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How likely is losing a Google account?

jefftk.com

191–200 of 305 posts

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. If anything, companies try to double-dip and serve multiple masters. See: the security and privacy mess in smart TVs. Last I checked, LG wasn't giving their TVs away.

The amount of nonsense on my LG C1 is nonsense given what I paid for it. Seriously considering getting an Apple TV or Nvidia Shield to run all my stuff on. Their UI is so bloated with crap.

Have you looked into displays built around the raspberry pi compute module? I don't have experience with them but I've heard them mentioned (here iirc but it's been some time). I don't know much about them so I'm sure the implementation varies between manufacturers. An example from Sharp: https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/system-on-a-chip

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone made a good point a few months ago: if you can’t afford to support your users, you have a broken business model.

The provide support for users that pay them, and for advertisers. Their business model is to sell things, and it is working pretty well. They can certainly 'afford' it, but they don't want to, and your complaint as a 'free' tier user means little to them. What is needed is legislation or some practiced standard regarding real-person online-id so that losing access to your email account doesn't nuke your ability to op…

I've managed a Google Workplace account (~30 paid users) for over a decade and have never had support respond in less than a week. And each time I got a canned response. I just don't even bother anymore, which is likely what they want. I don't think this is a free vs paid thing. It's just the way Google operates.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#193

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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 agree, but I do worry about it being ruined some other way - forcing me to use Chrome, censoring emails, bundling it with a paid service, ad-blocker-blocker, something else...

This is more the truth of it. It isn't some quantifiable probability that a big-tech service night disappear. It's that they're such clumsy lumbering beasts, and so insensitive to humanity they will steamroller over your rights and needs like crushing an ant. You mean nothing to them. And in turn their pledges and promises mean nothing. A cow is a dangerous animal not because it has claws and teeth, but because it's big, fearful and a basically a bit dumb.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#194
post #158

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To me, a chargeback is a 'burn the bridges' moment. If a company has wronged me to the point I'm prepared to do a chargeback, then I obviously don't want anything to do with that company anymore, and I welcome them to close my account since I will never do business with them again. Why would you want to continue doing business with a company that has frustrated you to the point of doing a chargeback?

Because you have to. For example, no matter how badly Microsoft wrongs them, people in many industries need to use Windows, or Office, or LinkedIn.

Microsoft, I get it.

Google no. I am very very close to being able to kill my google account though I probably will just leave it parked.

Believe it or not Google Voice is the one thing holding me at the moment. Nobody offers the same quality service period, let alone free. Come at me HN, I'm open to alternatives. Google Voice also has one killer feature nobody else has; the ability to make and receive calls using your carrier voice service and not DATA. Generally a higher quality connection that on most plans these days is unlimited, where as a lot of plans still count data usage whether it's a "unlimited" (but throttled) account or not.

OpenPhone is the closest I've found and seems their customer service is horrible, I see people on reddit complaining about them all the time.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#195
post #75

What is usually not mentioned is that enabling two factor authentication is a mayor reason for people getting locked out of their accounts.

Actually, in my experience it can also bite the other way around: I was locked out of my Google account after using it in Italy and coming back to Germany. Unable to login: It would first ask username, password, then send me an a-mail, then ask for the code from the e-mail (which I provided) and then either tell me to enter a phone number (Google is not going to get it from me!) or alternatively: “You're trying to si…

> I interpreted the phone number requirement as a signal that “had I setup 2FA, it would not have asked for the phone number but maybe just the second factor?”. Then I went on an odyssey to setup a Google account without linking it to a phone and with 2FA enabled (also not linked to a phone!). Seems OK so far, but the procedure is highly complicated and partially luck-dependent. I am probably going to publish it, because there are tons of articles about how to setup Google account without phone number, but none of them worked for me at the time :)

I'd be interested, even if it was just a rough guide. My experience has been that some services apparently let you sign up without a phone number, but then try to extort it out of you either at first login (or worse) after you've used the service for awhile.

I've noticed some of my own old accounts (not google anyway) seem to be grandfathered in and do not have a hard requirement here.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#196
post #108
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. The former companies have a direct incentive to keep giving you service as part of their core business. The latter are really only paying attention to the money they get from advertisers.

"is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. " Not necessarily, and in fact this case I would disagree. I trust Google's security 10x more than that of FastMail. The 'advertising company' reaps in billions of $ with which they can get all sorts of good engineers for 0-day research, exploits, updates. They have a lot more of a reputation to defend.…

> I trust Google's security 10x more than that of FastMail.

I trust Google security to protect Google, not me. For example by blocking my account.

> They have a lot more of a reputation to defend.

Actually no, if Fastmail pulled the shit that Google does, they'd be out of business.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. If anything, companies try to double-dip and serve multiple masters. See: the security and privacy mess in smart TVs. Last I checked, LG wasn't giving their TVs away.

The amount of nonsense on my LG C1 is nonsense given what I paid for it. Seriously considering getting an Apple TV or Nvidia Shield to run all my stuff on. Their UI is so bloated with crap.

Unfortunately, the Nvidia Shield hasn't been the community darling for some time. Ever since there was an OS update that started putting ads on the homescreen.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely correct. What would have happened to those banned accounts had it been a livestreamer with a small number of subscribers and a smaller number of viewers? Would any real human have ever looked at it - and would they have cared or been empowered to do anything? Obviously proving a negative is a problem, but would anyone be surprised if small bans like that had actually happened and never got fixed? I'd be su…

Yes, well, Google & all sites also has a right to defend the network against attackers, which these people constitute. They actively degraded the site's quality & looked like & were an attack. Ultimately I think it's the right of these sites to handle matters as they may, and to a large degree caveat emptor us users. But I also very much want there to be forgiveness somewhere in these systems. The historical, classic…

My concern is that Google has built a system in which for a large portion of the population it's the one who controls whether individuals are allowed access to the Internet (via Android devices dominating the low-end of the smartphone market and many people now using smartphones as their primary/only access), and in addition it controls one of the dominant online entertainment options. So, control of whether you can get online plus decisions about that which can be based on what you do while online.

Oh, and it's profit-driven so there's strong incentive to reduce costs, needs to do expensive content and comment moderation, has what could be classified as a toxic internal structure and a bunch of techies, which leads to automated moderation (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/youtube-moderation-b...). Because automated moderation can be scaled cheaply, doesn't need to be paid wages and benefits, doesn't complain about mental health, and if something goes wrong, you just point and say "it was a computer problem" and that blunts most of the complaints because who's even responsible at that point?

And while it has all this control it has limited options for punitive actions - Google can't really levy fines, its punishment options are effectively full or limited bans from some services (e.g. no commenting ability), temporary complete bans and permanent bans. If those bans can be circumvented easily they're kind of toothless, so with the information it has it can easily detect most bypass attempts.

So financial incentives to automate and reduce appeal options, plus limited enforcement options weighted to the heavy end, plus widespread use as an identity provider. There are probably a lot of people out there for whom a week in jail would be less of a long-term life disruption than loss of their Google account.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#199
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can reach a human" is a huge security vuln Google's algorithms make entirely too many errors. "I can't get my account back unless a viral account of my problem makes the front page of HN" is an unacceptable risk.

I'm not sure how you can make that judgement without extra context (that is almost certainly tightly held within google). For example, what actually is the error rate? How does that compare to improper access that is successfully prevented? Obviously any real person losing access to their account is a rubbish experience for that person, but an error rate of 0% is not possible with any system (including those with ple…

> How does that compare to improper access that is successfully prevented?

Last year I had an email from immigration services and I had to reply within 10 days. If I lost access to my email, I would be deported right now. They don't call, they just email. Why? I don't know, but that's what it is.

On the contrary, if someone get's access to my email, what can they do? Send random porn to my contacts? No-one will care.

As long as I can call the provider and fix the problem, it is irrelevant.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. If anything, companies try to double-dip and serve multiple masters. See: the security and privacy mess in smart TVs. Last I checked, LG wasn't giving their TVs away.

> LG wasn't giving their TVs away. No, but they're selling them at cost, and using monetization tactics to make up for that over the long term.

Well, that's lg off the list then. Thanks, that saved me a bunch of time, money, and eyestrain.
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