This year I have completed by goal of being mostly google free. I have yet to replace the Chromecast. Other than that, the transition is complete. I don't want to be held hostage by a single monolithic company with more resources than most nation states.
Google disabled my husband's account
471–480 of 499 posts
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#472If anyone has a Google account, you need to Takeout regularly. https://takeout.google.com
If only it worked... https://i.imgur.com/FKFa2l7.png I probably could try to bisect if there is a specific type of data that prevents Takeout on my account, but I haven't bothered as I think I have all the important data otherwise backed up.
I had the same issue and bisecting it helped to find the culprit (although I don't remember which one it was right now)
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
You need stable business with at least few people employed, to make sure the lights don't go out, and that people fix issues when they come up. Storage cost is probably only small part of the price.
You also don't want it to be VC backed because such businesses will not be worth billions. (and if it will try to become such you will have similar problems as google)
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wonder if they've blocked the providers of temporary virtual phone numbers?
Presumably the known providers such as Twilio, etc are blocked, but there are small companies that provide numbers from the same number ranges as the big cellular carriers so those are completely undetectable. I suspect if there would be enough demand for this service, a "grey" industry of people buying prepaid SIMs and renting access to them would appear.
Phone number risk scoring models would heavily weigh against behavior like that. Prepaid numbers are typically scored worse than post paid numbers as well, but that sort of behavior would quickly be identified as fraudulent.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stuff like this isn't the result of some faceless software algorithm that's only harming people because of 'bugs.' Consumer abuse isn't an emergent property of algorithms. They're designed, by people, to abuse consumers.
I agree with everything except for the fact you are treating gmail, YT and other google services users as "consumers" remember if you do not pay for a service you are the product, and 90% of google services and algorithm's are deigned to control their product (aka the users) This is the root of the problem; to google and their devs you the user are not a person, are not a human, you are just raw ore for them to mine,…
I think you're confusing customers and consumers, which are related but different. Google users may not be their customers, but they are absolutely consumers.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did it a few years ago and have been quite happy with the outcome. I still use a Google account for my Android phone, but my PinePhone should be shipping in a few weeks. I'm done with Google. Good riddance.
Are you hosting your own email server or going with a provider? Which provider, if so?
I use ProtonMail with a custom domain; the braindead simple email encryption is useful.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#477> In the meantime I tried to escalate internally and they're being a brick wall even tho I work there
> And this is how it ends. No one fucking tells me to assume good intent ever again. Fuck all of this. Our lives are in a bind because of this BULLSHIT
Tiniest violin.
Too many Googlers like him (and here on HN) mistakenly believe they're not evil, just because of that motto (which Google removed) and because the workforce is full of progressive agitators.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably the known providers such as Twilio, etc are blocked, but there are small companies that provide numbers from the same number ranges as the big cellular carriers so those are completely undetectable. I suspect if there would be enough demand for this service, a "grey" industry of people buying prepaid SIMs and renting access to them would appear.
Phone number risk scoring models would heavily weigh against behavior like that. Prepaid numbers are typically scored worse than post paid numbers as well, but that sort of behavior would quickly be identified as fraudulent.
> Prepaid numbers are typically scored worse than post paid numbers as well, but that sort of behavior would quickly be identified as fraudulent.
This assumes there is a way to tell which numbers are prepaid or not. To the best of my knowledge they both originate from the same pool of numbers and it is impossible for an outsider to tell whether a given carrier's number is prepaid or postpaid.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Gmail's spam filtering. Recaptcha's bot rejection. > Facebook's identity verification. The ability to choose an identity online not connected to your legal or in-person name, to make it more difficult to find and stalk you in person, is a feature, not a bug.
I don't disagree, but a lot of websites these days choose to offload their login systems to Google and Facebook to certify that a unique human is on the other end. It solves real problems for them like password management, bot detection, astroturfing, sockpuppetry, stolen accounts, and so on. For these purposes, an actual Real Verified Name is overkill, and a unique identity number would be enough. But Facebook offer…
I see GitHub OAuth logins in some programmer-centric websites. I prefer that over Google login (and god forbid Facebook). It's just as bad from a login-centralization perspective, but GitHub allows you to control your identity freely, instead of mandating (and more-or-less enforcing) your legal name like Facebook.
(Google no longer rejects or bans you for fake-sounding names, ever since the Google+ controversy, but it still enforces a Western-style first/last name instead of other cultures' name formats or single-part usernames.)
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#480I 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…
> 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…
> The only solution? Make sure all of your data is always backed up somewhere else.
Whenever there is a systemic problem, fixing the system is always a better solution than trying to fix individual behaviors. Backing things up is a good idea but that doesn’t fix the problem, it just helps mitigate some of the effects of the problem.