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Google users locked out after 15 years' use

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#61

Post by koonsolo »

stiray wrote: post #30

Welcome to vendor locked-in world where you have willing-fully decided to become prisoners in exchange for few sweets that you dont really need. I hope you dont also own some google router or even better, "home security" device. This would make it a real pain. I am explaining this to people since the birth of gmail, but no one listens. Let me think for a moment, what would happen if google does this to me... [x] No g…

Let me explain what happens when my house burns down, taking along all my hardware:

- I buy another laptop and install Linux.

- I connect my Google, Dropbox (which contains google backups) and Github, and they contain all data I own.

- I buy a new smartphone and connect it to Google

Simple as that. And my house doesn't need to burn down for this, when I buy a new laptop or smartphone I do the same.

Plus, all my email, documents, source code is accessible from anywhere, for when I don't have my hardware with me but have access to another device.

Everything has benefits and drawbacks, my approach definitely has drawbacks, but running your own server at home also has drawbacks.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#63

Post by ffpip »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #53
tedk-42 wrote: post #5

Pro-tip Only use Google SSO for things you don't care about. While in would be a pain if I lost my google account, I can still access Twitter, Discord, GitHub, Bitbucket, stack overflow etc as they aren't bound to Google. My emails/hangouts chats however would be lost unless I took a backup (I haven't but I might one day when I decide to go ad-free)

Google SSO is the best option to login into my country's e-government portal. The other options are: - Bank (requires subscription) - SIM card (requires subscription) - National ID card (requires reader plus a maze of Java applets) All of them suck badly. At least national ID has NFC so technically in future can be a bit easier.

Which country is this? Who uses Google SSO to login to a e-gov portal?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#64

Post by submeta »

Moved to Fastmail years ago, because my spider sensors were telling me for years that I need to fear companies where I can’t reach a human to resolve conflicts / problems. - They have an excellent Email service, calendar and contacts management. Most important: At fastmail I get a very quick response from a human who will always help me very quickly. Also I use my own domain name so that I can move my Emails to a new service provider whenever I want.

And while I was at it, I replaced Chrome with Firefox on my Mac and never looked back.

Finally I moved all my photos to iCloud, replaced my Android phone with an iPhone, got a paid account at Dropbox, started doing backups like there won‘t be cloud services tomorrow (Carbon Copy Cloner ftw!)

I have a google account, only for using Youtube (paid). And I like their search results. Even that is too much google for my taste.

Edit: Ahh, Gsuite. I migrated to office365 (microsoft). But I use it mostly offline (Word, Excel). Actually for legacy stuff. Because I started writing my documents with Emacs + Org and export to whatever format my recipient needs, doc, html, markdown (using pandoc extensively).

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#65

Post by ben_w »

_jjca wrote: post #60

This is genuinely scary. Photos, Yale locks, Fi, WiFi and Nest thermostat can all be poof gone because I made a silly YouTube comment? How is this not regulated? Google photos also 'helpfully' offers to delete your uploaded photos with 'some guarantee'!!! If this isn't an indication of a giant shitty monopoly that doesn't care about its customers at all, I don't what is. They have some AI ML fucking crap but can't fi…

I agree; from my non-lawyer perspective, it is this sort of thing (rather than search results or Android App Store policies) which harms consumers.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#66

Post by avh02 »

tjoff wrote: post #40
quickthrower2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do a google takeout ASAP if you haven’t done so already. This mitigates against data loss through being banned. You then just need to change your email in myriad places!

You often need to have access to your email to be able to change email. And many services will be like, oh, haven't seen you in a while so we sent you this code to your email to verify it really is you. Do it now.

ebay's stupid about this. you can reset your password but then they'll still send you an SMS(!) to verify it's you when you try to use your successfully reset password.

I no longer have access to that old number, i ditched that particular account cos it didn't mean much to me and opened a new one, wasn't worth the hassle.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#67

Post by elramon »

stiray wrote: post #30

Welcome to vendor locked-in world where you have willing-fully decided to become prisoners in exchange for few sweets that you dont really need. I hope you dont also own some google router or even better, "home security" device. This would make it a real pain. I am explaining this to people since the birth of gmail, but no one listens. Let me think for a moment, what would happen if google does this to me... [x] No g…

> Welcome to vendor locked-in world where you have willing-fully decided to become prisoners in exchange for few sweets that you dont really need.

This is one of the classic guys who has his own mail server.

> No google email (I have my own mail server - it is just a $90 motherboard with onboard cpu with disks)

I knew it

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#68

Post by PopGreene »

Yup. They suspend users and cancel services like the rss reader. Google giveth, and google taketh away. Capricious be the name of google.

Incidentally, you can download your google data:

https://takeout.google.com/

Set a reminder and do it on a regular basis. It will give you some protection from the Google Yank. (Until they yank this.)

BTW, does anyone know if this can be automated?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#69

Post by [deleted] »

TheChaplain wrote: post #3

Tip: Get your own domain from a non-google registrar, then connect to Gmail if you prefer. If you ever are locked out, you can just move the address to another email-provider. Another trick is to use always have forwarding enabled in Gmail, to Outlook.com or another provider. All email will be forwarded despite your account being locked, so you will not miss out on important info. And use Google Takeout for backing u…

[deleted]

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#70

Post by vr46 »

TheChaplain wrote: post #3

Tip: Get your own domain from a non-google registrar, then connect to Gmail if you prefer. If you ever are locked out, you can just move the address to another email-provider. Another trick is to use always have forwarding enabled in Gmail, to Outlook.com or another provider. All email will be forwarded despite your account being locked, so you will not miss out on important info. And use Google Takeout for backing u…

Another problem is that for many years, a user will have been signing up to accounts with their gmail email address. If this address is locked, password resets become impossible. I'm hoping that address reuse never becomes a thing.
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