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Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#81

Post by wolco »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #74
wolco wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of hn remind you of social media?

Every part of it, with no exceptions. It's a website where you register an account and interact with the other accounts socially. Contrast Netflix, where you consume fixed content, or Amazon, where you buy things.

Social media also includes the social profile (with info about you)/friends (followers/watchers),sharing, personalized feeds.

This is more like your local news site. Articles are presented with comments below. Comments can be from real people but anyone can use a fake name. And who gave the comment rarely matters.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#82

Post by wtmt »

dhosek wrote: post #65
gorbachev wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo is/was the same. I deleted my Yahoo (email) account, but they didn't delete the Yahoo Groups account tied to that account. I couldn't access Yahoo Groups, but I was still receiving Yahoo Groups messages on all groups I'd set it to forward posts to my email or notify me of things. No way to unsubscribe or change settings.

Well at least now that Yahoo has shut down groups, that problem has gone away.

It’s not completely shutdown. [1]

> On February 1, 2020, Yahoo! removed online access to discussions and all other features except simple membership management, essentially turning all groups into mailing lists.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Groups

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#83

Post by madsbuch »

wtmt wrote: post #80
madsbuch wrote: post #20

A recommendation going forward: make sure to host emails on a domain you control yourself. This will allow to change service provider for mail hosting when they act like this.

The OP is talking about a paid service, which I presume isn’t a gmail.com address (otherwise why the suspension for non-payment?). To add to your advice, just having an own domain doesn’t help if you don’t download and store all mails on a computer or other device so that you don’t have to resort to a server to get older content you need whenever you need it.

Of cause it helps. It just doesn't provide your old mails.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#85

Post by petee »

40four wrote: post #51
zozbot234 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 factor authentication (w/ security tokens, mobile "apps" etc.) comes with an inherent risk of getting locked out of stuff. Most of the time you can mitigate that risk by generating "recovery" codes in advance, but it's still something to be aware of.

Yeah for sure, It was kind of my fault. It all happened very quickly, I think 2FA was relatively new at the time. I kept getting ‘recommendations’ from Google to enable it to be more secure. As a dutiful user I obliged, and downloaded the authenticator app. I think it gave me 10 one time recovery codes, but of course I didn’t back them up externally :) I was having some performance issues with my Samsung phone at the…

I think at core it is their fault for letting users pick a single software 2FA method without a second device, its a poor design choice.

Asking users to print backup codes shouldn't count, it needs to be a second device. It is a bad fallback method especially because you can't force users to do it, but you still have to deal with the fallout later. While we are at it, if you're printing codes, you might as well print your passwords too.

This is why hardware tokes are a world better than software based...multiple hardware keys are required, you can't choose to not back it up, although what you do with that second key is critical too but its easier to track than a slip of paper.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#86

Post by petee »

edoceo wrote: post #70
jtwaleson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, documentation & automation works for the majority of cases. The problem is with the other cases where you hit a wall and have no way to talk to a customer service rep to get your issue resolved.

So I'm clear: we hit walls using the normal process. It was abnormal from my prior experience too. Then it was escalated and a CSR called me. Then the issue was resolved. I disagree specifically with the "no way to talk to" part.

To your point though, until some automated system escalated your case, there was no way to talk to. Assuming another user doesn't trigger this escalation, then they are stuck. I'm glad your experience was better, don't get me wrong.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#87

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

glitchc wrote: post #67
luckylion wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that lots of people would be happy to pay good money for plenty of support issues if that meant not having to use the terrible Google help pages and issue forms, and not having to wait a week or ten for a response.

Agreed. It's the main reason why I've refrained from using Google for business activities, otherwise it would be a no-brainer. If something breaks, I need to be able to call or email someone and receive a response within 24 hours. Anything else is just not tenable from a reliability perspective.

If you use Google services for business activities you‘d presumably pay for a support tier. For the consumer side I suspect, with over 2 billion users, it‘s pretty much impossible to offer human support at scale. That‘s not even taking into account malicious actors that would use the support as an attack vector. I might be mistaken. Is there an example of a company with that big a user base which offers human support for everyone?

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#88

Post by luckylion »

v7p1Qbt1im wrote: post #87
glitchc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It's the main reason why I've refrained from using Google for business activities, otherwise it would be a no-brainer. If something breaks, I need to be able to call or email someone and receive a response within 24 hours. Anything else is just not tenable from a reliability perspective.

If you use Google services for business activities you‘d presumably pay for a support tier. For the consumer side I suspect, with over 2 billion users, it‘s pretty much impossible to offer human support at scale. That‘s not even taking into account malicious actors that would use the support as an attack vector. I might be mistaken. Is there an example of a company with that big a user base which offers human support…

I suppose you can argue users vs customers, but Amazon does a much better job. Their support isn't perfect, it's off-shored, but it's still good enough for most purposes, I think.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#89

Post by edoceo »

petee wrote: post #86
edoceo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm clear: we hit walls using the normal process. It was abnormal from my prior experience too. Then it was escalated and a CSR called me. Then the issue was resolved. I disagree specifically with the "no way to talk to" part.

To your point though, until some automated system escalated your case, there was no way to talk to . Assuming another user doesn't trigger this escalation, then they are stuck. I'm glad your experience was better, don't get me wrong.

Yea, thats true. The owner reached me cause I'm good a pressing buttons on websites. And I had to press a bunch before we got to the human. The process for non-technical humans is not easy (those would also be the most expensive calls)
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