Man these kind of stories are scary as fuck. Great for Halloween!
Google users locked out after 15 years' use
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Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#82Being locked out from google account is one of my biggest fears in practical computer usage. Over the years I can't even tell how much I'm sunk into using tiny pieces of google's services, even though for most crucial things I tend to omit google and look for alternatives that are easier to handle in problematic situation. Mail is one of the things I'm most worried about.
As one who's never trusted my data to Google I really am curious why so many actually do so. Is the convenience truly that great that people are even prepared to gamble the loss of their data? Alternatively, why is it that some of us have always been mistrustful of Big Tech and most others not? They're completely opposite worldviews.
I really am curious why so many actually do so
There was a time, maybe up until 10 years ago, when Google was cool. Everyone wanted a GMail address, it started out as invite only, like Facebook. "Do no evil" was the motto. And they ramped it up slowly like boiling a frog. The evil, I mean. And here we are today.
Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#83Yup. 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?
Doesn't takeout automate this for a monthly or quarterly download?
Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#84Is it possible to file a case for financial loss, which is absolutely huge for the unfortunate Google customer?
I'm sure their TOS covers that
Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s no need for lock-in though. I have almost all those benefits without google, the only difference is, that I need to install TitaniumBackup first before I can restore everything on my phone. But unlike you, I don’t care if google locks me out.
It's still more work and risk of messing it up than using a cloud service.
More work, yes. That’s pretty much the selling point of Google services: We can fuck you over, but you have less work if we don’t.
Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#86Pro-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.
Google SSO is the best option to login into my country's e-government portal
If this is true, then as in my other comment, your government really ought to be regulating Google as a public utility.
Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#87Any usable suggestions on (1) what to do to get out of a Gmail account with many years of history unscathed and (2) how to prepare for disaster with an Android phone?
1. There are several alternatives, but usually not free. One example is protonmail, that I use with a custom domain so I can still switch provider without having to get everyone to change the address they use to contact me.
- You can import your emails, but it might not be realistic to import all your history. It's going to take ages and fill up your new account quota. So what I did is first do a cleanup of my gmail history (remove things like mailing lists, promotion emails, etc) then export only the last year. I can still log to gmail if I need to access an older email.
- You can't expect everyone who has your old gmail address to know your new email address, so you need to accept to live with a forward from gmail potentially forever
- Most services will let you change your login email address, some won't. In this case you can either create a new account or accept to keep the gmail account as login.
2. I really want to know more about that too!
Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#88Welcome 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…
You don't have to run your server at home. You can also rent VPS from a large number of providers that have much better customer service than Google. And if you don't like your current provider, it's easy to switch.
Or just upload backups of your home server's disk to the VPS.
Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#89I always use cloud services as a secondary fallback in case of data backup. The more you entrust your operations to external agents, the more you are at risk when they fail to deliver. I hope to eventually shift away from their e-mail services too.
Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use
#90Moved 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…
I've also moved to Fastmail years ago for the exact same reason, I've setup Gmail autoforwarding to my new email address.
Ironically I'm now permanently locked out of my old Gmail address despite knowing the password, sounds like I've made the right choice.