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Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

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Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#211

Post by Aeolun »

nightpool wrote: post #199
hbn wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you had a bank account shared between your developers, and someone who left the company started using it for money laundering, the entire account would be shut down and you would not be getting that money back. In fact, you might even be investigated by authorities for money laundering since it ran through your account. I don't see how that analogy applies here. It would be more like if someone who had access to…

Yes, but if you read closely, you'll find that OP never actually said that employee "H" was removed from their Google Play account. Instead, they say that "H [had] all permissions removed except on one game which we were still using H.'s consultation on - The app was unpublished later on". So H was still associated with the company's developer account as part of the unpublished game.

Yes? That kind of makes sense if they are still working on something for the company right? Just because they have a side job as a fraud doesn’t make their day job any less legal.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#213

Post by q-big »

qalmakka wrote: post #22

I will say this once again: App Stores are too important in the current world to be left to the mercy of some big Internet company. I agree they should get a cut due to them being both the creators and maintainers of their platforms, but their ability to regulate what's in them should be left to a third party or government agency, just like trade is not left to its own devices and has regulators. Apple and Google are…

As long as

* developers continue to develop apps for the respective app store (they could often create a web app, but they don't)

* there is no outcry among users for competition (instead of monopoly) in the provides app store(s)

nothing will change.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#214

Post by TuringNYC »

kmeisthax wrote: post #59

Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you…

I had a scare last year where Google supposedly gave me 30 days before they would shut off my Google account of 20yrs. Family photos, youtube videos, 20yrs of email, not to mention the treasure trove of personal documents on GDrive. It took two weeks to duplicate the content and back it up elsewhere. This is a paid tier Google account and I've yet to get an explanation on why this happened. It appears to be because of an "associated" (whatever that means) Google Business account for a startup where I worked where they shut off my GSuite account after I resigned, but customer service couldnt provide a real explanation why it would also terminate my personal Google account. The automated websites where you upload photo ID to prove identity didnt work and didnt give an absolute confirm/reject...so i slept uneasily for almost a month knowing that my 20yr account might disappear.

Ultimately it did not disappear in 30 days. Was it because I upload passport photos? Not sure. Because I spoke to customer service? Not sure. Because the original shutdown notice was a mistake? Not sure. The lack of clarity made it worse.

I've heard stories about people losing personal accounts like this due to GCloud usage. At work, where I'm CTO, I have open access +MSAs to the three major cloud providers -- BUT I am very hesitant to use anything but AWS/Azure. The risk of something going wrong with GCloud and that metastasizing to my (or anyone's on the team) personal Google account (or vice versa) is huge and just not worth the risk.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#215

Post by peckrob »

boredumb wrote: post #116
jahnu wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft have a better solution, or at least one of their departments does. You pay for support questions and if it turns out it’s actually Microsoft’s fault they refund you the fee. It’s great and most of the time I never had to pay. When I did it was still money well spent as I got good support. There have been a few occasions where I would gladly have paid Google/Twitter/Apple to answer my questions.

Honest question, why on earth would you ever have a question for twitter so important that you'd consider paying them to answer it?

A few months ago I was banned from Twitter for sharing a meme that literally said "I fucking love outer space." [0] That was it. Just an image with some text on it. For some reason this angered some algorithm and 10+ years of tweets and interactions were gone. It was heartbreaking. For a lot of people I followed that was my only real way of engaging with them.

The worst part was the complete and absolute silence from Twitter. I tried opening a support ticket and got no response. DAYS later, I got an automated email about what I needed to do, but the instructions didn't even work. Eventually I was able to get my account back about a week after that by going through some cumbersome verification process.

All for sharing a dumb space meme.

In that moment, if I could pay $10 to talk to an actual human being who could resolve my problem or at least tell me what I needed to do, even if it was via web-chat, I would gladly have done so.

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/746515-space

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#217

Post by Aeolun »

anaccountexists wrote: post #163
CPLX wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario you would have access to due process. There are very specific rules when banks make decisions about credit worthiness, and for the part involving authorities you’d have access to a well developed legal system where you have rights.

Credit worthiness, yes, though that’s typically at approval time and not later on. Risk bans or bans for suspicious / illegal activity? Totally different story (see the stories of Stripe / PayPal / etc shutting down accounts). The government (at least in the US) will punish banks pretty hard if they don’t crack down on fraud hard, so banks tend to lean more towards over enforcement.

Stripe and Paypal are not banks, last I saw. Which is exactly the reason they have to be so careful. They don’t have to adhere to the same rules as banks, but they don’t have the same protections either.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#218

Post by rbanffy »

One possible preventive measure could be to have separate developer accounts for each product and keep everything air-gapped between those accounts.

I was banned from AdSense for a never disclosed reason. I guess I still am - never tried again, in part because the alternative I used after that paid better.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#219

Post by frankfrankfrank »

cortesoft wrote: post #189
frankfrankfrank wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it would be far more effective and faster to simply demand enforcing the Constitution (at least in the USA), while also enforcing competition and shatter all the cartels and de facto monopolies. If there were more competition, there would also be alternatives that companies like in the subject case could choose from and which would deter companies from making mistakes in order to prevent loss of market share.…

What aspect of the Constitution would apply to this situation?

Freedom of speech and assembly, security in one’s person and affects, freedom of movement/transportation, even prohibition against slavery (even though that will be a bit too abstract for most), etc.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#220

Post by shdon »

15-20 years ago, I had a pretty good opinion of Google, as they seemed competent and true to their then motto "don't be evil". Now I avoid them wherever I can personally (unfortunately, and to my great dismay, my employer is fully dependent on Google cloud products). It seems they have become very evil. And what's worse... casually evil. The fact that these things happen is bad enough, but not having any recourse or a good way to resolve this is just unacceptable.
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