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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

#101

Post by doctor_eval »

realusername wrote: post #90
submeta wrote: post #64

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…

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.

That's not irony, that's vindication :)

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#102

Post by octoberfranklin »

koonsolo wrote: post #61
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…

> Let me explain what happens when my house burns down

Does your house burn down that often?

Frankly, getting deplatformmed is a much higher-probability event.

> and they contain all data I own.

No, they contain all data you think you own.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#103

Post by mosselman »

koonsolo wrote: post #61
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…

Have you actually tried connecting a new phone to your google account without access to any old "burned down" device?

You might want to try this before you feel secure enough. My mother's phone got stolen and I had a lot of trouble trying to get into here Google account for her. I was lucky enough to have logged into it once in Safari of all things on my personal laptop. Google seemed to have placed a cookie to 'remember' the device. Otherwise her google account would have been gone forever.

I now disabled all the trusted device related settings. Sure it is less secure versus hackers, but getting completely locked out isn't a great prospect either.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#105

Post by iRomain »

rainingcatndogs wrote: post #95

> They don't know why they've been banned. The absence of reason makes me wonder a lot of possibilities. Maybe google bans people who use ad-blockers, maybe they didn't explicitly set that way but some of their algorithms must have figured out these users should go. I know, it is extremely unlikely but we're free to come up with reasons if google doesn't give one. Don't sit there thinking it won't happen to you(I was…

I imagine a "social dilemma" scene with the little guys inside the computers:

> His actions over the past 15 years lead to a 76.9% chance that he will break our ToS. Furthermore,he has clicked only on 0.000001% of the ads. Terminating him now will increase the average profit per user by 0.00000000000000000291%.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#106

Post by octoberfranklin »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #92
koonsolo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

what happens tho to all your google authenticator linked stuff?

People need to stop calling this "google authenticator".

It's called TOTP:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_One-time_Password...

It's an open standard, RFC 6238:

  https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238
Calling it "google authenticator" is like saying "I'm going to GMail that document to you".

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#107

Post by fareesh »

Self-hosted email seems to elicit conflicting reports of experiences - I think the takeaway I've seen cited most often is that it is incredibly difficult to get your emails delivered to users because you will be randomly blocked one day.

I feel like there ought to be some kind of "let's encrypt for email" type solution to create trust but I'm not sure how it could be done.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#109

Post by mhasbini »

Getting locked out of Google is a legit risk that I have: I'll loose most of my personal & professional data because of it: Emails (Gmail), Files & Photos (Drive), Contacts, Calendar...

Google already offer a way to download backups from Google Takeout. But this isn't enough because:

1- I have to remember to download an up-to-date backup myself. 2- I have to store the backup somewhere. 3- Retrieving the data is cumbersome: e.g. if I need to access my emails after a lock down I'll have to first get a recent backup that I stored somewhere then try to find a program that work on my machine that'll read the email format then import it.

This approach is open to flaws that is why I'm working on the side on a product that address these pain-points: you'll be able to automatically get backups to the service servers and it'll do all the parsing so that you can have a similar services UI (read-only) to the ones from Google.

Shoot me an email if you want to keep updated.

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