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Still locked out of my AWS account

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Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#61

Post by giancarlostoro »

drbawb wrote: post #56
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this require separate gmail addresses? If so, then that's an extremely bad idea. I already had one gmail account completely banned with no notice. I wasn't doing anything abusive -- I used it for some npm projects and a github account. Actually, is there a reasonable free gmail alternative for situations like this? I'd like to migrate. FastMail is worth paying for, but it's too expensive for one-off side proj…

One trick I like is that you can use `account+ @example.com` and a lot of services will consider it a separate e-mail address, even though MTAs will transfer it to the same account; this has the added benefit of being easy to filter for on your e-mail client. I also use this tactic when signing up for web services that I anticipate will spam me. (I import a lot of merch from China/Japan; their unsubscribe systems ten…

I was just about to comment with this suggestion. A friend of mine uses it for gmail and its great for filtering as you suggested.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#62

Post by falcolas »

mabbo wrote: post #35

The moral of the story is that your AWS account and your personal amazon buying account should be separate. As well, if you use Kindle Direct Publishing, are an Amazon Seller, work for Amazon Flex, or use the Amazon Affiliates program, each of these should also be on an independent Amazon account. This way, problems on one won't affect problems on the other.

I am not convinced such a separation would be effective. Accounts identified as being associated with a "problem" account (shared CC, addresses, etc) could also justifiably be closed. The idea being to keep "abusive" individuals from just opening a new account and resuming their abusive behavior.

The only long term solution is to get a person with enough power to make their own decisions to look at your claims, but that takes quite some time and is not guaranteed to be successful.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#63

Post by problems »

wvenable wrote: post #32
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this require separate gmail addresses? If so, then that's an extremely bad idea. I already had one gmail account completely banned with no notice. I wasn't doing anything abusive -- I used it for some npm projects and a github account. Actually, is there a reasonable free gmail alternative for situations like this? I'd like to migrate. FastMail is worth paying for, but it's too expensive for one-off side proj…

Sometimes I feel like I'm last person on the planet who has their own domain and hosts their own email.

I'm still doing this one too - took maybe an hour to configure a simple dovecot+postfix+spamassassin setup and I don't have to touch it beyond an upgrade once every 6 months or so.

Having catchalls at bullshit domains is great.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#64

Post by sillysaurus3 »

mintplant wrote: post #54
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use a single gmail account, it seems far less likely to get banned. I think I was caught in some sort of automatic purge, since I certainly wasn't abusing anything or using it for much beyond my side projects. This email hostage situation kind of sucks. Hopefully there's an alternative for scenarios like this. Someone mentioned self-hosting upthread. I wonder how difficult that is.

I have numerous Gmail accounts (more than 20) and not a single one has been banned. And Google explicitly supports using multiple accounts by providing an account switcher. Perhaps your account was banned for some reason other than being a duplicate.

Maybe so, but they won't tell me why it was banned. That alone should give people pause. There were a lot of resources tied to that account.

Here's the closest thing to a list of reasons I could find: https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/%2B/policy/content.html

I didn't engage in illegal activities, malicious or deceptive practices, hate speech, harassment, distributing personal information, child exploitation, spam, ranking manipulation, distribution of sexually explicit material, violence, selling regulated goods and services, impersonation, account hijacking, or use multiple accounts to bypass the above policies. So I have no idea what I did -- Google won't say, and all attempts to get more info out of them failed.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#65

Post by e59d134d »

ceejayoz wrote: post #28
gorkonsine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always a danger when you rely on outside provider for something that's critical to your business or life. Sometimes you can't avoid it or it's completely infeasible to, but choose carefully. I see too many companies using AWS for stuff they could fairly easily self-host.

By "self-host", don't you mean "rely on a landlord / ISP / colocation facility"?

Back in days we rented servers and created our env, it was not really that hard. And it was super easy to move from one provider to another.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#66

Post by netsharc »

iddqd wrote: post #9

Might sound obvious in hindsight, but _always_ create separate AWS accounts for your different projects.

IMO this is more of a workaround for a defect which is "Customer service for these cloud feudals is an oxymoron".

So what if I use the same account, if there is a lock-out event I should be notified and there should be an actual customer service agent that can solve my problem taking care of the issue...

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#67

Post by gorkonsine »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #55
gorkonsine wrote: post #4

This should be a good warning about what you can expect when relying on other companies for service.

At some level you're always relying on other companies for a service. Even Google does -- they don't own the last mile. However, even if you expect people to CoLo, you're still relying on a the facility for power, cooling, networking, security. Moreover, AWS is a paid service, there should be some expectation of conflict resolution. It's not like Google where Gmail is free and there really isn't any reason you should…

As another responder astutely pointed out below, services like this aren't contractually-bound, they're subject to TOSes. Good luck getting any kind of conflict resolution with a giant company when all you have are TOS. Companies that rely on other companies for service, when they do it right, use contracts.

Your point about having multiple providers is very sound though; if all you have available is AWS-like services with TOSes, being able to easily switch between them mitigates your risk.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#68

Post by Hnrobert42 »

willow9886 wrote: post #53
mintplant wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you lose that single sign-on account, you lose everything attached to it as well.

Amazon offers many services, of course they are going to want users to have one set of credentials to access all those services. There are trade-offs to every security approach, but storing passwords at every web service is 100x worse.

I don't understand your concern. We all have numerous accounts all over the web. Having one or two more doesn't increase our attack surface 100x.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#69

Post by mistermumble »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #13
iddqd wrote: post #9

Might sound obvious in hindsight, but _always_ create separate AWS accounts for your different projects.

Doesn't this require separate gmail addresses? If so, then that's an extremely bad idea. I already had one gmail account completely banned with no notice. I wasn't doing anything abusive -- I used it for some npm projects and a github account. Actually, is there a reasonable free gmail alternative for situations like this? I'd like to migrate. FastMail is worth paying for, but it's too expensive for one-off side proj…

I have had a half-dozen gmail accounts over the past 10 years and all are active with no problem.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#70

Post by mirekrusin »

Also having problem with AWS - can't access it and they keep billing me for something there I want to shut it down (EC2?) but I can't.

I recently moved from Brazil to UK (new address) and changed phone + sim card (Authenticator after restore from backup lost all 2 factor auth entries).

This is the moment when you realise that you're outside of predefined use cases of The Machine and you're fucked. Nobody is here to help you. I've tried, nobody gives a shit at Amazon. They have procedures, you know.

I blame 2FA and I think it's great if you don't have problems but it's shit if you have, ie. you move places, change phones etc. in your life. Something there in the process is missing like "next of kin" recovery that should be mandatory when enabling 2FAs.

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