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Google disabled my husband's account

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Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#221

Post by xibalba »

I understand this is frustrating, but reading through this person's thread, it reads as an absolute temper tantrum. A few choice quotes:

> Our lives are in a bind because of this BULLSHIT

> I am out of office reconsidering whether I should work at a company that continuously escalates its attacks towards my family.

> [looking for]... A company that provides a steady salary and respects me, my nationality, culture, ethnicity, sexuality and my family

It's very hard to take this stuff seriously when someone is claiming lack of access to to their emails and photos is an attack on their life, family, sexuality, etc.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#222

Post by justinlloyd »

I had a Google Pixel phone. Less than a year old old. Treated with kid gloves. Always kept in a case. Pristine condition.

An approved Google software update bricked it. This was, by all accounts, a known issue.

The phone was under warranty. I sent it back.

They shipped me a scratched up refurbished phone. It ran fine for a week then bricked itself due to the same software update. I sent that back.

They sent me another, even worse scratched up refurbished phone. That too bricked after a week due to the software update.

I've got $3,000 worth of hold charges on my CC whilst Google are playing footsie with my phones. I sent that phone back.

They "lost" it and claimed I sent back a different phone. Then that became that I sent back a phone with a different serial number. Then a different model of phone. I pressed for details but they could never tell me any details about the phone I had allegedly sent back.

They wanted me to pay for all the phones, then eventually just the one phone that was missing. Finally Google admitted "we lost the phone but that's your problem."

After a month I said "fine, you fix this shit or I am doing a charge back." They didn't fix it. I did a credit card charge back for the thousands of dollars currently on hold on my card.

Google decided to disable my Google payments account so I couldn't use the Playstore. Or buy groceries using Google Pay. Or process any subscription items attached to the Google payments account. Or access my store rewards cards stored in my Google Pay wallet.

Google still owed me for the cost of the original phone that was a brick that I no longer possessed after it was sent to Google.

I took Google to small claims, and won.

Google decided that wasn't to their liking and disabled the Google account attached to the phone.

Fuck Google.

P.S. Please stop up-voting. This is not a vote-worthy post. It is simply a "this is what happened." Save your attention for something that is worthy. Save your anger for things that matter.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#223

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

ffpip wrote: post #25
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #13

Every time this happens I think about reducing my dependence on google, however I'd love to be able to make this decision by evaluating the actual risk of this happening. Does anyone know an estimate of how likely this is to happen to an individual on a per year basis? Obviously that risk will change as the organization changes, but if it's happening to a couple hundred good faith accounts a year I'd probably put it…

7 billion people use Google. If you look at the likeliness of it happening to one guy out of 7 billion, it would be very, very small. But the problem is, once it is banned, you will probably lose a lot of important stuff permanently.

> If you look at the likeliness of it happening to one guy out of 7 billion, it would be very, very small

How small is the question.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#224

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

swiley wrote: post #32
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #13

Every time this happens I think about reducing my dependence on google, however I'd love to be able to make this decision by evaluating the actual risk of this happening. Does anyone know an estimate of how likely this is to happen to an individual on a per year basis? Obviously that risk will change as the organization changes, but if it's happening to a couple hundred good faith accounts a year I'd probably put it…

More likely you'll get locked out because account recovery now uses a heuristics based algorithm. This is what happened to me, thankfully I had nothing important on it.

Yes that is also something I'd like to know the rate of.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#225

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #194
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 have my own domain, and run exim+dovecot on a Linux machine for E-mail. This setup has run solidly for years. I serve E-mail for family and friends. No reliance on some cloud account for what is essentially the gateway to all of your password reset functions. When I first set it up, I had some deliverability problems, but once I had DKIM and SPF set up, it's been rock solid.

[deleted]

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#226

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

dleslie wrote: post #156
jpxw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello from the UK, where we lock people up for jokes! Public authorities are just as corruptible.

For jokes and for carrying deadly assault spoons. AFAICT, it looks to be sporting aftermarket tacticool rust. ;) https://www.foxnews.com/world/british-police-station-mocked-...

The spoon might be the most extreme part of that picture, but I wouldn't blink at seeing 90% of those in a kitchen - how are brits supposed to cut meat?

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#227

Post by bigbubba »

m00x wrote: post #172
tehwebguy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filing a required financial report is not similar to terminating someone's access to their account

Filing an SAR usually comes (99.99%) along with suspending the account. Suspension of account usually comes before filing the SAR as to stop any further illegal actions.

> Filing an SAR usually comes (99.99%) along with suspending the account.

You're missing half of the analysis. What percentage of account suspensions are preceded by an SAR filing?

(Probably not many.)

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#228

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

thsowers wrote: post #66
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #13

Every time this happens I think about reducing my dependence on google, however I'd love to be able to make this decision by evaluating the actual risk of this happening. Does anyone know an estimate of how likely this is to happen to an individual on a per year basis? Obviously that risk will change as the organization changes, but if it's happening to a couple hundred good faith accounts a year I'd probably put it…

Do you pay them or any of their subsidiaries for anything? I have cell service on Google Fi. Long, painful (still-ongoing) story short, they shipped me a Pixel 4a that had no cell service. I went back and forth with support for ten days. Then they shipped me a replacement phone. I confirmed my current address. They sent me a shipping notification for my current address. FedEx ended up delivering the package, no signa…

> Do you pay them or any of their subsidiaries for anything?

Yes, one of the places that I back up photos is google photos and I pay them $ for that.

I'm assuming you think that is an important thing to condition on?

I am not planning on refuting any charges that google gives me any time soon and would try and back up all of my data before doing that.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#229

Post by kevingadd »

jpxw wrote: post #60
andmarios wrote: post #41

I am not fond of suggestions to break up big companies, but I do believe that FAANG should be treated as utility companies and not be allowed to deny service to anyone; any termination decision should be left to an independent 3rd party, ideally a public authority, so the big company will not be liable for any account misconduct.

Hello from the UK, where we lock people up for jokes! Public authorities are just as corruptible.

At least if a US public authority decided to suspend his husband's account, he could issue a FOIA request to get the documentation explaining why it happened. If the FOIA is rejected for national security reasons, that'll be explicit. Public records laws and regulations don't apply to a big company like Google, so they can stonewall you forever and not have to explain what their policies are or how they were enforced.

Public authorities are at least theoretically accountable to the public, unlike a billion-dollar megacorp which isn't accountable to any force on this planet.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#230

Post by speeder »

icf80 wrote: post #136
speeder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently I am trying to figure out how to move e-mail away from google, not my personal one, but my company e-mail. Couldn't figure out yet... The reason is that despite being a corporate costuemer we don't pay enough to have access to support, and some issues we had, the only thing the FAQ and documentation did was redirect us to a page behind payment.

User https://www.thunderbird.net/ to make a local backup copy, then you can sync it with other accounts.

We already use thunderbird. In fact that is part of the reason we want to move away from Google, they declared Oauth 2 will be mandatory, and thunderbird last I checked didn't had all the certifications needed, and we had a scare when suddenly all our company thunderbirds couldn't login on gmail-based accoutns at all, and we needed them to, to send urgently some documents to the government.
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