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Don’t Mess with The Google

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Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#81

Post by morganvachon »

wyager wrote: post #57

Anyone have any good links on how to host your own email with spam blocking and such?

It's incredibly difficult and time consuming. I've found that a good compromise is to buy a domain name (or use one you already have), and pay for a reseller hosting account with a reputable service provider. You'll get a level of customer support that is far above a standard hosting account, full control over your email settings, and you'll have full root/WHM access to your account. As a bonus you can spin up a website whenever you want for testing or production, and make back your monthly fees by selling webspace to a single client. It sounds like a lot to just have good managed email, but I only pay about $15/month for the reseller account, barely more than a regular hosted account.

I went with A Small Orange, they have incredible support and they stay on top of abuse reports so their emails servers never get blacklisted. I've also used Tiger Technologies in the past and they are superb as well.

With that said, I'm still considering replacing Gmail with something like Fastmail even though I'm satisfied with the email service from ASO. Having a web-based account outside the reseller hosting umbrella makes two-factor auth a lot easier to manage.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#82

Post by tw04 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #70
tw04 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if your "landlord" (and by landlord I mean your buddy who is letting you stay in his apartment complex free of charge other than making you read through the occasional newspaper flier) cut off access to your apartment, and everything inside, because you happened to have a raging house party that encompassed the entire 20th floor of his building. None of those apartments were occupied so you just broke down the d…

Even under the worst lease violations you can think of, it is illegal for a landlord to keep your stuff. They can throw it out on the curb, but they cannot keep it. Google not only cut off services, they cut off access to remove users' content. I don't see how that is defensible.

They cut off access to a COPY of a users content. They didn't TAKE anything from a user. If, in 2016, you're relying on a free service as your only copy of important data, you're a fool.

Countless governments across the world could literally, without any notice, delete all of your data at the drop of a hat on ANY public service. See: megaupload. It's not the job of a free service provider, who literally makes 0 promises of data integrity, to provide you unlimited access to your data until the end of time.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#83

Post by tw04 »

Mithaldu wrote: post #69
tw04 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if your "landlord" (and by landlord I mean your buddy who is letting you stay in his apartment complex free of charge other than making you read through the occasional newspaper flier) cut off access to your apartment, and everything inside, because you happened to have a raging house party that encompassed the entire 20th floor of his building. None of those apartments were occupied so you just broke down the d…

Equating "life more difficult" with "destroying apartments" is silly.

Equating "copy of my data" with "my housing situation" is even more silly. Google isn't TAKING anything from you by locking the account, they are simply destroying what should be one of many COPIES of your data.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#84

Post by brazzledazzle »

moyta wrote: post #72
serge2k wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sane world Google would get a swift and harsh judgement against them for this. Don't be evil. lol. Anyone remember the glory days of the first sale doctrine? Before we started letting companies essentially make arbitrary binding rules at their whim.

If anyone banned bothers to file a small claims case against Google, they could likely win. I've successfully won cases with significantly more grey area against well informed people in small claims, and Google would be compelled to send a company representative who is wholly unfamiliar with the law and what the case is about due to the way small claims court works. The most likely outcome is Google will settle well…

I'm sure it varies wildly from state-to-state and country-to-country but I believe where they are required to send a representative that's an employee they can send a lawyer that that they have on staff since they meet the requirement. That said I'm not sure what advantage they'd have since small claims is a very different beast. Not to mention the costs to do so would almost certainly exceed the judgement. Might even be cheaper to simply default than deal with the back-and-forth of settling the matter outside of court.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#85

Post by morganvachon »

relics443 wrote: post #48
morganvachon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only speaking for myself, but I'm put off because Google is punishing its users with a digital death sentence because they sold a phone that was originally bought from Google at full retail price . Yes, it's against the service agreement for the Fi phone service, but at most Google should only be allowed to suspend the user's Fi account, not irretrievably delete their entire Google identity. It's retaliation and puni…

It's not retaliation or punishment. It's process. At the end of the day, rules were broken. If you can't handle the repercussions then don't break the rules. Pretty simple.

The problem is that the customers broke the rules of their Google Fi service. I wouldn't be as upset if Google just suspended that one service (though I maintain that Google should not be allowed to do anything in retaliation for a customer exercising their right to resell a full retail purchase).

However, Google is not only suspending their phone service, they are deleting the user's entire Google account. For some people that goes all the way back to 2004 when Gmail started. That's a hell of a slap in the face, and they are doing it without warning nor chance for appeal.

Even if you agree with Google's stance on this, you must realize that this is horribly negative publicity for them, right? There are people (myself included) who are immediately seeking alternative services and planning to drop Google altogether because of this. It's highly disturbing that they would so casually drop the hammer.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#86

Post by brazzledazzle »

duaneb wrote: post #41
taurath wrote: post #23

Pretty incredible - especially with how little that a hardware product purchase has to do with a user's data. Imagine for a moment that google required people to have an account to access all their services - that they have the ability to cut you off arbitrarily across ALL their services for a TOS violation should scare anyone. Imagine if facebook cut your account and thereby ties to many of your friends and acquaint…

> Imagine if facebook cut your account and thereby ties to many of your friends and acquaintances for promoting a competing ad company? This is very imaginable. Facebook has never attempted to be privacy or user friendly; DO NOT USE IT. You are the only product they have of value. In general, do not use third party login for anything personal you care about. It's not a password; it's nothing you control.

I remember when Spotify switched to requiring facebook for signup and were pushing linking the accounts on existing users. Perhaps it was a bug but at one point they made finding and following other users very difficult without facebook integration. Apparently they switched back to allowing email signup again some time ago but it left a very sour taste in my mouth. I still have my account today so I suppose that's a testament to how well they've run their service outside of that issue.

Anyway, I hope developers keep incidents like this Google one in mind and let people create standalone accounts. Certainly at the very least supporting more than one provider and allowing you to link another email address if they don't feel comfortable dealing with the very serious responsibility of managing and encrypting usernames and passwords.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#87

Post by relics443 »

relics443 wrote: post #51
kinkdr wrote: post #19

We have to stop being naive about our email accounts. My recommendation is to buy a domain name use that as the primary email. It may cost in total around $100/year but it is definitely worth it.

I hear clintonemail.com is available

Too soon?

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#88

Post by relics443 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #56
relics443 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A. Landlords can most certainly terminate your lease because of that. They can't throw you out immediately because of tenant protection laws, and they have to let you get your belongings once you're evicted. B. ToS are just as legally binding as a lease (provided they are presented in the right manner, which is how Google presents them). No one cares of you actually read them or not. As soon as you check the box that…

Are you seriously trying to argue the current ToS situation is reasonable? Seriously?

I'm telling you a fact. A ToS is legally binding. Outrage, and wishing it weren't so won't change that.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#89

Post by dang »

vuanotino wrote: post #9

This is so low and childish that I am sure only Google could do something like this.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and especially not vitriolic ones. Throwing acid around is damaging to the kind of discussion we're hoping for.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#90

Post by bbcbasic »

hackits wrote: post #39
mendelk wrote: post #3

TL;DR: At least 200 people participated in a scheme in which they purchased (multiple) Pixel phones and had them shipped to a dealer in NH for resale to others, in contravention of the Google ToS. In response, Google suspended all their accounts, without the option to download any their stuff, including email and drive data, etc.

My response to Google deleting peoples email accounts. Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work: This makes me laugh my ass off. This is a bit of a pet peeve I have with people and modern technology. They believe they have a right to use a service even though they're not paying for the usage of the service. Then they turn around shocked and angry when the free service is removed. `Why! why did they do this…

And the open source frameworks.... well it's up to you but I think it should be tackled from the other end. Guys keep your stuff proprietary and sell it. Or at least make the open source version less features. There I said it.
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