Google disabled my husband's account • Hacker News Board

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#91

Post by rurp » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

ghastmaster wrote: post #42

izacus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have been thinking about this for a while. Considering I prefer to keep the important data/emails on Gmail or Google drive for security and I really consider it important. Would it help if Google had a paid tier? It wouldn't, because Google is averse to any kind of customer support even for paying services. Even the "support" people that get attached to highly paid YouTube, GSuite, and other accounts get regularl…

That's a partial solution. The author noted that account logins tied to the google account would no longer be usable either. The sites can do nothing to help that situation, since most sites do not have a way to "transfer account". I could not imagine losing access on a potential grand scale like that.

True, the full solution is to NEVER rely on Google as a single point of failure for anything. Which means backing up all photos/documents elsewhere and never using your Google account to auth with another service. I've always avoided tying my Google account to non-google services for just this reason and haven't ever had it be a problem.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#92

Post by actuator » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

vidanay wrote: post #73

01100011 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google won't do it, why hasn't a 3rd party stepped up to provide the service? I'd gladly pay a trustworthy company a few dollars a month to automatically backup my gmail, google photos, and google docs. I don't want to do it locally, since that puts me on the hook for assuring physical safety and backups of my backups. I suppose I could roll my own solution, but frankly I get tired of maintaining my one-off projec…

Because it costs more than a few dollars a month. The net cost to users for Google is zero (or a token amount) because Google makes their money from data mining and selling your meta data.

Email addresses and inboxes are important to people. They are critical to our online identity.

Wiki mentions Gmail having 1.5 billion users. Imagine even 100M of them paying $100 per year. Makes Gmail a $10B product just on paid subscriptions, that is not a small amount.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#93

Post by 01100011 » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

vidanay wrote: post #73

01100011 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google won't do it, why hasn't a 3rd party stepped up to provide the service? I'd gladly pay a trustworthy company a few dollars a month to automatically backup my gmail, google photos, and google docs. I don't want to do it locally, since that puts me on the hook for assuring physical safety and backups of my backups. I suppose I could roll my own solution, but frankly I get tired of maintaining my one-off projec…

Because it costs more than a few dollars a month. The net cost to users for Google is zero (or a token amount) because Google makes their money from data mining and selling your meta data.

Amazon cloud storage is $1.99/mo for 100GB. That's exactly what I get from Google(I pay $1.99 for extra storage).

Are you saying the software to perform the syncing costs more than a few dollars per month?

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#94

Post by AlfeG » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

ezconnect wrote: post #57

I use OneDrive, iCloud, a couple HD for backup of my stuff. I also have duplicate of my OneDrive and iCloud stuff on another storage in case both company does something unexpected.

Do You know, is there a self hosted solution for automatic photos upload to own server?

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#95

Post by blunte » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #19

itg wrote: post #12

Right now I have everything tied up to my Google account (primary email, drive, photos). Has anyone moved away and if so, to what?

I would love to see a step-by-step guide on how to move away from centralized services entirely. Maybe in favor of the various federated services that are popping up.

People post guides to HN periodically about how to do exactly this. But it will require a lot of effort and a carefully designed backup/failover plan for when your self-hosted things tank (or get hacked).

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#96

Post by jeremyjh » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

breakingcups wrote: post #83

It's incredibly Kafka-eqsue that you get banned for a supposed violation that you're supposed to appeal, but you don't know what you're being accused of doing. This is exacerbated by the fact that 9 out of 10 times a story like this appears it's an algorithm gone rogue which its billion-dollar shepherd assumes is infallible. The remaining 1 time it's because someone knows how to abuse reporting systems to get someone…

Its only 9 times out of 10 when the story is escalated to the front page of Hacker News. For all we know, 99,999 times out of 100,000 its a case of fraud or law enforcement action that is completely correct and valid, and you do not give those actors information on how you detected them.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#97

Post by drcoopster » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

actuator wrote: post #14

I have been thinking about this for a while. Considering I prefer to keep the important data/emails on Gmail or Google drive for security and I really consider it important. Would it help if Google had a paid tier? Say, if you can get into an annual plan, similar to what's there for hardware devices like Apple Care+. Just that, in this there is someone to help you through issues. We used to pay 10% of our AWS bill fo…

This is why I moved off of Gmail and Google Drive for important things.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#98

Post by commandlinefan » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

breakingcups wrote: post #83

It's incredibly Kafka-eqsue that you get banned for a supposed violation that you're supposed to appeal, but you don't know what you're being accused of doing. This is exacerbated by the fact that 9 out of 10 times a story like this appears it's an algorithm gone rogue which its billion-dollar shepherd assumes is infallible. The remaining 1 time it's because someone knows how to abuse reporting systems to get someone…

You would think that with congress seriously talking about breaking up monopolistic tech companies, the big players would have tried to _tone down_ the monopolistic behavior, not amp it up...

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#99

Post by Semaphor » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

traveler01 wrote: post #36

izacus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have been thinking about this for a while. Considering I prefer to keep the important data/emails on Gmail or Google drive for security and I really consider it important. Would it help if Google had a paid tier? It wouldn't, because Google is averse to any kind of customer support even for paying services. Even the "support" people that get attached to highly paid YouTube, GSuite, and other accounts get regularl…

To be fair I had a lot of trust in Google. Now, seeing these cases I'm thinking about starting moving my important stuff to other services...

Have you not seen all the similar things that happened over the years? This is not a new thing, it’s SOP. And though I think Google is especially bad, don’t ever have important data with a single company.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#100

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

traveler01 wrote: post #36

izacus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have been thinking about this for a while. Considering I prefer to keep the important data/emails on Gmail or Google drive for security and I really consider it important. Would it help if Google had a paid tier? It wouldn't, because Google is averse to any kind of customer support even for paying services. Even the "support" people that get attached to highly paid YouTube, GSuite, and other accounts get regularl…

To be fair I had a lot of trust in Google. Now, seeing these cases I'm thinking about starting moving my important stuff to other services...

s/other/your own directly managed/