Live data from Hacker News

Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

consumerist.com

221–230 of 258 posts

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#221
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that I am being accused of "samefagging" just because I seem to be on another person's side and am making somewhat wild assertions about what might have happened. I'm not an HN user typically because I'm ignorant of most of the stuff you guys find interesting, I found this thread linked from reddit and when I saw that ThomasAlexander's building had allegedly been raided by the FBI going after Anon, I…

Hi RangerSix!

LOL, another accusation. I looked at RangerSix's reddit profile, and I can confirm that he's definitely not me. Have you considered that my reddit name is the same as this one?

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#222
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. A bunch of Google fanboys voting me down for stating something rational, but that just happens to be anti-Google. I just started using G+ (mainly because I'd like there to be a strong competitor to FB), but Google's antics give me cause for concern. I'd hate to get "hacked" some day and have Google completely wipe out every bit I have with them.

You can download your data from Google anytime: http://www.google.com/takeout/ When you sign-up for a Google account, there's a little something called a Terms of Service you agree to. You violate them? You sacrifice all rights to any data you may or may not have on their services. That's something every Google user agrees to from day one. If you don't like that punishment, you shouldn't have signed up.

This doesn't include the most important service: GMail.

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went viral because all you do is talk and talk and talk and talk, and people love hearing about other people with problems. A "look at that poor sap, I'm better than him," kind of thing. But anyway, we would appreciate it if you didn't start spamming HN with this story. We know the details. We know you're upset. We don't really care. If you must comment, one comment per threading level, please. Don't reply to the…

Speak for yourself. I fully appreciate this guy being the one carrying the torch for all of us, who have or will be in the future, wronged by Google or any other big corporation where we have no recourse. Hopefully something positive will come of this.

What came of it was that he's violated Google's ToS, as confirmed by a number of employees. It would be nice if he was innocent, but he's not, so the story is meaningless.

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. I fully appreciate this guy being the one carrying the torch for all of us, who have or will be in the future, wronged by Google or any other big corporation where we have no recourse. Hopefully something positive will come of this.

What came of it was that he's violated Google's ToS, as confirmed by a number of employees. It would be nice if he was innocent, but he's not, so the story is meaningless.

No, the point is that its irrelevant that he violated ToS. Google should not unilaterally wipe a user's data without providing a chance to retrieve it. I'm sure the ToS lets Google delete an account for no reason whatsoever. That doesn't mean it isn't evil to delete a user's data.

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#226
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can download your data from Google anytime: http://www.google.com/takeout/ +1's, buzz, contacts, picasa and my +1 posts? That's less than 10 % of the data I have with Google.

Seriously. Are they even being serious with that?

I believe Takeout launched with Google+, so it's geared toward data in Google+ (at least initially).

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can download your data from Google anytime: http://www.google.com/takeout/ When you sign-up for a Google account, there's a little something called a Terms of Service you agree to. You violate them? You sacrifice all rights to any data you may or may not have on their services. That's something every Google user agrees to from day one. If you don't like that punishment, you shouldn't have signed up.

This doesn't include the most important service: GMail.

I believe Takeout launched with Google+, so it's geared toward data in Google+ (at least initially). Here's a post I did about backing up data in Gmail a while back: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/backup-gmail-in-linux-with-get... This post has info about backing up other data from a Google account: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/not-trapping-users-data-good/

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FWIW Not much. They're only doing damage control. I wonder whether Matt Cutts is on holiday or something, by the way..

I talked to the person with this complaint, then looked into it myself. The account was suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service. After digging into the situation, my personal opinion is that Google took appropriate action. I'm sorry that I can't go into more detail.

So I am OK with Google suspend my G+ account, but I can't share items on Google Reader anymore, what the fuck Google?

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FWIW Not much. They're only doing damage control. I wonder whether Matt Cutts is on holiday or something, by the way..

I talked to the person with this complaint, then looked into it myself. The account was suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service. After digging into the situation, my personal opinion is that Google took appropriate action. I'm sorry that I can't go into more detail.

The constitution doesn't directly apply to convictions within google-world, but it does have some good ideas about justice:

The right to know the specific charges lodged

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_S...

"A defendant has the right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him. Therefore, an indictment must allege all the ingredients of the crime to such a degree of precision that it would allow the accused to assert double jeopardy if the same charges are brought up in subsequent prosecution.[8] The Supreme Court held in United States v. Carll, 105 U.S. 611 (1881) that “in an indictment ... it is not sufficient to set forth the offense in the words of the statute, unless those words of themselves fully, directly, and expressly, without any uncertainty or ambiguity, set forth all the elements necessary to constitute the offense intended to be punished.” Vague wording, even if taken directly from a statute, does not suffice."

So the charges have to be specific enough. In this case, they are super general.

Pretty much all the other parts of justice are denied by google too (except the right to a speedy trial). These include the right to a public trial, an impartial jury, legal representation, the right to call witnesses in one's own favor, and the right to confront one's accusers.

Obviously Google is not required to give anyone these rights. But not even giving a semblance of them puts google on the evil side.

These rights aren't just made up for no reason - in the past people realized that just trusting leaders to do the right thing doesn't work, and gets corrupted. To stop this corruption they came up with ideas for how to make things more fair, and built systems around this. In some cases they even died to get these rights. Just trusting google to do the right thing is a scary, primitive way to deal with their power - and google seems to be wilfully ignoring that progress.

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to the person with this complaint, then looked into it myself. The account was suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service. After digging into the situation, my personal opinion is that Google took appropriate action. I'm sorry that I can't go into more detail.

Since Cutts isn't at liberty to say I think I'll take this one for him. This guy did really dumb stuff with Adwords or Adsense and got caught. Everyone wants a piece of the Google pie and Google wants no one to have it too easily, or their integrity goes to the shitter. Think about what you could do with a tiny bit of programming knowledge and keyword knowledge to make money using these service. Then try it and get b…

hey pal, i'm not going to go around righting every one of you people who thinks they know what they are talking about. but since i'm here anyway, even though i already said this, i don't know a goddam thing about google adsense or adwords. period. i wouldn't know how to make money from scamming google even i wanted to.
Post reply on HN