GMail and Google Calendar.
      - jamesaguilar 13y ago
        Enterprise apps accounts are pretty cheap compared to your average business expense. Not speaking as a googler, just a concerned fellow hacker. That might not perfectly insulate you from risk, but I guess (again, without any internal knowledge, I don't work on this stuff) that it cuts it by another factor of ten or more.
drawkbox 13y ago
Definitely a reason I have always paid for Gmail/Drive before it was that. But the actual reason is quite scary why it triggered the issue: "My data was intact save for the last thing I’d worked on–a spreadsheet containing a client’s account numbers and passwords. It seems that Google’s engineers determined this single document violated policy and locked down my entire account. My request to get that document back is still pending." So you can't keep files you need to secure in Drive? Blown away by this. And the access to the entire ecosystem based on one document. This is not good. With that logic if there is a DCMA request or problem with a video on youtube the whole site should just shut down.
- magicalist 13y ago
  It seems extremely unlikely that you could determine the problem from "the last thing I'd worked on", and it seems even more unlikely that a spreadsheet with (barring any additional information from this story) account numbers and passwords would auto-trigger a shutdown: there would be so many false positives that most people would have had their accounts closed by now.
- falcolas 13y ago
  If this file is indeed the cause of the account closure... what happens if you're using a Chromebook? Then not only do you loose access to that computer, you are restricted to what kind of content you can create and store on your computer. I hope this gentleman is wrong. I really do.
  - dunham 13y ago
    It's plausible. I've personally seen phishing done via google docs. And, at one point, Oxford blocked google docs because of phishing. So phishing via docs is probably a common occurrence. To combat this, I wouldn't be surprised if Google had software that tried to detect this (maybe look for spreadsheets of username/passwords), and shut down the accounts associated with it.
    - bradleybuda 13y ago
D9u 13y ago
Of course the author preformed daily backups to removable media and other cloud based services? Let this be a lesson. Data redundancy is important!
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  Is there a tool to backup your google everything? If there isn't then what you're doing is called "taunting".
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    You can download some of your Google data using Google Takeout. It’s far from complete, but if you’re still using Google services, it doesn’t hurt to download a backup once in a while. The Data Liberation Front lists which services can be backed up, and how to do it: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/
    - Lewisham 13y ago
      FWIW I believe Takeout does work when your account has been disabled, so that you can transfer to another provider. EDIT: Although sadly it looks like Gmail is not part of Takeout :/
      - bmj 13y ago
        Right, Gmail is not part of Takeout, but there are third party apps to facilitate this: http://gmvault.org/ http://gmvault.org/ http://www.gmail-backup.com/ http://www.gmail-backup.com/
      - trhtrsh 13y ago
        Ever mail client written since ~1990 is capable of downloading your Gmail.
        Lewisham 13y ago
        The problem is that if your account is disabled, it's unlikely you'll be able to acces Gmail, IMAP or otherwise. I think Takeout has an exception so that it works even when your account does not.
alexeston 13y ago
I would really, sincerely, love to reply with my opinion on this, what seems by the title at least, wonderful article. But unfortunately people do not seem to have decent enough of a hosting provider and/or server to survive the outcome of getting on the front page of HN and hence I am forced to see "Error establishing a database connection".
- frozenport 13y ago
  Back in the old days before VPS, websites would autoscale leading to huge and unprecedented bills. For example, I hosted a website that contained download links. One day the Chinese found out and hot-linking causing my server bill to jump from $5.95 to over $200. I was 12 and this made me sad.
  - alexeston 13y ago
    I believe I was not around then. I started when the shared hosting was a really popular thing with fixed bandwidth and even that could of easily survived HN. So, I'm kind of amazed on why some sites can't handle that in 2013.
    - frozenport 13y ago
      When you exceed your limit they charge you a penalty.
      - alexeston 13y ago
        Yes, but at least here in Estonia the limit was more than enough (usually 500gb of bandwidth per month).
bloaf 13y ago
Cloud storage doesn't count as a backup if it is the only place you've stored your data.
- aquadrop 13y ago
  Any storage doesn't count as a backup if it's the only place you've stored your data.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  It wasn't just stuff he backed up on google drive that he lost. You can lose your email account, possibly locking you out of any internet service that uses email as authentication, as well as any important emails. You can lose documents you made on google drive itself that you haven't yet downloaded. He lost his calendar, which I don't even know if you can backup. He also mentioned his blog and phone service and contacts. The point is it's not just data that is lost and of what is, not everything is easily backed up on local storage.
ubersync 13y ago
I can't access the article. Can anyone tell shortly, what the author is complaining about?
- thomaslutz 13y ago
  Google closed his Google Account including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calender etc. without notice and without explanation. After 6 days he got it back after a google employee he knows personally escalated the case internally.
  - frozenport 13y ago
    And now that employee is paying the price with an embarrassing hacker news article?
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      No, the employee comes out pretty good but google clearly sucks for anything mission critical without a backup outside of google.
- ubersync 13y ago
  I could finally access it. Well, ideally all the services should be decentralized (each person/company hosting their own email, social network, cloud storage etc). But if that is not feasible, you can at least try and use a different company for each service. In that case violating the terms of one service would not shut you out of others.
zalzane 13y ago
I think what's even more horrifying that isn't mentioned in the article is how many services use email as a form of user authentication. If you lose access to your gmail account, you also lose access to changing your password on any service that makes you do so through an email link - I know of some services that don't even let you change your account email without clicking on an email authentication link. So not only is there the always-lingering possibility of losing your google account to automated shutdowns, you can also lose access to services that you use that use authentication through email, quite an uneasy thought.
- coderdude 13y ago
  Unfortunately though, it's poor practice to let a user change their email address without first sending a confirmation email. If you don't confirm the action before making the change then bad people can lock out the true owner of an account simply by being logged-in.
  - trhtrsh 13y ago
    Which is why everyone should have their own domain name, or have a contract with a reputable provider. It's crazy to cede over ones entire identity to a free "best-effort" service.
    - drdaeman 13y ago
      Identities and accounts are two separate matters. Accounts can only be some of identity's credentials. You are not your email address (and you should never be considered so), but your email provider can optionally act as one of trusted third parties who can assert your identity. Not the other round. Also, you can't really own a domain name — you can only rent it from your domain registrar, in almost a same manner you rent your email account. And the idea of paying for keeping my own identity somehow frightens me.
      - trhtrsh 13y ago
        You can pay for many years in advance, and you can register for auto-renewal. Paying to keep your identity is far better than borrowing it from someone who has made no promises to you.
imsofuture 13y ago
What are the best alternatives to Gmail?
- lignuist 13y ago
  Paying for managed Webspace that includes email functionality.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Who runs a remotely comparable e-mail service, though? I mean, I've tried Windows Live, and that's the closest I've found and is still pretty poor.
    - lignuist 13y ago
      A comparable service leads to comparable problems.
- hexis 13y ago
  I have been very happy for the past few years using fastmail.fm.
- baby 13y ago
  There's Zoho which is pretty similar imo.
- cpncrunch 13y ago
  If you're a real hacker, you should probably manage your own email/file server.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    There's a hardware startup opportunity here somewhere: sell a box which does this for an end-user, and makes it really trivial to setup replication mirrors elsewhere. Probably dies on the platform of "people don't have good broadband".
baby 13y ago
Reading this was like reading a nightmare. I have all my life on my Gmail account. All my plans on my Calendar. Important documents on Driver etc... I'm way too dependent of Google. Same thing if iTunes Match or Dropbox dump me tomorrow.
tannerc 13y ago
Looks like we may start needing cloud services to backup cloud services. That'd be an interesting service, particularly if it worked seamlessly in the background.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  All fine, until all the data ends up stored in the very same Amazon server room, at which point in the event of server fire your "cloud backups" will probably go down along with the original data.
  - trhtrsh 13y ago
    You are misunderstaning how cloud storage works. Amazon/Google data is stored in 3-6 different disks, often in 2 or 3 different datacenters. If that data were lost due to physical failures, you would have much larger worries, like dust from a meteor blocking out the sun.
- Kerrick 13y ago
  They've existed for a while. https://www.backupify.com/ https://www.backupify.com/
magoon 13y ago
Please don't keep sensitive client data in a spreadsheet on Google, or DropBox. If you must store it in a cloud, at least encrypt it and store it in a locally-encryptable service like JungleDisk.
woodchuck64 13y ago
It seems strange that Google wouldn't have a policy of issuing warnings, escalating warnings, etc., before taking the drastic action of suspending an account. Without knowing the exact reason this person's account was suspended, for all we know it could be a complete glitch.
- e40 13y ago
  It's not strange, it's by design. They would do it if they wanted to. If by strange you meant "bad", then I agree with you.
- gscott 13y ago
  When you're God you can just send a flood and say "well I hope that person built a boat". (i.e that the person should have a copy of their data).
  - MichaelApproved 13y ago
    Even the god in the fable you're referencing gave Noah advance notice of the flood.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Even the god in the fable you're referencing gave Noah advance notice of the flood. Yeah, but it wasn't Noah's ToS violation that the god involved was addressing.
      - gscott 13y ago
        There was no TOS violation, just an algorithm gone wild. This happens to me all the time but with Google adwords - Google Adwords tells me not to run more then one domain in an ad group then suspends the ad group... that has only one ad in it. Takes a week for Google to undo their suspension. - Google Adwords suspends an ad, support says that during the signup process there should be a page that links to competitors with a comparison of prices as features. Sort of like going to a K-Mart but once your at the checkout the checker says "you shudda gone to Wal-Mart sucker!" (to save a dollar). Takes a week for Google to undo their suspension. etc and so on. If you spend 20k a month or more with Google adwords when Google wants to give you pain they find very unusual ways to do it I presume to mess with your click history to force you to pay more, so Google quarterly profits go up. I presume this happens throughout Google's products.
dendory 13y ago
The most interesting part was the reason he believes the account was suspended. He was working on a spreadsheet containing usernames and passwords. If that's really the case, it means some automated system scans not only your email, but documents you work on, for things like password lists, and right away assumes you're up to no good, killing your account. Scary.
- ceph_ 13y ago
  Sounds like a really wild accusation to me. Is their anything to back this up besides their speculation?
  - taf2 13y ago
    I know our consulting company for 2 years kept a sheet of logins as do most agencies so I find that hard to believe... However, I do recall getting my Adsense account banned for click fraud - which really sucked but it was true that I had my friends all click my ads and that my site was basically just ripping off pop culture content with naive hopes of getting rich quick - ah the 200's. so no suprise it got banned.
    - karma_fountain 13y ago
      That wasn't popjam was it?
  - tytso 13y ago
    There's also the question of whether the original poster was telling the truth, or even told the whole story. If for example, the spreadsheet had a form for the entry of usernames and passwords, and someone came across it (maybe because it was e-mailed out to lots of people), and reported it as an attempted account phishing form, that would certainly explain an account getting suspended for an TOS violation --- and as far as I know, someone who is trying to use their Google account for phishing doesn't get escalating warnings... and I think most people would agree with this.
    - 13y ago
jfoster 13y ago
If it was based on the content of a document in the Google Drive, it's probably an automated rule. Clearly such an automated rule is going above and beyond the minimum action by affecting the entire account rather than just the document in question. Given that characteristic, I wonder if it might also shutdown the account of anyone who the document is shared with. Could be quite dangerous if it does. Documents can be added into someone's Google Drive just by having them follow a link.
josscrowcroft 13y ago
"Services I'd Pay For", May 2013 Edition: 1) A hands-off, hassle-free service that connects to all your Google 'properties' and backs up everything every hour, on the hour, and allows easy importing into a selection of similar replacement services if/when the Googleplex smites me down. 2) See 1).
- johnsbrayton 13y ago
  My Mac app, CloudPull, closely resembles that description. It runs in the background on your Mac, backing up Gmail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Google Reader. It performs backups every hour, and keeps snapshots for 90 days. You can download CloudPull from: http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/ http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/ CloudPull is free for a single account. For $9.99, you can upgrade to get premium features including support for up to ten Google accounts. John
  - josscrowcroft 13y ago
    Fantastic, thanks for the heads up.
  - mikro2nd 13y ago
    Any plans for a Linux port? Seriously, I'd love to pay you, but don't do iAnything (and for much the same reasons that I don't trust Google with much of anything these days.)
- eloisant 13y ago
  * Buy a Synology NAS * Buy a domain name * Setup a mail server on your NAS (you get Roundcube in 2 clicks) * Forward emails from gmail to your home email * Backup to Amazon Glacier (in a few clicks on a Synology) Now when a problem arise, just stop using GMail and use Roundcube directly.
  - junto 13y ago
    Did you install Roundcube directly via DSM, or indirectly using the DSM Owncloud plugin?
RawData 13y ago
I don't understand why no one has sued google over this... That would be my first reaction...
- jfoster 13y ago
  It would be interesting to know if that might be a path for someone with a sealed closed account to at least get access to their data back. I imagine Google would want to settle such a case, and giving the customer a dump of their data would seem an easy route to settlement.
- SEMW 13y ago
  English law student here. This isn't legal advice. Generally, in common law countries, if you're not paying Google for the services, the legal system won't help you. Since you gave no consideration for the services you got, there's no legal contract, so you can't even enforce their own terms of service against them. (In theory, an action in tort for negligent provision of services can succeed against a provider you didn't pay - but in practice, that'd fail for a number of reasons in this situation (in England anyway)). As soon as you're paying for services, the whole thing changes. You've suddenly got the contract law at your back, and with that comes whatever laws govern unfair terms in consumer contracts, and the supply of services to consumers, in your jurisdiction. You're in a vastly better position, legally.
  - RawData 13y ago
    Consideraion doesn't necessarily have to be money...
    - SEMW 13y ago
      I'm guessing you mean that having adverts shown to you might be good consideration? I guess it's possible that it might be held to be, but it's by no means a given. (I don't know any English cases on that, but there may be US ones I'm not familiar with. All the cases of website terms I know are ones where the website owner wants to enforce against the user, so don't help, as AFAICS the courts only care whether the party seeking to enforce gave consideration (which they have: the service)). But even if you succeed in that, it still might not help you. Seems to me that the effect of that would be to make the service a standing offer on Google's part. Analogy: a sign on a shack saying "Come in and take a biscuit if you view the advert on the wall". The consideration isn't in return for a promise to continue to provide services. If the shack owner removed the shack one day, you couldn't sue him for breach of contract. Wheras if you've paid money for a service and they don't provide it, they're in breach, full stop. (Even if they claim you're in breach, they have to notify you and give you a reasonable time to cure it). IANAL, and my consideration analysis might be completely wrong. But even if it is, I still strongly suspect it's not going to be easy to convince a court to hold Google in breach for stopping giving you a service you weren't paying for. If you're paying for a service, you're in a much more secure position.
devmach 13y ago
For an individuals it's overkill buy at work we use something like this : * We use Google/Gmail only for mail hosting, not for calender or cloud storage. * Google apps with our domain. * We have also an account at Yandex. * DNS service from DynDNS, MX ttls set to 3600 seconds (1 hour, it could be less) * For virtualization, we have a i7 machine with 2x1 TB disks (Raid-1). * For webmail, calender, sharing etc we use Zimbra ( open source version ). * Everyone has an internal email ( x@office.domain.com ) and external gmail account. Zimbra syncs itself with gmail. * When somebody sends email , depending user, zimbra send it using gmail or relay. * At 3 a.m. system automatically shut down Zimbra , takes backup on usb 3 hdd (~100Gb, arround 40 mins) and brings up it again( I know, there is a room for improvement, like rsyncing /opt/zimbra directory ). We change usb disks everyday or two and store other disk at somewhere outside the office. So, - If Gmail "dumps" us, we can change our MX to Yandex, stuggle couple hours and then continue to work. - If local server burns, users can continue to work using Gmail while we build & install new one. We tried rackspace email hosting but it had problems ( some mails doesn't delivered, some incoming mails lost etc ). Fastmail was/is expensive comparing current infrastructure and it could be viable if we have more than 30 persons. P.S. : I'm not saying this solution is perfect or it's the only way to do, i'm just sharing.
- suhastech 13y ago
  Well, I actually wrote a simple email backup app called http://thehorcrux.com/ http://thehorcrux.com/ for individuals. It was my own personal itch. </shamelessplug>
hifier 13y ago
I'm wondering if this is the mindset that most people have. The idea of putting you're entire personal dataset (and work dataset?) into a free service has always seemed terrifying to me. Especially one whose entire business model is based on using that data to serve you ads! I keep local copies of everything and backup daily. I don't trust anyone with such a complete picture of my digital life. 'The cloud' is overrated, at least the free, ad supported version is IMHO.
eksith 13y ago
Lost count of how many times this was mentioned, but it bears repeating still : You don't own what you can't control. Even if your name is on it, even if you've given it to everyone, even if you use it on a million other accounts as a means of access and an identity, you don't really own it. This is why, I still keep a contact@domain for professional work while saving all my personal stuff on Gmail locally via POP. The nice thing about HN (or the bad thing; depends on your perspective) is that it doesn't need an email. I wish more watering holes were like that. Alas, people are flaky with passwords and need resetting from time to time.
jameskennemore 13y ago
"Google’s engineers determined this single document violated policy and locked down my entire account" -- meaning "no privacy for your documents."
DigitalSea 13y ago
If anyone has ever had to deal with an AdSense account suspension, this story will hit close to heart. I find it alarming that Google suspended his account over a spreadsheet which contained login details for a client (I do this for managing my various domain and hosting accounts in Google Docs). While we haven't heard the full story of what happened here, the fact they restored his access proves he didn't do anything that really violated the TOC otherwise his account access would not have been reinstated. Seems to me this is a case of Google doing the wrong thing here, their lack of customer support is frustrating.
gap 13y ago
If you are an Android user, in this situation you also lose access to all the apps that you bought from Google Play. Many developers only release their software through Google's app store, and for paid apps you cannot make backup copies of the APK, at least if your device isn't rooted, which it isn't for most users. If you are an Android dev, please also make your app available through other stores.
robomartin 13y ago
Seriously, why does ANYONE use anything other than Google Search and Analytics? Why do you willfully choose to expose yourself and your business to what they can do to you? From the article: "A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on because my Google calendar had disappeared. I couldn’t publicly gripe about what I was going through, because my Blogger no longer existed. My Picasa albums were gone. I’d lost my contacts and calling plan through Google Voice; otherwise I would have called friends to cry." And that list of losses can be expanded if you use other Google tools. Personally, I just don't get it. I was using various forms of email before Google even existed. I settled on Outlook and self-hosted email on Linux a long time ago. Oh yes, MS Office for docs, calendars, etc.. Perfect? Nope. But nobody can flip a switch and take it all away overnight. I simply could not fathom running any of my businesses with this kind of daily risk. Any one of your employees could trigger a Google account shutdown and cost you dearly. What's the problem here? Are MS license fees too expensive when compared to loosing all of your data overnight? As for the other non-MS Office services offered by Google, well, there are tons of alternatives, free and paid. I was lucky enough to learn this lesson about three years ago when a client's account was shut down merely for moving about two hundred domains to a an "AdSense for Domains" service they used to offer. Bam! Three days later their entire account is shutdown, AdWords, AdSense, Gmail, Docs, everything. Wow. New user too. From that point forward I made a few decisions I have yet to violate: - Use Google Search if you must - Use Google Analytics if you must - Use Google AdWords if you must - Do not base a business on Google AdSense. Your entire revenue stream could evaporate overnight. - Do NOT use ANY OTHER Google service, no matter how enticing or convenient it might be. Consider what the cost to your business might be if that new sparkling offering on the table is pulled away without notice or recourse. - Do not build a business on a foundation someone else has full control over. So far, so good. Email, documents, backups and collaboration existed just fine before Google was even an idea in someone's head. Don't be lured into something that can kill your business and cause you personal financial damage. If I were running an investment firm I would have a clause in my contracts requiring that no business-critical services are to be hosted by Google on any companies we'd invest on. Talk about playing with fire. Invest millions into a venture and Google pulls their data backbone from right under them? Crap! Screw that.
nowhereman123 13y ago
Frankly, you are an idiot. Trusting Google was your first mistake. Putting a client's passwords or any sensitive data into a FREE SERVICE that explicitly states that your data may disappear at any time was tantamount to malpractice. You got what you deserved.
fakeer 13y ago
I don't know about Analytics, never used it. But I strongly believe search needs to be decentralized. Something like P2P. I mean it's like basic healthcare rights (or right to live) on the Internet. Without search most of the Internet is blocked for you and this mostly lies in a few corporate behemoths; no, I let me correct it - that's just one! Or are there already services like that? I don't think DDG can simply read from Google indexes and give us the results or maybe they can but it still is dependent on indexes by Google which shuts accounts without notice and it's gone for good if you don't know anyone inside or your story is picked up from the Internet.
mokash 13y ago
I think we need a paid email provider, someone who's sole business is to provide email services, and maybe a calendar. Someone who you can host your own domain with and someone who's mission it is to ensure their customers have privacy, security and can rely on their services. Someone who doesn't just guarantee their services for as much as you pay for them but someone who is willing to put their ass on the line to prove that they're a good provider. Sure, you could just set up your own email server but why go through the hassle? There's a real opportunity here, my mother doesn't know how to set up her own email provider, neither does my aunt. A good email provider will make it really easy to do everything related to email with advanced spam filtering capabilities and will run a very tight ship. A man can dream.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Derbasti 13y ago
  Actually, getting a paid email account is easy. Just about every hosting provider out there also offers an email address. Web access is usually terrible though. If you're lucky, they provide roundcube, which is ok, but certainly inferior to Gmail. If you use IMAP and some desktop client, this might not be a problem. The hard part is the calendar and contacts. I don't know of any CalDAV or CardDav provider. Your best bet is probably some hosted Exchange solution, which provides ActiveSync.
  - mokash 13y ago
    The biggest problem with web hosting providers' email services is the lack of effective spam filters similar to Gmail's though.
  - mokash 13y ago
    The biggest problem with web hosting providers' email services is the lack of effective spam filters similar to Gmail's though.
stevewilhelm 13y ago
If you are so dependent on GMail, pay the $50 per year for the Google Apps for Business version.
foobits 13y ago
Uh? So Google really closes accounts?!? Wow... But honestly, what the fuck are governments doing? I mean, companies like Google, Facebook, Paypal etc. are de-facto monopolies and should NOT be able to refuse service to anyone, much less ban existing users! In general, any company pulling such obvious "dick moves" needs punishment. What's the point of having a government and a law system if it cannot even enforce such basic stuff?
DanBC 13y ago
I recently had a drive die on me. Everything was backed up. My passwords were safely stored. But it was going to take some time to get to them. I did have my Google password, so I logged in. I was on a different computer, a different OS, a different network. I was asked to enter my Google Authenticator number, and then BAMM I got access to everything. I realised just how scary the Google 'Save passwords' thing is. I trust Google, and I know they have smart people working on security. We've seen similar where someone having their Google account hacked lost access to everything. This should be part of your back up / disaster planning. I guess there's a niche for a single page check-list of what people should be storing 'just in case'.
DanBC 13y ago
It would be nice if Google, when they threw you out, let you download a glob of your data. That would make the thing a lot less painful for most people. > Google told me for the first time that it reserves the right to “terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.” No one reads the ToS / AUP, but this shows why it's a problem. It was not the first time Google told this guy; he was told in the legal documents that he agreed to when he signed up. Yes, Douglas Adams had it right. > "But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months." > "Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything." > "But the plans were on display ..." > "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." > "That's the display department." > "With a flashlight." > "Ah, well the lights had probably gone." > "So had the stairs." > "But look, you found the notice didn't you?" > "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
- dhimes 13y ago
  At the very least they should tell you exactly why. To not do so is, at the very least, extremely bad manners.
buro9 13y ago
When G+ was announced I realised the implications were I to do anything on the social side that risked the account... loss of access to email, calendar, documents, etc that go back more than a decade. I made a choice that day and I still stick to it: I split my Google identity. My original Gmail account is still in use and I use that for anything social, for any settings and preferences... i.e. the non-essential stuff: Google+, Chrome Sync, Android Play Store, and Google Currents. A Google Apps account deals with anything that I care to keep and is on my private domain: Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, and Drive. I then used sync control in Android to turn off everything that each account won't use. And in Manage Domain on the Google Apps I disabled G+ and anything social. For me it's a risk limitation exercise. Should Google lock my Gmail, I lose things I don't care about. I keep backups (Gmail offline + Grive) of my Google Apps domain, and should that get locked I can change the DNS, setup my own email and restore the backup via IMAP. I get to benefit from Google services without a large exposure to risk should something happen.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
bumbledraven 13y ago
Protip: whenever an argument uses the word "unfettered", it's a warning sign that the argument sucks.
karussell 13y ago
Probably the author would have been interested in an article which I didn't finally publish ;) ... here are some (not always good ;)) Google alternatives Search: DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ask, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, Baidu Scholar: TODO Patent:TODO Image: Bing Shopping/price compare: Photos (Picasa): Flickr, SmugMug YouTube: Vimeo News: Yahoo, TODO Mail: Yahoo, Hotmail, Thunderbird, Fastmail GDrive (storage): Spideroak, Dropbox, Documents: Microsoft, Zoho, OpenOffice Calendar: Zoho, Hotmail, AOL Calendar, 1Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird, 30 boxes Chrome (Browser): Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chromium with Chromatic Google+: Facebook, Twitter, Identica, Diaspora, LinkedIn, Foursquare Maps routing: OSRM, Bing (=Yahoo), MapQuest, GraphHopper ;) local search: Yelp, Bing (no API!) mobile: TomTom Google Streetmaps/Earth: Bing 3D News: Netvibes (full of google search ;)), Yahoo, Twitter, breakingnews Reader: Netvibes, liferea (Linux only) Alerts: Netvibes Translation: Microsoft Analytics: Piwik AdWords: TODO Google Books: nothing found!? Google Sites: Wikispaces, Zoho Google Talk/Hangout: skype, talkyoo Blogs: Wordpress, tumblr Code: GitHub, SourceForge, BitBucket Groups: SourceForge Checkout/Wallet: TODO Google Apps: Amazon Speech Recognition: Nuance Google Voice: PhoneBooth Google TV: Apple TV, Samsung, LG, ... Chrome OS: it's Lubuntu! Smartphone (Android): iPhone, Nokia, BlackBerry, Ubuntu Play Store: Apple Store music: spotify, itunes Self-driving car: BMW, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Nissan, ... Parts of those information through lifehacker ToDos for Google: Offline routing, Own Games, Porn, Ebay, Amazon clone

271 points by stkhlm 13y ago

People have been warned about relying on web services already: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

baby 13y ago
Alright but then how do you safely store your important data? Imagine if the same thing happened with Dropbox (if you're using it).
- jacquesm 13y ago
  The same way you always used to: on media that you control in more than one location.
  - baby 13y ago
    I used to store my data on an external hard drive, which I don't control in more than one location.
- ori_b 13y ago
  If it happened with Dropbox, you would still have a local copy. Keep a backup on media you own. Or, at the very least, mirrored across different providers.
  - Domenic_S 13y ago
    Until dropbox wipes their side and waits for you to sync...
    - a3n 13y ago
      This thing happened to my ex, although it's more likely she did the wipe. She had her home machine and two office machines synched with DB, and her stuff was gone at home and Office One. We went to Office Two, disconnected from the net, turned the machine on and copied her data to USB.
      - Domenic_S 13y ago
        That's good if you know it's coming, but if they surprise you...
- betterunix 13y ago
  Back it up on hardware you own. You can buy multiple terabytes at low cost, you can use duplicity/Deja Dup if you want secure remote backups (on a server of your choosing), etc. You can send people files without having to rely on any specific service provider -- there is email, there is rsync, etc. It is cheap and easy to set up a file server and dynamic DNS, assuming you have a broadband connection (surprisingly many people do not, but that is a separate issue). The problem with these web services is that they allow a single service provider to screw you over on a whim. Why put yourself in that situation? Why leave yourself vulnerable to unscrupulous competitors and governments who might try to copy your files without permission, because some service provider was more concerned about complying with warrants and monetizing your data than about security? Stay in control of your data, and you will not be posting these sorts of stories to HN.
  - theoretick 13y ago
    I think there is a much bigger issue here than the theoretical storage solutions. Everything you said is indeed entirely possible for most HN-readers and tech people but I sure can't talk my mother into switching to dynamic DNS and rsync. The only reason there was a happy ending to this story was that this guy was connected enough to know how to contact someone at Google, what about the other 300million users who barely know what OS they are running? There needs to be some kind of restructuring to protect the public, whether its simple awareness or legislation.
- marssaxman 13y ago
  I keep my data safe by storing it on hardware I control and never depending on cloud-service providers.
  - baby 13y ago
    What if your apartment get robbed? This is the main reason I bought a Dropbox account.
  - greenlander 13y ago
    Any serious amount of data storage requires a hard drive (as opposed to flash), and hard drives are quite fragile. If you drop one on a hard floor it's probably done. And with time they fail for all kinds of other reasons. They are mechanical devices.
    - marssaxman 13y ago
      I seem to have had better than average luck with hard drives; it's been about 20 years since I've had one die while I was still using it. In any case, yes, I rely on a great big hard drive for backup, but it sits on the bottom shelf of a large cabinet; it's not falling any distance onto anything. What's more important is that I know exactly where it is and who has access to it, and I will continue to have access to it as long as I keep on feeding it electricity.
- rsync 13y ago
  How do you safely store your data if you don't have access to dropbox ? As in, dropbox, that company that didn't exist until q3 2008 ? There is a "must be this tall to ride" limit on the Internet, and that is your own IP and the ability to act as a peer on the network. If you don't meet those requirements, you are just a consumer. You're eyeballs that someone else is renting out. You're a digital serf.
- junto 13y ago
  Try http://owncloud.org/ http://owncloud.org/. Run your own cloud server. Files, contacts, calendars, loads of third party integrations (email via RoundCube: http://roundcube.net/ http://roundcube.net/). I'm running mine off a Synology DiskStation that sits at home. Mobile clients for Android and iOS. Sync clients for Windows, Mac and Linux (plus source code if you want to write your own): http://owncloud.org/sync-clients/ http://owncloud.org/sync-clients/ You could point OwnCloud at the same folder as Dropbox. Both monitor the same folder. Double backup. http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/04/how-to-set-up-your-own-private-cloud-storage-service-with-owncloud/ http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/04/how-to-set-up-your-own-... http://jamieflarity.com/technology/owncloud-and-email/ http://jamieflarity.com/technology/owncloud-and-email/

capo 13y ago

Same as every other “cloud provider”, yet somehow Google is the one subjected to these overwritten accounts and the almost mandatory pseudo law/policy musings that follow. You might want to take a look at some policies from others in the industry to get a more accurate picture of this landscape. These policies are constructed as such to mitigate litigation, which the author concedes. Regardless I'm glad this instance had a happy ending. It’s also worth mentioning the the paid tier of Google Apps operates under completely different TOS: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/premier_terms.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/premier_terms.html

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Facebook gets its amount of beating too. Those too should be very careful to not get regulated by an angry mob. I'd say well deserved.
ubersync 13y ago
There is a need to decentralize email, social networking, cloud storage etc. FreedomBox is a step in the right direction. So is Diaspora Project.
- sneak 13y ago
  There is already an effort underway to decentralize email. It's called SMTP and works really well. I think they started it sometime in the 80s?
  - ubersync 13y ago
    But it was again re-centralized in late 90s with the advent of hotmail and all. What I wanted to say was, we need to re-decentralize it.
    - sneak 13y ago
      Gmail and Yahoo Mail and Facebook Mail and my personal mail server all stand in contradiction to your claim. Stop making things up just because you want to complain about the Google. Nobody will fault you for a simple "Fuck Google, they're demonstrably evil and have access to way too much data now," which is what it seems to me you're driving toward.

jamesaguilar 13y ago

Kinda sucks that Google makes type 1 errors occasionally. OTOH, you keep sensitive data from your users in your personal gmail account and you're not paying for support? You crazy.

wereHamster 13y ago
It's not about sensitive data. It's about email, calendar, drive and other google services you use and rely on for your daily work.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  You should not rely on services you're not paying for and don't own for your daily work. :-/ My point isn't about the nature of the data that was stored, my point was the economic reliability of the tool being used to store it. In other words, you want the provider to have some significant incentive not to screw you if your livelihood depends on it.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    It's a calculated risk. Chances of this happening to any given person so far has proven to be almost infinitesimal, so people (rationally) don't care and treat GMail like they treat electricity. But yes, if this indeed happens to you and you were depending on Google services for your work and life, you're completely screwed. Sometimes I feel afraid of this happening to me, but I don't know where to move some of my data to, as every other mail/calendar service I know sucks hard in comparison to GMail and Google Calendar.
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      Enterprise apps accounts are pretty cheap compared to your average business expense. Not speaking as a googler, just a concerned fellow hacker. That might not perfectly insulate you from risk, but I guess (again, without any internal knowledge, I don't work on this stuff) that it cuts it by another factor of ten or more.

drawkbox 13y ago

Definitely a reason I have always paid for Gmail/Drive before it was that. But the actual reason is quite scary why it triggered the issue: "My data was intact save for the last thing I’d worked on–a spreadsheet containing a client’s account numbers and passwords. It seems that Google’s engineers determined this single document violated policy and locked down my entire account. My request to get that document back is still pending." So you can't keep files you need to secure in Drive? Blown away by this. And the access to the entire ecosystem based on one document. This is not good. With that logic if there is a DCMA request or problem with a video on youtube the whole site should just shut down.

magicalist 13y ago
It seems extremely unlikely that you could determine the problem from "the last thing I'd worked on", and it seems even more unlikely that a spreadsheet with (barring any additional information from this story) account numbers and passwords would auto-trigger a shutdown: there would be so many false positives that most people would have had their accounts closed by now.
falcolas 13y ago
If this file is indeed the cause of the account closure... what happens if you're using a Chromebook? Then not only do you loose access to that computer, you are restricted to what kind of content you can create and store on your computer. I hope this gentleman is wrong. I really do.
- dunham 13y ago
  It's plausible. I've personally seen phishing done via google docs. And, at one point, Oxford blocked google docs because of phishing. So phishing via docs is probably a common occurrence. To combat this, I wouldn't be surprised if Google had software that tried to detect this (maybe look for spreadsheets of username/passwords), and shut down the accounts associated with it.
  - bradleybuda 13y ago

D9u 13y ago

Of course the author preformed daily backups to removable media and other cloud based services? Let this be a lesson. Data redundancy is important!

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Is there a tool to backup your google everything? If there isn't then what you're doing is called "taunting".
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  You can download some of your Google data using Google Takeout. It’s far from complete, but if you’re still using Google services, it doesn’t hurt to download a backup once in a while. The Data Liberation Front lists which services can be backed up, and how to do it: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/
  - Lewisham 13y ago
    FWIW I believe Takeout does work when your account has been disabled, so that you can transfer to another provider. EDIT: Although sadly it looks like Gmail is not part of Takeout :/
    - bmj 13y ago
      Right, Gmail is not part of Takeout, but there are third party apps to facilitate this: http://gmvault.org/ http://gmvault.org/ http://www.gmail-backup.com/ http://www.gmail-backup.com/
    - trhtrsh 13y ago
      Ever mail client written since ~1990 is capable of downloading your Gmail.
      - Lewisham 13y ago
        The problem is that if your account is disabled, it's unlikely you'll be able to acces Gmail, IMAP or otherwise. I think Takeout has an exception so that it works even when your account does not.

alexeston 13y ago

I would really, sincerely, love to reply with my opinion on this, what seems by the title at least, wonderful article. But unfortunately people do not seem to have decent enough of a hosting provider and/or server to survive the outcome of getting on the front page of HN and hence I am forced to see "Error establishing a database connection".

frozenport 13y ago
Back in the old days before VPS, websites would autoscale leading to huge and unprecedented bills. For example, I hosted a website that contained download links. One day the Chinese found out and hot-linking causing my server bill to jump from $5.95 to over $200. I was 12 and this made me sad.
- alexeston 13y ago
  I believe I was not around then. I started when the shared hosting was a really popular thing with fixed bandwidth and even that could of easily survived HN. So, I'm kind of amazed on why some sites can't handle that in 2013.
  - frozenport 13y ago
    When you exceed your limit they charge you a penalty.
    - alexeston 13y ago
      Yes, but at least here in Estonia the limit was more than enough (usually 500gb of bandwidth per month).

bloaf 13y ago

Cloud storage doesn't count as a backup if it is the only place you've stored your data.

aquadrop 13y ago
Any storage doesn't count as a backup if it's the only place you've stored your data.
Houshalter 13y ago
It wasn't just stuff he backed up on google drive that he lost. You can lose your email account, possibly locking you out of any internet service that uses email as authentication, as well as any important emails. You can lose documents you made on google drive itself that you haven't yet downloaded. He lost his calendar, which I don't even know if you can backup. He also mentioned his blog and phone service and contacts. The point is it's not just data that is lost and of what is, not everything is easily backed up on local storage.

ubersync 13y ago

I can't access the article. Can anyone tell shortly, what the author is complaining about?

thomaslutz 13y ago
Google closed his Google Account including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calender etc. without notice and without explanation. After 6 days he got it back after a google employee he knows personally escalated the case internally.
- frozenport 13y ago
  And now that employee is paying the price with an embarrassing hacker news article?
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    No, the employee comes out pretty good but google clearly sucks for anything mission critical without a backup outside of google.
ubersync 13y ago
I could finally access it. Well, ideally all the services should be decentralized (each person/company hosting their own email, social network, cloud storage etc). But if that is not feasible, you can at least try and use a different company for each service. In that case violating the terms of one service would not shut you out of others.

zalzane 13y ago

I think what's even more horrifying that isn't mentioned in the article is how many services use email as a form of user authentication. If you lose access to your gmail account, you also lose access to changing your password on any service that makes you do so through an email link - I know of some services that don't even let you change your account email without clicking on an email authentication link. So not only is there the always-lingering possibility of losing your google account to automated shutdowns, you can also lose access to services that you use that use authentication through email, quite an uneasy thought.

coderdude 13y ago
Unfortunately though, it's poor practice to let a user change their email address without first sending a confirmation email. If you don't confirm the action before making the change then bad people can lock out the true owner of an account simply by being logged-in.
- trhtrsh 13y ago
  Which is why everyone should have their own domain name, or have a contract with a reputable provider. It's crazy to cede over ones entire identity to a free "best-effort" service.
  - drdaeman 13y ago
    Identities and accounts are two separate matters. Accounts can only be some of identity's credentials. You are not your email address (and you should never be considered so), but your email provider can optionally act as one of trusted third parties who can assert your identity. Not the other round. Also, you can't really own a domain name — you can only rent it from your domain registrar, in almost a same manner you rent your email account. And the idea of paying for keeping my own identity somehow frightens me.
    - trhtrsh 13y ago
      You can pay for many years in advance, and you can register for auto-renewal. Paying to keep your identity is far better than borrowing it from someone who has made no promises to you.

imsofuture 13y ago

What are the best alternatives to Gmail?

lignuist 13y ago
Paying for managed Webspace that includes email functionality.
- eropple 13y ago
  Who runs a remotely comparable e-mail service, though? I mean, I've tried Windows Live, and that's the closest I've found and is still pretty poor.
  - lignuist 13y ago
    A comparable service leads to comparable problems.
hexis 13y ago
I have been very happy for the past few years using fastmail.fm.
baby 13y ago
There's Zoho which is pretty similar imo.
cpncrunch 13y ago
If you're a real hacker, you should probably manage your own email/file server.
- XorNot 13y ago
  There's a hardware startup opportunity here somewhere: sell a box which does this for an end-user, and makes it really trivial to setup replication mirrors elsewhere. Probably dies on the platform of "people don't have good broadband".

baby 13y ago

Reading this was like reading a nightmare. I have all my life on my Gmail account. All my plans on my Calendar. Important documents on Driver etc... I'm way too dependent of Google. Same thing if iTunes Match or Dropbox dump me tomorrow.

tannerc 13y ago

Looks like we may start needing cloud services to backup cloud services. That'd be an interesting service, particularly if it worked seamlessly in the background.

TeMPOraL 13y ago
All fine, until all the data ends up stored in the very same Amazon server room, at which point in the event of server fire your "cloud backups" will probably go down along with the original data.
- trhtrsh 13y ago
  You are misunderstaning how cloud storage works. Amazon/Google data is stored in 3-6 different disks, often in 2 or 3 different datacenters. If that data were lost due to physical failures, you would have much larger worries, like dust from a meteor blocking out the sun.
Kerrick 13y ago
They've existed for a while. https://www.backupify.com/ https://www.backupify.com/

magoon 13y ago

Please don't keep sensitive client data in a spreadsheet on Google, or DropBox. If you must store it in a cloud, at least encrypt it and store it in a locally-encryptable service like JungleDisk.

woodchuck64 13y ago

It seems strange that Google wouldn't have a policy of issuing warnings, escalating warnings, etc., before taking the drastic action of suspending an account. Without knowing the exact reason this person's account was suspended, for all we know it could be a complete glitch.

e40 13y ago
It's not strange, it's by design. They would do it if they wanted to. If by strange you meant "bad", then I agree with you.
gscott 13y ago
When you're God you can just send a flood and say "well I hope that person built a boat". (i.e that the person should have a copy of their data).
- MichaelApproved 13y ago
  Even the god in the fable you're referencing gave Noah advance notice of the flood.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Even the god in the fable you're referencing gave Noah advance notice of the flood. Yeah, but it wasn't Noah's ToS violation that the god involved was addressing.
    - gscott 13y ago
      There was no TOS violation, just an algorithm gone wild. This happens to me all the time but with Google adwords - Google Adwords tells me not to run more then one domain in an ad group then suspends the ad group... that has only one ad in it. Takes a week for Google to undo their suspension. - Google Adwords suspends an ad, support says that during the signup process there should be a page that links to competitors with a comparison of prices as features. Sort of like going to a K-Mart but once your at the checkout the checker says "you shudda gone to Wal-Mart sucker!" (to save a dollar). Takes a week for Google to undo their suspension. etc and so on. If you spend 20k a month or more with Google adwords when Google wants to give you pain they find very unusual ways to do it I presume to mess with your click history to force you to pay more, so Google quarterly profits go up. I presume this happens throughout Google's products.

dendory 13y ago

The most interesting part was the reason he believes the account was suspended. He was working on a spreadsheet containing usernames and passwords. If that's really the case, it means some automated system scans not only your email, but documents you work on, for things like password lists, and right away assumes you're up to no good, killing your account. Scary.

ceph_ 13y ago
Sounds like a really wild accusation to me. Is their anything to back this up besides their speculation?
- taf2 13y ago
  I know our consulting company for 2 years kept a sheet of logins as do most agencies so I find that hard to believe... However, I do recall getting my Adsense account banned for click fraud - which really sucked but it was true that I had my friends all click my ads and that my site was basically just ripping off pop culture content with naive hopes of getting rich quick - ah the 200's. so no suprise it got banned.
  - karma_fountain 13y ago
    That wasn't popjam was it?
- tytso 13y ago
  There's also the question of whether the original poster was telling the truth, or even told the whole story. If for example, the spreadsheet had a form for the entry of usernames and passwords, and someone came across it (maybe because it was e-mailed out to lots of people), and reported it as an attempted account phishing form, that would certainly explain an account getting suspended for an TOS violation --- and as far as I know, someone who is trying to use their Google account for phishing doesn't get escalating warnings... and I think most people would agree with this.
  - 13y ago

jfoster 13y ago

If it was based on the content of a document in the Google Drive, it's probably an automated rule. Clearly such an automated rule is going above and beyond the minimum action by affecting the entire account rather than just the document in question. Given that characteristic, I wonder if it might also shutdown the account of anyone who the document is shared with. Could be quite dangerous if it does. Documents can be added into someone's Google Drive just by having them follow a link.

josscrowcroft 13y ago

"Services I'd Pay For", May 2013 Edition: 1) A hands-off, hassle-free service that connects to all your Google 'properties' and backs up everything every hour, on the hour, and allows easy importing into a selection of similar replacement services if/when the Googleplex smites me down. 2) See 1).

johnsbrayton 13y ago
My Mac app, CloudPull, closely resembles that description. It runs in the background on your Mac, backing up Gmail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Google Reader. It performs backups every hour, and keeps snapshots for 90 days. You can download CloudPull from: http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/ http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/ CloudPull is free for a single account. For $9.99, you can upgrade to get premium features including support for up to ten Google accounts. John
- josscrowcroft 13y ago
  Fantastic, thanks for the heads up.
- mikro2nd 13y ago
  Any plans for a Linux port? Seriously, I'd love to pay you, but don't do iAnything (and for much the same reasons that I don't trust Google with much of anything these days.)
eloisant 13y ago
* Buy a Synology NAS * Buy a domain name * Setup a mail server on your NAS (you get Roundcube in 2 clicks) * Forward emails from gmail to your home email * Backup to Amazon Glacier (in a few clicks on a Synology) Now when a problem arise, just stop using GMail and use Roundcube directly.
- junto 13y ago
  Did you install Roundcube directly via DSM, or indirectly using the DSM Owncloud plugin?

RawData 13y ago

I don't understand why no one has sued google over this... That would be my first reaction...

jfoster 13y ago
It would be interesting to know if that might be a path for someone with a sealed closed account to at least get access to their data back. I imagine Google would want to settle such a case, and giving the customer a dump of their data would seem an easy route to settlement.
SEMW 13y ago
English law student here. This isn't legal advice. Generally, in common law countries, if you're not paying Google for the services, the legal system won't help you. Since you gave no consideration for the services you got, there's no legal contract, so you can't even enforce their own terms of service against them. (In theory, an action in tort for negligent provision of services can succeed against a provider you didn't pay - but in practice, that'd fail for a number of reasons in this situation (in England anyway)). As soon as you're paying for services, the whole thing changes. You've suddenly got the contract law at your back, and with that comes whatever laws govern unfair terms in consumer contracts, and the supply of services to consumers, in your jurisdiction. You're in a vastly better position, legally.
- RawData 13y ago
  Consideraion doesn't necessarily have to be money...
  - SEMW 13y ago
    I'm guessing you mean that having adverts shown to you might be good consideration? I guess it's possible that it might be held to be, but it's by no means a given. (I don't know any English cases on that, but there may be US ones I'm not familiar with. All the cases of website terms I know are ones where the website owner wants to enforce against the user, so don't help, as AFAICS the courts only care whether the party seeking to enforce gave consideration (which they have: the service)). But even if you succeed in that, it still might not help you. Seems to me that the effect of that would be to make the service a standing offer on Google's part. Analogy: a sign on a shack saying "Come in and take a biscuit if you view the advert on the wall". The consideration isn't in return for a promise to continue to provide services. If the shack owner removed the shack one day, you couldn't sue him for breach of contract. Wheras if you've paid money for a service and they don't provide it, they're in breach, full stop. (Even if they claim you're in breach, they have to notify you and give you a reasonable time to cure it). IANAL, and my consideration analysis might be completely wrong. But even if it is, I still strongly suspect it's not going to be easy to convince a court to hold Google in breach for stopping giving you a service you weren't paying for. If you're paying for a service, you're in a much more secure position.

devmach 13y ago

For an individuals it's overkill buy at work we use something like this : * We use Google/Gmail only for mail hosting, not for calender or cloud storage. * Google apps with our domain. * We have also an account at Yandex. * DNS service from DynDNS, MX ttls set to 3600 seconds (1 hour, it could be less) * For virtualization, we have a i7 machine with 2x1 TB disks (Raid-1). * For webmail, calender, sharing etc we use Zimbra ( open source version ). * Everyone has an internal email ( x@office.domain.com ) and external gmail account. Zimbra syncs itself with gmail. * When somebody sends email , depending user, zimbra send it using gmail or relay. * At 3 a.m. system automatically shut down Zimbra , takes backup on usb 3 hdd (~100Gb, arround 40 mins) and brings up it again( I know, there is a room for improvement, like rsyncing /opt/zimbra directory ). We change usb disks everyday or two and store other disk at somewhere outside the office. So, - If Gmail "dumps" us, we can change our MX to Yandex, stuggle couple hours and then continue to work. - If local server burns, users can continue to work using Gmail while we build & install new one. We tried rackspace email hosting but it had problems ( some mails doesn't delivered, some incoming mails lost etc ). Fastmail was/is expensive comparing current infrastructure and it could be viable if we have more than 30 persons. P.S. : I'm not saying this solution is perfect or it's the only way to do, i'm just sharing.

suhastech 13y ago
Well, I actually wrote a simple email backup app called http://thehorcrux.com/ http://thehorcrux.com/ for individuals. It was my own personal itch. </shamelessplug>

hifier 13y ago

I'm wondering if this is the mindset that most people have. The idea of putting you're entire personal dataset (and work dataset?) into a free service has always seemed terrifying to me. Especially one whose entire business model is based on using that data to serve you ads! I keep local copies of everything and backup daily. I don't trust anyone with such a complete picture of my digital life. 'The cloud' is overrated, at least the free, ad supported version is IMHO.

eksith 13y ago

Lost count of how many times this was mentioned, but it bears repeating still : You don't own what you can't control. Even if your name is on it, even if you've given it to everyone, even if you use it on a million other accounts as a means of access and an identity, you don't really own it. This is why, I still keep a contact@domain for professional work while saving all my personal stuff on Gmail locally via POP. The nice thing about HN (or the bad thing; depends on your perspective) is that it doesn't need an email. I wish more watering holes were like that. Alas, people are flaky with passwords and need resetting from time to time.

jameskennemore 13y ago

"Google’s engineers determined this single document violated policy and locked down my entire account" -- meaning "no privacy for your documents."

DigitalSea 13y ago

If anyone has ever had to deal with an AdSense account suspension, this story will hit close to heart. I find it alarming that Google suspended his account over a spreadsheet which contained login details for a client (I do this for managing my various domain and hosting accounts in Google Docs). While we haven't heard the full story of what happened here, the fact they restored his access proves he didn't do anything that really violated the TOC otherwise his account access would not have been reinstated. Seems to me this is a case of Google doing the wrong thing here, their lack of customer support is frustrating.

gap 13y ago

If you are an Android user, in this situation you also lose access to all the apps that you bought from Google Play. Many developers only release their software through Google's app store, and for paid apps you cannot make backup copies of the APK, at least if your device isn't rooted, which it isn't for most users. If you are an Android dev, please also make your app available through other stores.

robomartin 13y ago

Seriously, why does ANYONE use anything other than Google Search and Analytics? Why do you willfully choose to expose yourself and your business to what they can do to you? From the article: "A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on because my Google calendar had disappeared. I couldn’t publicly gripe about what I was going through, because my Blogger no longer existed. My Picasa albums were gone. I’d lost my contacts and calling plan through Google Voice; otherwise I would have called friends to cry." And that list of losses can be expanded if you use other Google tools. Personally, I just don't get it. I was using various forms of email before Google even existed. I settled on Outlook and self-hosted email on Linux a long time ago. Oh yes, MS Office for docs, calendars, etc.. Perfect? Nope. But nobody can flip a switch and take it all away overnight. I simply could not fathom running any of my businesses with this kind of daily risk. Any one of your employees could trigger a Google account shutdown and cost you dearly. What's the problem here? Are MS license fees too expensive when compared to loosing all of your data overnight? As for the other non-MS Office services offered by Google, well, there are tons of alternatives, free and paid. I was lucky enough to learn this lesson about three years ago when a client's account was shut down merely for moving about two hundred domains to a an "AdSense for Domains" service they used to offer. Bam! Three days later their entire account is shutdown, AdWords, AdSense, Gmail, Docs, everything. Wow. New user too. From that point forward I made a few decisions I have yet to violate: - Use Google Search if you must - Use Google Analytics if you must - Use Google AdWords if you must - Do not base a business on Google AdSense. Your entire revenue stream could evaporate overnight. - Do NOT use ANY OTHER Google service, no matter how enticing or convenient it might be. Consider what the cost to your business might be if that new sparkling offering on the table is pulled away without notice or recourse. - Do not build a business on a foundation someone else has full control over. So far, so good. Email, documents, backups and collaboration existed just fine before Google was even an idea in someone's head. Don't be lured into something that can kill your business and cause you personal financial damage. If I were running an investment firm I would have a clause in my contracts requiring that no business-critical services are to be hosted by Google on any companies we'd invest on. Talk about playing with fire. Invest millions into a venture and Google pulls their data backbone from right under them? Crap! Screw that.

nowhereman123 13y ago

Frankly, you are an idiot. Trusting Google was your first mistake. Putting a client's passwords or any sensitive data into a FREE SERVICE that explicitly states that your data may disappear at any time was tantamount to malpractice. You got what you deserved.

fakeer 13y ago

I don't know about Analytics, never used it. But I strongly believe search needs to be decentralized. Something like P2P. I mean it's like basic healthcare rights (or right to live) on the Internet. Without search most of the Internet is blocked for you and this mostly lies in a few corporate behemoths; no, I let me correct it - that's just one! Or are there already services like that? I don't think DDG can simply read from Google indexes and give us the results or maybe they can but it still is dependent on indexes by Google which shuts accounts without notice and it's gone for good if you don't know anyone inside or your story is picked up from the Internet.

mokash 13y ago

I think we need a paid email provider, someone who's sole business is to provide email services, and maybe a calendar. Someone who you can host your own domain with and someone who's mission it is to ensure their customers have privacy, security and can rely on their services. Someone who doesn't just guarantee their services for as much as you pay for them but someone who is willing to put their ass on the line to prove that they're a good provider. Sure, you could just set up your own email server but why go through the hassle? There's a real opportunity here, my mother doesn't know how to set up her own email provider, neither does my aunt. A good email provider will make it really easy to do everything related to email with advanced spam filtering capabilities and will run a very tight ship. A man can dream.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Derbasti 13y ago
Actually, getting a paid email account is easy. Just about every hosting provider out there also offers an email address. Web access is usually terrible though. If you're lucky, they provide roundcube, which is ok, but certainly inferior to Gmail. If you use IMAP and some desktop client, this might not be a problem. The hard part is the calendar and contacts. I don't know of any CalDAV or CardDav provider. Your best bet is probably some hosted Exchange solution, which provides ActiveSync.
- mokash 13y ago
  The biggest problem with web hosting providers' email services is the lack of effective spam filters similar to Gmail's though.
- mokash 13y ago
  The biggest problem with web hosting providers' email services is the lack of effective spam filters similar to Gmail's though.

stevewilhelm 13y ago

If you are so dependent on GMail, pay the $50 per year for the Google Apps for Business version.

foobits 13y ago

Uh? So Google really closes accounts?!? Wow... But honestly, what the fuck are governments doing? I mean, companies like Google, Facebook, Paypal etc. are de-facto monopolies and should NOT be able to refuse service to anyone, much less ban existing users! In general, any company pulling such obvious "dick moves" needs punishment. What's the point of having a government and a law system if it cannot even enforce such basic stuff?

DanBC 13y ago

I recently had a drive die on me. Everything was backed up. My passwords were safely stored. But it was going to take some time to get to them. I did have my Google password, so I logged in. I was on a different computer, a different OS, a different network. I was asked to enter my Google Authenticator number, and then BAMM I got access to everything. I realised just how scary the Google 'Save passwords' thing is. I trust Google, and I know they have smart people working on security. We've seen similar where someone having their Google account hacked lost access to everything. This should be part of your back up / disaster planning. I guess there's a niche for a single page check-list of what people should be storing 'just in case'.

DanBC 13y ago

It would be nice if Google, when they threw you out, let you download a glob of your data. That would make the thing a lot less painful for most people. > Google told me for the first time that it reserves the right to “terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.” No one reads the ToS / AUP, but this shows why it's a problem. It was not the first time Google told this guy; he was told in the legal documents that he agreed to when he signed up. Yes, Douglas Adams had it right. > "But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months." > "Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything." > "But the plans were on display ..." > "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." > "That's the display department." > "With a flashlight." > "Ah, well the lights had probably gone." > "So had the stairs." > "But look, you found the notice didn't you?" > "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

dhimes 13y ago
At the very least they should tell you exactly why. To not do so is, at the very least, extremely bad manners.

buro9 13y ago

When G+ was announced I realised the implications were I to do anything on the social side that risked the account... loss of access to email, calendar, documents, etc that go back more than a decade. I made a choice that day and I still stick to it: I split my Google identity. My original Gmail account is still in use and I use that for anything social, for any settings and preferences... i.e. the non-essential stuff: Google+, Chrome Sync, Android Play Store, and Google Currents. A Google Apps account deals with anything that I care to keep and is on my private domain: Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, and Drive. I then used sync control in Android to turn off everything that each account won't use. And in Manage Domain on the Google Apps I disabled G+ and anything social. For me it's a risk limitation exercise. Should Google lock my Gmail, I lose things I don't care about. I keep backups (Gmail offline + Grive) of my Google Apps domain, and should that get locked I can change the DNS, setup my own email and restore the backup via IMAP. I get to benefit from Google services without a large exposure to risk should something happen.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

bumbledraven 13y ago

Protip: whenever an argument uses the word "unfettered", it's a warning sign that the argument sucks.

karussell 13y ago

Probably the author would have been interested in an article which I didn't finally publish ;) ... here are some (not always good ;)) Google alternatives Search: DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ask, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, Baidu Scholar: TODO Patent:TODO Image: Bing Shopping/price compare: Photos (Picasa): Flickr, SmugMug YouTube: Vimeo News: Yahoo, TODO Mail: Yahoo, Hotmail, Thunderbird, Fastmail GDrive (storage): Spideroak, Dropbox, Documents: Microsoft, Zoho, OpenOffice Calendar: Zoho, Hotmail, AOL Calendar, 1Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird, 30 boxes Chrome (Browser): Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chromium with Chromatic Google+: Facebook, Twitter, Identica, Diaspora, LinkedIn, Foursquare Maps routing: OSRM, Bing (=Yahoo), MapQuest, GraphHopper ;) local search: Yelp, Bing (no API!) mobile: TomTom Google Streetmaps/Earth: Bing 3D News: Netvibes (full of google search ;)), Yahoo, Twitter, breakingnews Reader: Netvibes, liferea (Linux only) Alerts: Netvibes Translation: Microsoft Analytics: Piwik AdWords: TODO Google Books: nothing found!? Google Sites: Wikispaces, Zoho Google Talk/Hangout: skype, talkyoo Blogs: Wordpress, tumblr Code: GitHub, SourceForge, BitBucket Groups: SourceForge Checkout/Wallet: TODO Google Apps: Amazon Speech Recognition: Nuance Google Voice: PhoneBooth Google TV: Apple TV, Samsung, LG, ... Chrome OS: it's Lubuntu! Smartphone (Android): iPhone, Nokia, BlackBerry, Ubuntu Play Store: Apple Store music: spotify, itunes Self-driving car: BMW, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Nissan, ... Parts of those information through lifehacker ToDos for Google: Offline routing, Own Games, Porn, Ebay, Amazon clone