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Don’t Mess with The Google

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271–280 of 504 posts

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#271

This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. For telephone companies, there are rules about when they may disconnect you, e.g. the Arizona Utilities Division write > f I am unable to pay my entire bill, what can I do to maintain local dial tone? > The Arizona Administrative Code specifically states that a telephone company may not disconnect a customer for failure to pay an unregulated portion of their bil…

> This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law

Absolutely not! That way you are slowly making people to lose any bits of the common sense they might still have. Perhaps losing data once or twice will make people look for alternatives. Throwing in another regulation will just increase barrier of entry for companies offering emails and who knows what else some dumb politicians could come up with, maybe this will open the gate to even not being able to self host an email server.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#272

Is it legally enforceable for a company to dictate what you can or cannot do with a phone that you bought from them? Sure, the terms said whatever they said, but is it enforceable/constitutional? I mean, people sell their phones all the time for whatever reason.

Did the terms say you can't resell the phone or that if you resell the phone Google will terminate your account? The latter is completely legal as far as I understand it.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going on a tangent, there should probably be a set of universal backup formats that can be advertised as being somewhat portable. So that, if you need to can take your mail and other online business stuff elsewhere if need be. Beyond this article a user might start working for some place that does not allow external app use, but they can bring their data with, to be loaded onto the service. I guess like github and gi…

Blatant violation of the First Sale doctrine. Class action lawsuit incoming in 3..2..

I think the legal theory behind this would be that you have agreed that Google can terminate your account for any reason.

Furthermore, they're not preventing you from reselling your phone at all - just deleting your account. Not "deleting your account if you do resell it" just deleting your account. First sale simply means they can't sue or get you arrested. They can do anything else with you, and refusing to do any further business with you certainly falls within that scope.

Without additional laws there's nothing to do here.

TLDR: never use your main Google, or Facebook, account for anything, not even buying a Google made phone, or buying Facebook ads for your own company, just never ever do that, so that at the very least, the pain is spread. They are businesses, and you do not want to give them a trivial way to retaliate or use this in a negotiation.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#274
post #123

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 a…

While I'm in complete agreement with you (everyone should be responsible for protecting and ensuring the integrity of their data), it seems a little unreasonable to expect the average gmail user to purchase a domain name, link it to an email provider, (optionally) migrate their emails, etc. Same goes for YouTube videos. Content creators typically maintain copies of their work, but casual youtubers don't.

I think someone who figures out an easy way to do it will get some nice money coming in :)

Technology is already there, just need an easy way to order a domain and a server configured to use that domain. You control 100% of the data.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#275
Maybe a bit of a contrary opinion here but I think Google is in the right. You break the terms that you agreed no when creating your account, you loose your account.

I was in a similar situation recently where I lost my adsense account. My appeal got rejected, and once they made the connection to my other adsense account which was run by a business entity, they banned that adsense account as well for violating the terms with creating another adsense account. That it was linked to a YouTube channel that lost monetization and partner status didn't matter. That it was not even breaking the terms as it was owned by a legal entity instead of me as a person didn't matter either. Try to contact a human to get this mistake out of the way? Impossible.

It's important to know how fragile your entire online existence can be. Plan for these kind of things and backup often. Don't trust cloud services and have a emergency strategy ready.

For me, I took control over my domain, moved it to fastmail and would be ready to rewire the mx records to a different server anytime. My dropbox account is getting auto-pulled to my NAS at home which is powered by a RAID setup, and once a week the files are compressed and stored somewhere else. It's setup in a way that if dropbox deletes a file, the NAS doesn't delete it unless manually given permission to wipe deleted files. Same goes for Google Music - all files I buy or upload are getting auto-downloaded to the NAS and securely stored.

I have multiple Google accounts for different things: Music, YouTube, Analytics and all services that allow it have multiple account managers setup, just in case a account is getting terminated and login is no longer possible.

Then I still have 1 google account that I am using as login email for very important things, just because it's the least likely to get compromised.

After signing up somewhere with OAuth, I also immediately go into the settings and give myself a password and valid email to not rely on the OAuth provider.

Paranoid? Don't think so. Since knowing that my data is waiting at home for me and can't just disappear, I am sleeping a lot better. It was a bit annoying to go from the convenient "my google account is my life" to this solution, but the ease of mind is so worth it.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#276
post #170

First post, might as well be a cautionary tale. My father, a pretty old programmer by anyone's standards, regularly warns me of this sort of thing. He was pretty much shafted by CompuServe many years ago on a miniscule scale compared to what is possible now. He lives his life in what I previously described as a paranoid bubble of data control. Until I inevitably burned myself with Google. I have no idea what happened…

That is why I stick to OSS like Linux, Thunderbird, nextcloud, etc. as much as possible. I got locked into a closed source platform once and it was a pain to get out of it. I will never let it happen again.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#277
I ratified peace treaty with Google - I trust their service more than my ability do properly configure backups and servers.

Example here? Someone abusing T&C and making profit on their phones... It's just like printing counterfeit money, stealing profit from the gov. No wonder why they got unhappy.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#279
post #170

First post, might as well be a cautionary tale. My father, a pretty old programmer by anyone's standards, regularly warns me of this sort of thing. He was pretty much shafted by CompuServe many years ago on a miniscule scale compared to what is possible now. He lives his life in what I previously described as a paranoid bubble of data control. Until I inevitably burned myself with Google. I have no idea what happened…

That is why I stick to OSS like Linux, Thunderbird, nextcloud, etc. as much as possible. I got locked into a closed source platform once and it was a pain to get out of it. I will never let it happen again.

And for email ?

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#280

1. Why is everyone here condoning the act of these people to make _extra_ money? 2. If you are doing such shady stuff create a new Gmail account and do it

Regarding question 1:

(1) Because the First Sale Doctrine is supposed to give people the right to resell their legally acquired goods. Retaliating against people who resell something they paid for already is extremely bad form on Google's part, even if they have found a tortuous way to legally do so.

(2) Regardless of whether Google was justified or legally within their rights to do so, cutting off people's email with no warning is alarming. Many people depend on Google's email and data storage services; if they're going to cut off your access because they don't like what you've done on something completely unrelated that may be a good sign that all of us should stop using Google's services while we can still do so gracefully. What if next they decide that they don't want to continue offering email service to people who bought an iPhone instead of an Android? Or people who voted for Trump? They could most likely determine both of those facts if you are using GMail as your primary email provider...

People here aren't really approving of what those folks out to make a quick buck were doing specifically -- they're concerned about the way Google does business.

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