Don’t Mess with The Google

Hm. Another lesson - avoid Google for critical accounts. Having your account handled by someone who can suspend it because they didn't like how you bought your hardware is simply too risky, besides just how weird it sounds. It highlights that Google wields too much power over their users.

Wait you have to have a Google account just to order a pixel phone? How dumb would you have to be to do that when you're doing shady reselling deals? But this is why I distrust any online transaction that cannot be done without a guest account unless there's some solid reason. There's no such reason for buying a phone.

I recently got locked out of my old bank account because I didn't use the SIM from my country of origin for 5 months. My mobile operator disabled my ~15yo phone number and I can't recover it without flying there and visiting their office with my ID.

That's why I also feel uneasy towards all these number-based messengers. They're targeted at users who rarely leave their countries.

Rule Zero: Never rely on a URL that you don't control. Use your own domain name for your e-mail addresses. Use your own domain name for canonical links to content. If you control the URLs, you do not depend on any one provider.

Rule One: If you only have one copy, you have no copies. It is an act of faith to assume that a Youtube video or a file in Google Drive will remain available, just as it's an act of faith to assume that a hard drive will never fail. Anything from a hacker to a natural disaster could destroy your data. The "cloud" is made of servers, not magic.

If you follow these two rules, you have nothing to fear. Google could suspend my account tomorrow and it would be nothing more than an inconvenience. I change a couple of DNS records, restore some data from nearline and I'm back in business like nothing happened.

Disclaimer: I don't speak for Google and don't have any real context into why this occurred. Speaking as myself, a private citizen.

I work in Spam & Abuse and it's possible that this is the result of some clustering algorithm that was trying to take down sharders / phone buying rings. It's very possible that the SWEs responsible didn't consider this possibility (that legitimate customers would be used to shard purchases) and I'm pretty sure if the affected customers appeal they'll be reinstated, maybe with a warning. I certainly wouldn't characterize this as intentionally punishing the individuals who purchased phones on Google's part -- notice that only users who directly sent their phones to the reseller's address were taken down. Smells like automation to me.

The "deleting all their data if the appeal doesn't go through" thing is actually because of privacy policy and Google can't keep your data around for longer than 90 days give or take after your account is suspended. Again it seems heavy-handed but is more a perfect storm of big-company policy decisions with good intentions overall. Know that if you ask Google to remove your account, you'll actually get everything wiped! (That's a good thing imho!)

It really is unfortunate that FPs (or "mostly-FP"s) in Google's systems impact people so badly. FWIW for most Google services if you abuse them you usually get a service level suspension rather than your entire account suspended, probably for this exact reason.