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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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Sorry, I can't hear you over the noise of my Dyson hoover.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#132
post #78

Is it possible to file a case for financial loss, which is absolutely huge for the unfortunate Google customer?

Under GDPR right to access your own data (in Europe), you could sue over Google's refusal to honour your data rights. Your request to use data rights can be made through any means, including social media message funnily enough! You can privately litigate breaches of GDPR, and I imagine the court would be keen to award you costs when the judge discovers the kafka-esque situation going down. Oh, and ensuring you receiv…

I was thinking the exact same thing, but Google isn't stupid either. So far all of these lockouts have happening to US folks, but this one is from UK. I'm not sure if Google made a misstep in this case or they found a loophole and no longer care about GDPR.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#133
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have millions of dollars or millions of users to back you up.

You are not helpless as an individual. If the company wrongly disables your account and leaves you no other option, you are well within your power to fill out some paperwork and file a lawsuit. It should cost you $10k just to respond.

The point is you should never need to do this. The law should automatically ensure that you always have access to your data.

Today, denial of access to one's data ought to be a human rights matter.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#134

Why is no one suggesting iCloud as a replacement? Never heard of Apple locking out devs? Do they?

As much as I like Apple, you wouldn't gain much by switching. In case you do get locked out, it will be the same faceless corporation as Google. Your best bet is own domain and bigger provider with a human support. Fastmail, protonmail or even 365 would work.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#135

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?

Doesn't takeout automate this for a monthly or quarterly download?

Yeah, you can chose between once per year or every two months to the following endpoints:

* Mail

* Google Drive

* Dropbox

* OneDrive

* Box

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#136
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know that it is possible, but think that ensuring correct backups can be difficult and that a VPS is actually quite pricy. (Especially if I want my data outside of a place which the NSA can touch, that is, no DigitalOcean or Azure.) Do you have tips for that?

We are talking about alternatives to Google services. They are very likely infiltrated by the NSA already. So using Google over small VPS providers will give your data to them far more likely. I doubt that the NSA has "everyone surveillance" contracts with every VPS provider out there, even ones in the US... they might only just send letters about individuals they are interested about. Every additional person who has to keep the secret makes exposure more risky.

Anyways, if you do distrust your VPS provider, you can just use it for encrypted backups, and then you'll only have to manage the key.

As for suggested alternatives to DO, there are plenty VPS providers in Europe. 1&1 or Hetzner come to mind. Maye they don't have DDoS protection, but you aren't trying to build a public website anyways.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#137
post #98
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…

> 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... > {lots of stuff that is impossible for the average person} If you're making the same comments to those who "don't listen" then I can see why. Honest…

About the first part of your post, actually there is a single package for all the components: mailu does that in the form of a set of docker images. I've also heard about iRedMail but I don't know it. For the rest of your comment you're right, after launching mailu you still have to configure the DNS and deal with some providers still thinking you're a spammer. But at least you can avoid the painful traditional setup which requires to install multiple pieces of software and configure them to make them talk each other, and mailu also helps you with DNS by telling you which value you should put to have dkim working (and maybe also something else that I'm not recalling right now). Personally the problem that stopped me from having my own mail server was the difficulty to have a reverse PTR record configured for your vps. I was trying to get it with an Oracle Cloud server, but after a rather time consuming process of trying to gather information about this, I found out that Oracle didn't offer the option to have a reverse PTR record.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#138
post #21
post #7

Being 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.

> Mail is one of the things I'm most worried about. Use an IMAP client. It would keep all your mail on your device, so at least you don't have to rely on having uninterrupted access to your account for your old conversations. Actually, I'm surprised just how many people use email through web interfaces for some reason.

Backups of emails are OK, got a few of them. It's the constant need to receive emails as others have noted below is my fear.

If I'll get locked out will I be able to reset my password to the other bank account I almost forgot about? How long will it take for my old recruters to figure out not to mail me there? etc.

I run Thunderbird sometimes on desktop to cache all emails locally. I also have a NAS wich is downloading emails 24/7 and I can browse all locally from backup. This also gets backed up to 2 other locations :)

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#139
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.

He appears to be in NZ. Yes, I find that crazy.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#140
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.

Google SSO for an e-government portal? No, thank you.
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