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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

#611
post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

> selling some hard-to-get long tail items

Was there anything potentially illegal or sketchy about this?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do when you already have history with Google? I use their OAuth whenever I can, all my accounts on the internet use the gmail address, most of my life is in gmail. Losing emails is not a bug deal, I can back them up, but losing Oauth accounts and ability to reset passwords for accounts I don't have a password saved in my manager is a bigger concern. Does anyone have any suggestions?

use multiple non-linked google accounts never use an android device

I'm really struggling with this one. I'm increasingly unhappy with Apple's bullying and the only other option I have is a company that may brick my device at any moment because "machine learning".

There's seriously got to be a better way. I want to get a Pine Phone but they don't sell them with service where I live yet..

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#613
post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

This, I think, is one of the most important things legislators need to look at going forward as they dig into the practices of companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. The massive paradigm shift that occurred once these companies grabbed prominence in commerce is to go from a system where humans interacted with humans in business-to-business commerce to solve problems to a cold, hard, heartless and decidedly dan…

Taking the meta-view: the cynical take is that you only care because you and people you know are in the crosshairs. If you feel that there's a role for government here, perhaps you should be more considerate of a role for government in areas you'd previously thought it unwarranted; clearly, it's impossible for any one person to have personal experience for all the ways people can be screwed over, and for which the only real recourse is intervention by the public-at-large (i.e., the government, at least in a representative democracy).

There's always a bigger fish, you just met yours. I'm all for serious reform (and even dissolution) at Google et al., but I also don't think everything will be hunky-dory just because America's entrepreurial upper middle class gets their satisfaction. While we're swinging the antitrust hammer, might want to take a look at retail and gig "employers" too.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#614
Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit are becoming the gatekeepers of the internet but I think that's a byproduct of the endless list of people who keep trying to fit moralistic arguments ("the way things should be" that is specific to their community) onto a platform where "one size also fits all".

This platform is in constant competition with it's own capitalistic and identity-less values. I say they're identity-less because let's face it, it's almost guaranteed that Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit don't have enough people that are like you and your community on every team that touches stuff that you and your community interact with to give a proper shit about your values or how you will perceive something. I might even take this a step further and say they've developed their own culture for the internet and you either adhere or die. You can swap in and extrapolate any group that has some measure of depth to it in that statement and it'll still be true. That's why, in my mind, there's this desperate race for diversity and to reflect all things at all times. Don't get me wrong, I love to have a diverse workforce, and in my experience the teams that weren't all predominately one characteristic have always been more productive and fun. I'm just extrapolating why these things suddenly matter, almost ten fold, to companies that run platforms.

I've seen people here suggest that developing more tools will help suppression, faulty-auto-moderation, deplatforming, etc... but let's be real. It won't. Maybe you'll more accurately identify people who are violating your terms of service and can vomit up some reason as to why with explainable AI. I don't really view that as a win though and here's why:

Americans ran from King Henry because he was willing to chop peoples heads off and imprison them without having to answer to the public that he ruled over. We created The Boston Tea Party because of a relatively small tax. Some people laugh at that event, but it goes to show you that when you have the haunting memory of a tyrant in your past, the latest cut feels like open heart surgery without anesthesia.

In the end Americans decided that if even one person were sent to the guillotine without a fair trial it was one too many. Our laws have reflected that since, but we have also stripped many of those ideals away in favor of racist ones or convenient ones (at times). Now Mega Corporations are your new King Henry, and all the smaller corporations who buy services from them are their Dukes. They'll either do as the King says or as the saying goes, "Off with their heads!".

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#615
post #70

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.

> I'm hoping that address reuse never becomes a thing.

FYI, it already is for yahoo. I got lucky that they _only_ deleted all my emails after I didn’t log in for a while, and nobody else managed to hijack the account while I was gone and password-reset all my services...

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#616
There has to be regulation with regards to account closure in this day and age.

I'm sure large companies don't want to screw their users over and have to shut down accounts to follow some other regulation but at their scale Google does not care enough about any individual account.

That's why there has to be some set of laws ensuring people can always take their data out with them. IANAL but exporting and importing all your data to/from Google must be just a button click away even after account closure unless there's a court order.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#617

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…

Who do you recommend instead of Google Domains?

Namesilo has been both cheap and reliable for me in the last few years.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#618

This article finally prompted me to do what I should've done a long time ago, which is to create a Fastmail account and begin importing my Gmail into it. I've seen this story far too many times, and no longer will I say "yeah but it'll never happen to me". Setting up the import was insanely easy, and my Fastmail account is now configured to enable me to send using my Gmail address from directly within Fastmail. Plus…

Suggestion/what I have been practising for the past 20 years: Get your own domain "lastname.com" or "somethig.com", get it from someone who will give you 1GB catch-all mailbox. My setup is: Windows, MS Outlook. The emails go to the 1GB mailbox, I can access them over my phone. Once I fire up Outlook, they are siphoned down and live on my Outlook forever. My emails are around 5-6GB of .pst file(s). I backup my whole d…

Damn, nice rundown. I will check out Carbonite, looks very promising.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#619

A few comments in this thread rub me the wrong way. E.g.: > It should be illegal. > How is this not regulated? No one forces you to use these services. They're voluntary. Imagine you're looking for storage for some stuff. One company advertises a storage service, which is free, but there's a clause in the contract that says, "We can take your stuff at any time, for any reason, no backsies." Would you trust your stuff…

That analogy doesn't even make sense. Also, nobody is arguing that people are "being forced" to use google services, feel free to quote a single person here that said that.

It makes sense to me, or I wouldn't have used it.

> nobody is arguing that people are "being forced" to use google services

My point is that they entered into the [contractual] relationship voluntarily and now that they have become dependent on their provider some folks here are saying that they want to alter the deal by legal end-run as opposed to just using some other service or trying to renegotiate en mass ("Google users' union", "Boycott Google", whatever) or creating or promoting alternatives.

If you want to be a lemming and jump off the cliff, I don't like it but it's your life. The specific thing I'm on about here today is, don't jump off the cliff and then shout for the government to give you a parachute.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#620
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you combine it with a paid domain, then you can transfer your email provider even when locked out. Of course you risk loosing your emails, but you can setup a desktop client to always download all your emails or do periodic backups.

I've had trouble with e-mails from my own domain frequently landing in spam folders. I do agree on the control though.

That seems very odd. There's no reason why mail from any domain with good mail servers should just land in spam folders. You should investigate. Perhaps someone is sending spam using your domain?
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