Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google disabled my husband's account

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–499 of 499 posts

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#491

Post by danaris »

jjav wrote: post #489
jdofaz wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't look up voting locations without a reCAPTCHA challenge https://recorder.maricopa.gov/pollingplace/default.aspx

This is particularly pernicious. If a private business does it I'll hate on them but oh well, it's their business at the end of the day. But there should be accessibility laws to prevent government agencies from blocking access to citizens/taxpayers using these proprietary technologies.

What's the alternative?

I don't know offhand of an open-source captcha library that's nearly as effective as reCAPTCHA. All the old "wavy lines through slanted text" ones are completely broken with current OCR techniques.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#492

Post by Cyberspy »

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…

Though less serious, my wife has a similar problem with Amazon. She tried to review a product (first review for a very long time) and was greeted with this message:

"! We apologize but Amazon has noticed some unusual reviewing activity on this account. As a result, all reviews submitted by this account have been removed and this account will no longer be able to contribute reviews and other content on Amazon. If you would like to learn more, please see our community guidelines. To contact us about this decision, please email reviews - help@amazon.co.uk."

The 'community guidelines' link goes to a page with what the rules are, but doesn't say what rules have been broken.

We emailed Amazon, using the email address in the post and got this reply:

"I relayed your information to the team trained to handle this scenario regarding your inability to post reviews. They are not able to provide an exact date or time when they expect this issue to be resolved. For more information about our policies, please see our Community Guidelines (http://www.amazon.co.uk/review-guidelines) We appreciate your patience in this matter.

Warmest regards,"

'Warmest Regards'? Really - you just told me she's locked out and it's gonna stay like that for the foreseeable future. :(

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#493

Post by koheripbal »

bilalq wrote: post #189

It's so incredibly frustrating that no one at Google seems to care about this. They don't even acknowledge this as an issue to be addressed. It amazes me that their callousness still hasn't backfired further. I was on the receiving end of a similar issue with Google Pay Support for Android and it took weeks for Google to unblock in-app-purchase transactions, even via internal escalations from friends who work there.…

I have a good friend at Google. The motto they go by is that unless 10000 people are impacted by an issue, it's really not worth their time to investigate.

Just create a new account - no one is ever going to care.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#494

Post by koheripbal »

Macha wrote: post #35
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…

What makes you think Google treats paying customers any better? https://medium.com/bling-financial/google-has-threatened-to-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17494518

As a GSUITE admin, they absolutely do. ...usually.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#495

Post by sjs382 »

gowld wrote: post #356
sjs382 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the key thing is using my own domain name. Then the trust is placed in your registrar. Maybe that's where the trust should be placed from your perspective, but do note that you're still choosing to trust another organization who's interests may not totally align with yours.

You can't be self reliant. No one will deal with you of your only contact information is GPS coordinates

My point is that where and on what level you put your trust is a choice, each with their own risks.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#496

Post by xenophonf »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #479
jbay808 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

WebAuthn is right there and built into Windows 10 and macOS now. I don't understand why it isn't seeing more adoption.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#497

Post by jjav »

danaris wrote: post #491
jjav wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is particularly pernicious. If a private business does it I'll hate on them but oh well, it's their business at the end of the day. But there should be accessibility laws to prevent government agencies from blocking access to citizens/taxpayers using these proprietary technologies.

What's the alternative? I don't know offhand of an open-source captcha library that's nearly as effective as reCAPTCHA. All the old "wavy lines through slanted text" ones are completely broken with current OCR techniques.

The alternative is nothing. There is no justifiable reason for a CAPTCHA for looking up voting locations. It can be a static HTML page served to anyone in the world.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#499

Post by jwineinger »

ffpip wrote: post #163
jwineinger wrote: post #51

This is why I pay for Amazon Photos as well and use double the data/time to upload to both. I don't want google's AI or employees nerfing my entire family photos archive.

> I don't want google's AI or employees nerfing my entire family photos archive. What is different about Amazon? https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/furious-customers-say-... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121022/07340420786/amazo...

Fairly light evidence of a similar problem with Google. Even if so, at least I have photos in two clouds and I would guess there's little chance of losing both accounts concurrently. And Amazon customer support can be reached.
Post reply on HN