Regarding Gmail: I've been using Google Apps for Domains for years, among other things to host my private family domain. All family members, wife, kids, have em

Regarding Gmail: I've been using Google Apps for Domains for years, among other things to host my private family domain. All family members, wife, kids, have email accounts there. Around New Year my 7-year old son's account was permanently suspended. Even I as the superadmin of the domain can't unlock it, there is no way to get the data out. What happened is he tried to register G+. No, our young kids don't have G+ or FB accounts. They are not allowed to and we monitor how they use Internet. But it's hard to avoid running into G+ these days. So my son clicked on a link somewhere. It turned out that a person younger than 13 years are not allowed to have a google account. Period. It's a violation of their TOS. Even though outside of USA, GMail or Google apps for domains never explicitely asked you for your age. Not before G+, and even now only if you register your G+ profile. Bottom line: I have no other choice than to de-google-ify my life. Google forced me to do it. I know you can lie about age of your kid but doing so is risky. See above. I have a cronjob that runs every hour to backup all Gmail inboxes to a IMAP server (dovecot) so in my case it's not a disaster. But imagine if I wasn't so paranoid about Google... Also as they say if the service is free you are their product. These days everywhere every time when I can I choose the paid option.