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Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

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Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#421

Post by MattyRad »

bdibs wrote: post #50

I actually just got my Google Ads account suspended because I forgot to update my billing address before adding a new card. The suspension was for "suspicious billing activity", tried appealing twice with the correct billing address, and was told the suspension is final (some automated email) both times. They won't take my calls because the account is suspended, which leaves me not being able to advertise on the #1 s…

I also had my account suspended due to a failed payment method.

I was just exploring Google Places API to see if I could integrate it with a side project. The signup process claimed that it only needed a credit card to "prove that you're a financially capable human," which makes sense (and it also said that it would not charge your account until you gave it express permission), so I happily agreed. Despite this claim, Google apparently requires an active, chargeable card at all times, from account inception until you die. Failure to do so will result in terminating your account.

Whatever, let them terminate the account. Google's public favor is in a tailspin, and I can get the data I need from FourSquare at a fraction of the cost.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#422

Post by ehsankia »

on_and_off wrote: post #165
heptathorp wrote: post #51

> I had created a Google Developer Account simply so I could pass on the login details to my app developers who uploaded and updated the app via my account each time. Sounds like one of those developers was previously banned for violating ToS and Google suspects the author is the same person with a new account trying to evade the ban. Instead of sharing login details, the correct thing to do is add a user and give th…

It seems reasonable to me as well. So far 99% of the people I have seen complaining about their account being suspended were unwilling to read the ToS, even less to try to comply with them. I am pretty sure that the review process does mistakes as well, but as always bad actors spoil everything for everybody. FWIW, I had 2 apps removed from the play store earlier this month. They were all based on the same codebase (…

And most people don't see the other side of the coin, which is that millions of bad actors are trying to break this exact system. When you start doing suspicious things like that, you look exactly like the scammers trying to evade bans.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#423

Post by Nasrudith »

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #336
avip wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you’d like to see Google classified as a class II common carrier...

I wonder - how big does a company have to become before a society steps in and says "you have enough power to control and affect the lives of X% of our citizens. Therefore, we must have a say in how you conduct your affairs." I mean, this is for all intents and purposes what regulation is - and the reason for it. Otherwise, set aside the very idea of government as a farce, and populate the world with a dystopian patc…

I think it isn't even a matter of bigness per say but of monopoly essentially. Your local water company can't decide to just jack up prices to $2500/gallon because they have an exploitable monopoly position.

Meanwhile say GE could be very huge and produce 50% of lightbulbs but if they decided to be grossly unreasonable people could just stop buying lightbulbs from alternatives. Now if they had created their own bulb-socket standards and enforced them so that only they could produce bulbs that fit into the socket then there would definitely be an abuse of monopoly standard and ample grounds to argue "No you abused the patent and it will go into public domain now as part of the punishment.".

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#424

Post by fyfy18 »

bdibs wrote: post #50

I actually just got my Google Ads account suspended because I forgot to update my billing address before adding a new card. The suspension was for "suspicious billing activity", tried appealing twice with the correct billing address, and was told the suspension is final (some automated email) both times. They won't take my calls because the account is suspended, which leaves me not being able to advertise on the #1 s…

It's worth mentioning that GDPR gives people rights to allow them to appeal automated decisions, and receive a clear explanation of how the decision was made:

https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item...

I'm not sure if it'll help for the author of the article, as Google's decision is clear, just their logic in unfair, and I assume they are talking about a business, not a personal, account.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#425

Post by crankylinuxuser »

crazygringo wrote: post #224
makecheck wrote: post #127

Even in systems with automated processes, the bare minimum for communication should be a log of activities that is visible to all parties (e.g. account owner and company). The log should remain visible for quite awhile even after a severe action such as a ban. And in such a log, every action taken by an employee should be marked with an employee number, even if it is a number that only means something inside the comp…

The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is that people use accounts for fraud, and if they find out why an account got banned, they'll know which behavior triggered it and will learn to avoid that behavior in the rest of their accounts and future accounts. It sucks, but automating sharing reasons for flagged actions will be self-defeating. Ultimately it needs to be reviewed by a person at the company who is equip…

> The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is that people commit crime, and if they find out why they got in trouble with the law, they'll know which behavior triggered it and will learn to avoid that behavior.

> It sucks, but automating sharing reasons for illegal actions will be self-defeating.

Yes I changed your text from corporate "illegal" to government "illegal". We wouldn't let THAT fly in a court of law. We have rules on that, like the 4th and 5th amendment. Right to have the charges read before them; right to face their accuser; right to a fair trial; right to be secure in their houses/papers/effects

So what are the charges? "We will not tell you what you did."

Who's the accuser who said I did the thing? "It cannot be in the courtroom. It is an algorithm.

Secure in your effects? You waived them (unilaterally) in dealing with a monopoly. Too bad, soo sad.

Fair trial? SURELY YOU JEST!

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#426

Post by 43920 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #351
43920 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a couple solutions to this. First, "trust" should depend on your own evaluation of the developer, based on metrics like how long their app has existed, customer reviews, what protections they have around handling data, etc. You have the ability to do a much better job evaluating trust than Apple or Google are likely to. But even beyond that, sandboxing needs to be made effective enough that even if yo…

> as far as I know, there haven't been any widespread attacks using browser vulnerabilities since sandoxing was introduced (except maybe Internet Explorer, which doesn't really count). While non-malicious, jailbreakme.com seems to come back once every few years or so.

That's a good point, although the only recent exploit (in 2017) depended on a combination of 3 vulnerabilities that had already been fixed over a year and a half ago when the exploit was released.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#427

Post by benmcnelly »

We got one of our app taken down and a strike on our account, warning that further strikes are going to mean no more developer account. We wanted to re-upload and try to find what the problem was but with no human contact ever able to be made, we had to settle for not doing the app over losing all of our other ones.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#428

Post by system2 »

qwertox wrote: post #234
rjknight wrote: post #23

It sounds like the problem is with the outsourced developers responsible for the app. It's their account which has been banned - for multiple violations of the ToS. Now, perhaps this is just over-zealous enforcement on Google's part, but it's also possible that these developers have created shady apps before, or are adding shady code to apps developed for others. The OP doesn't seem to know for certain what code is i…

I'd love to see the source code of the uploaded app.

The owner most likely doesn't have them. If he had from the beginning none of this would've happened. Considering the publisher is the offshore developer, the owner would've gotten worse trouble than this in the future.

Knowing all these, I wouldn't touch their iOS app with a ten-foot-pole.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#430

Post by 43920 »

yoz-y wrote: post #268
43920 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a couple solutions to this. First, "trust" should depend on your own evaluation of the developer, based on metrics like how long their app has existed, customer reviews, what protections they have around handling data, etc. You have the ability to do a much better job evaluating trust than Apple or Google are likely to. But even beyond that, sandboxing needs to be made effective enough that even if yo…

Disregarding security, the app stores also (try) to filter out crap applications, blatant rip-offs, applications that steal your data or ruin your battery by mining bit coins. These things usually don't really need to circumvent the sandbox. One can of course argue that the stores don't really do a great job policing the right things but they are efficient to some degree (e.g.: the recent facebook spy-vpn fiasco). On…

If an application is a "blatant rip-off", users are most likely going to realize it and uninstall it/stop spending money on it/dispute it with their credit card company, which should eventually stop the scammers from making money. And even before you install the app, you can still read reviews from other people to determine whether it's trustworthy.

Excessive resource usage is already pretty easy to avoid - iOS will limit resource usage when an app is in the background, and show you which apps are using a lot of battery power so you can uninstall them. I would imagine Apple could expand this more by showing an unobtrustive notification somewhere with a message like "____ is reducing your battery life, would you like to stop it?"

Regarding private API's, if Apple's position is that third-party apps are not allowed to use them, they should just stop exposing these APIs to other apps completely.

Solving privacy issues is tricker, at least in the short term, although I think this should eventually be handled by government regulation. Assuming we can get fair and well-written regulation (which, to be fair, is a big if!), we could have clearly-documented rules that apply equally to all market participants, and aren't quite as clearly biased based on commercial incentives (although there would still be an indirect effect due to lobbying).

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