How likely is losing a Google account? • Hacker News Board

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#41

Post by Juliate » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #29

guptaneil wrote: post #13

It's true that every service has to deal with the same policy and lockout problems, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that the risk is the same. I pay for FastMail because 1. if something goes wrong, I can reach a human without needing to write a viral blog post first. Other services pay for a customer service department. 2. I trust FastMail more to not shut down their product because they got bored. Sure Gmail…

"I can reach a human" is a huge security vuln. I don't want people social engineering my identity provider.

You do want that. But with proper (actual) procedures in place.

The opposite of that is, you do not have a way of recourse, ever. Even states have some.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#42

Post by mattnewton » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #35

guptaneil wrote: post #13

It's true that every service has to deal with the same policy and lockout problems, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that the risk is the same. I pay for FastMail because 1. if something goes wrong, I can reach a human without needing to write a viral blog post first. Other services pay for a customer service department. 2. I trust FastMail more to not shut down their product because they got bored. Sure Gmail…

2) Why in the world would Gmail get shut down? The veins of treasure to be mined from within the user's emails are vast and endless. It is quite simply a mother lode. The only bigger source within their direct control is the search input screen.

I think they are talking about some change to workspace effectively breaking the service for them. This has some precedent (with the old “dasher” personal accounts having growing pains for some people migrating IIRC) but also seems like a very low risk.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#43

Post by fullstop » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

column wrote: post #8

sshine wrote: post #2

Okay, so it's not very likely. What made me transition away from Google/Gmail as my identity provider was pondering the question: How screwed am I if I get locked out of my Google account? The answer: Well, if you're on Hacker News, you may have a chance of reaching a human. But if you broke a policy, good luck. I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed. (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.)

I'm not sure I understand.. where do you pay $5/mo for a service similar to Gmail? Or do you mean you have a paid Google account with extra storage?

Fastmail is $5/mo as is ProtonMail.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#44

Post by armchairhacker » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

> For example, in HN discussions people will often recommend Fastmail or Protonmail, but they've had their problems too (FM: 2017, 2020, 2022, PM: 2018, 2019, 2021).

I think this is a bit dismissive of Fastmail: in all three of the linked reports (2017, 2020, and 2022) Fastmail has apologized and reinstated the account or provided some other mitigation.

Nobody is perfect, any service will have bugs causing lockouts and false-positive fraud claims. But what makes Google untrustworthy is that they don't seem to have any recourse if you are caught in a mess. To the point where engineers in other Google departments can't get human support, and the linked case which made mainstream news did not get his account back despite being proven beyond-doubt innocent.

A good service can make some mistakes, what differentiates them from a bad service that they attempt to correct them. Like how a good company can do layoffs if they provide good severance and also cut top executives' pay.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#45

Post by dspillett » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

NelsonMinar wrote: post #24

Chargebacks can get your Google account locked. If you have a dispute with Google and protect yourself by reversing a credit card charge, Google might lock you entirely out of your account. The Google Pixel subreddit has a bunch of people's stories about that: https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/search/?q=chargeback Not sure if this counts as "policy reason" for the article's purposes; he sort of dismisses payment d…

> My takeaway was that if I was ever in a dispute over a couple of hundred bucks for Google, I would not risk a chargeback for fear of retaliation.

My takeaway from that is to never spend more than a few quid (i.e. money I'd care about losing) on anything linked that directly to Google.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#46

Post by Chinjut » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

edent wrote: post #5

Yup - happened to me. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/11/the-day-google-deleted-me/ "Luckily" I had enough identity documents to prove to Google's satisfaction that I was who I said I was. But even after I recovered the account, it was all screwed up. Since then I've dropped my reliance on Google. I don't use them for sign-in, my mail gets regularly backed up, I use alternative apps where I can. Google scale only works…

Out of curiosity, in what way was the account screwed up after you recovered it?

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#47

Post by cameronh90 » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

karteum wrote: post #12

sshine wrote: post #2

Okay, so it's not very likely. What made me transition away from Google/Gmail as my identity provider was pondering the question: How screwed am I if I get locked out of my Google account? The answer: Well, if you're on Hacker News, you may have a chance of reaching a human. But if you broke a policy, good luck. I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed. (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.)

> I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.) But the article precisely addresses that: For example, in HN discussions people will often recommend Fastmail or Protonmail, but they've had their problems too (FM: 2017, 2020, 2022, PM: 2018, 2019, 2021). Especially given that these are much smaller services I'm not convinced that the risk is lower there. Any syst…

Talking to a human doesn't necessarily make anything any easier.

Lots of large companies have a bunch of customer support agents who are easy to get in touch with, but entirely powerless to solve these sorts of problems: "Computer says no". They are just, to be blunt, executing flowcharts, and have no scope to escalate beyond that.

The only reliable ways to get decent customer support are, in my experience:

- The CEO is a friend of yours

- Your account is so large that a significant chunk of the company depends on you for their income

- You have an ironclad support contract

- Regulatory requirements enforce a level of customer service

Unfortunately, none of those are likely to apply to an average person looking for an email provider, and running one is usually impractical due to these large companies blocking small hosts. Next best thing is taking regular backups and having your own domain with a low TTL MX record.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#48

Post by OmarAssadi » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:35 PM UTC

I had already begun using my own domain for emails by the time it happened to me, but nothing accelerated that process faster than getting locked out of my Google account. I was lucky it wasn't permanent in my case, at least, but it was a wake up call that I really cannot trust them.

For me, it all happened because I tried to purchase, of all things, Minecraft from the Google Play store and typed my CVV in wrong a couple of times. That locked me out of my email and all Google services for about three days while they did some sort of fraud verification.

While, yes, things can happen to FastMail, etc, the likelihood of having my domain stolen from my registrar (which is very possible) is a lot lower than something happening to my Google account. And, god forbid it did happen, in my experience, getting in contact with a human at a domain registrar is easier than getting in contact with a human at Google.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#49

Post by fullstop » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:35 PM UTC

Overtonwindow wrote: post #3

This reminds me, again, that I should look into setting up my own home mail server. Is there an off the shelf solution for this? I don't mind setting up another PC as a server for this, but how hard is it?

Check out https://mailu.io/

It's very easy to set up, although your mail might get caught in the spam filters of the giants, even if you are configured 100% correctly.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#50

Post by ckemere » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

Has anyone else had trouble with Google takeout? I tried to download my GMail history and it just failed with no extra info. (I made a post about this that didn't get any traction... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34456459)