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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

#381

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

TomSwirly wrote: post #227
_trampeltier wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a private company. So they can choose there customers. If they don't want you, they are free to throw you out.

And steal your data? Bullshit. The worst is that they are certainly keeping your data, because they never throw anything out, while they are preventing you from getting to it. That is theft, pure and simple.

That's not theft in the least. They kept the data that you gave them while using their service. Should banks throw out records for people who close accounts?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#382

Post by lordnacho »

juskrey wrote: post #380
Mikho wrote: post #362

Happened to me too after 10 years of Gmail use. Exactly the same story. No explanation. As I remember at that time I checked Google servers data as to uptime—the data was public, not sure about now—and it appeared that there was a serious problem with servers right before I was blocked. It looked like Google just completely lost data in some server cluster. Anyway, there was no way to get any response from Google or…

How is OneDrive different in this sense?

It's similar, but chances are you won't lose both accounts at once.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#383

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

blunte wrote: post #155
mbeex wrote: post #151

Many commentators mention e-mail here: I'm a conservative oldtimer with my own domain (since the Ninetees) and associated e-mail, of course. The problem is that it happens to me more and more often that especially with my business contacts in larger companies my e-mail is filtered out / ends up in their junk folders / disappears for other, unspecified reasons. Simple public black lists do not show anything. I am more…

The bias against major player-hosted email was probably rooted in spam prevention, but there's little doubt in my mind that they (the few big players) recognize the value of attempting to force users to use their service, and then to trap them.

I doubt they really care that much. Everyone migrated to GMail from a world with Hotmail and Yahoo email accounts. They truly don't need to lose sleep over other competitors with far less capitalization.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#384

Post by lordnacho »

_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…

This raises a question. If you're well marinated in Google services, like me, what do you do? Is there a comprehensive, simple, and easy way to port everything?

Perhaps there's some authoritative site about what exactly you need to do?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#385

Post by varispeed »

cm2187 wrote: post #243
_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…

If you are a “customer”. How many people pay for google services? I know it’s kind of jerky but I still agree that if you aren’t paying for the service, you have no leg to complain about it.

People pay with their data. It suits Google very well. If they were able to make billions, lest they could do is to have a proper customer service. I see them now as a company exploiting their customers in every way possible and then giving them a middle finger if there is any problem they experience. It should not be legal to respond to customer issues with bots or people not trained to deal with specific requests. If this means customers would have to pay extra, I am fine with that.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#386

Post by mhasbini »

donmcronald wrote: post #204
mhasbini wrote: post #109

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 cumbe…

Try exporting data from a whole GSuite account. They make it as difficult as possible. IMO it’s intentional, but maybe Google just sucks.

Supporting GSuite/workplace accounts is on my list for things to look at once an MVP is ready.

Did you try to process listed here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/100458?hl=en ?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#387

Post by g_p »

andylynch wrote: post #91
g_p wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

GDPR article 22 (Automated decision-making and profiling) may also apply here - I would think for many people this kind of situation has the kind of ‘similarly significant effect‘ which would trigger a right for human intervention.

Absolutely. I suspect if this hit a court, Google would decline to say why the account was banned. A judge would then struggle to see this as not being an automated unaccountable decision.

A good point well made. Several grounds here.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#388

Post by windexh8er »

lqet wrote: post #194
mbeex wrote: post #151

Many commentators mention e-mail here: I'm a conservative oldtimer with my own domain (since the Ninetees) and associated e-mail, of course. The problem is that it happens to me more and more often that especially with my business contacts in larger companies my e-mail is filtered out / ends up in their junk folders / disappears for other, unspecified reasons. Simple public black lists do not show anything. I am more…

I have been managing my own mail server for 6 years now, and enabling and configuring all the mail security features (DKIM, SPF, etc), and keeping up with them, is indeed the most difficult part. I regularly check my mail server against tools like this: https://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx . If you just do one thing wrong, you will end up on some black list from which it is very difficult to get off. So far, I did n…

This. So many people don't take the 10 minutes to configure DMARC, DKIM and SPF. I've been hosting my own domains since 1996 and I haven't ever had a problem with any of them sending mail to any of the big hosters. If your DMARC passes and you actually have a policy set to REJECT you're almost guaranteed to not have a problem as long as your domain isn't a few days old. The first thing I do for any new domain I plan to use is get all of those items configured ASAP and start sending mail into Google and O365 to test and thereby end up in their domain analysis.

Given all the horror stories I've moved all but one domain off of Gmail (mainly to preserve my grandfathered G-Suite. I don't use `@ gmail dot com` for anything other than Google services. And if you are using GMail back it up! MailArchiva [0] is free for less than 10 mailboxes and works well. In this regard at least you still have access to your mail and can possibly prove something if those emails contain any identifying information (hopefully not, but you never know what will help).

If your email is that important to you then don't run it for free. Pay for someone to host it - I've been more than happy with Fastmail for many years and also use paid for ProtonMail accounts with custom domains.

At the end of the day if you don't control the domain and don't pay for the service I don't feel like I can trust the provider to do the right thing or expect any level of support. Bring email back from the monopolized "free" tier!

[0] https://mailarchiva.com/

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#389

Post by g_p »

fer wrote: post #315
klohto wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GDPR no longer applies to UK.

The UK's Data Protection Act (2018) is pretty much a copy-paste of the GDPR, and it is to remain in effect - the UK had a fair hand in writing the GDPR itself, and has passed it as its own implementing law. So while it's not "the GDPR", the rights it gives are almost word-for-word identical.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#390

Post by k4rli »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #200
ffpip wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lithuania. You do need to setup initially using normal means, but after that Google account doesn’t even need 2FA enabled. https://www.epaslaugos.lt/portal/nlogin

Just hope that LT will get SmartID like Latvia and Estonia.
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