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How likely is losing a Google account?

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Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#281

Post by brewdad »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #265
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…

Is there any company that won't blacklist you if you do a chargeback? As far as I know, this "criticism" applies to every company in existence.

While it's true that most companies will probably blacklist you at least for a while, you can work around it by using a different card or having a partner make the purchase if you really want to continue doing business with them.

Google knows more about me than the CIA and FBI. If they truly want to blacklist me, I'm not working around that without the aid of operators I'd rather not be associated with.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#282

Post by csomar »

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…

Another one: I can link my domain. I backup my emails regularly. Getting locked out of fastmail is a temporary disruption for me.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#283

Post by brewdad »

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?

I'm paying $10 a year for https://purelymail.com. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a hit-by-a-bus factor at play here that could bite me but the one time I had an issue it was resolved within 8 hours with a follow-up to make sure the uptime they were seeing was also my experience. If the bus ever does meet my provider, I can move providers within a day. For my personal email, that is more than sufficient.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#285

Post by brewdad »

bookofjoe wrote: post #233
layer8 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While my recommendation was targeting the HN crowd, where I assume some level of computer savviness, buying a domain doesn’t require technical expertise. Wiring it up with an email provider may require some, although providers often provide good instructions, and, more pertinently, you can also buy this as a service, or have a friend or family member take care of it. The important part is that you own the domain. I f…

>... buying a domain doesn’t require technical expertise. I respectfully disagree. I succeeded in buying my own domain but it was a VERY painful, confusing, and disagreeable experience, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone who's not amongst the HN techie crowd.

When I bought my domain, granted a decade ago when there were fewer TLDs, it was a typical search bar. Then click Buy then enter payment and user info. It wasn't any more difficult than any other online purchase. The config/DNS steps require a certain level of techiness but buying the domain, the key step, was easy.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#286

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Linux-Fan wrote: post #125
aktuel wrote: 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…

>Seems OK so far

First dose is free, eventually you'll have to give the phone number for your safety.

lol, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34584269

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#287

Post by jsnell »

jmull wrote: post #237
jsnell wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google had creepy marketing based on private email content (making you worry about what else they are doing with my private email content As far as I know, email content was never used for ad targeting on any iteration of Workspace/Gsuite/Google Apps for Your Domain/etc. (And it hasn't been used for consumer gmail for many years either.)

How would you know though? Not that the details of how they use a specific information stream are all that important (if they aren't using one it's just because they've got something else better). The fundamental problem is that their interests are fairly heavily misaligned with mine. They want to make money by effectively mining my information and I don't like that and find it creepy.

Because they've made public statements to this effect, including in the privacy policy.

Why trust those statements? Because lying would be a very bad idea. The lies would be revealed very quickly (e.g. via whistleblowers). The outcome would be expensive civil lawsuits, probably billions in fines, and a loss of trust in their $20 billion / year cloud business.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#288

Post by dspillett »

ryandrake wrote: post #153
dspillett wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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?

Sometimes you have little choice⁰, sometimes there are convenience¹² issues.

My point is that to avoid even having to consider this choice to make by never doing anything that I might ever want to charge back. Separation of concerns: don't do (significant) money stuff with Google, then money stuff can't affect your other uses of Google.

----

[0] Some have a lot of contacts who know them at their @gmail address, getting people to update your contact info when you deliberately change address can be enough of a faf, imagine having to do it without warning. Some also have other accounts where they login via Google, they need to make sure those are transferred to something else (if possible).

[1] I have nothing irreplaceable in Google's sphere (my phone contacts & other content is backed up there, but not only there) though there are a few shared photo albums and so forth that I interact with using that account.

[2] Even if you intend to move away from Google or other large multi-pie-fingered company, and are actively doing so, you want to do that at your conveniences not with them chucking you out in an automated hissy-fit.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#289

Post by Maxburn »

brewdad wrote: post #280
Maxburn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Google Voice is the only service I don't have a good replacement for either. I pay for Youtube TV (cable streaming) because it has the best price/value proposition for my viewing habits but there are a half dozen other services I could switch to and be happy. I still have a shared calendar on Google but only because I can't convince my wife to try something different. I used to be all-in on Google but have spent the…

Maps was my killer app for google. Early on I started with TomTom on a PDA, but Google maps for years was the absolute best. Until all the blatant ads showed up. First every McDonalds is visible at far zoom levels. Then garbage I don't want starts showing up in search results. Viewing your travel history is mildly disturbing and even if you delete it you just know it's already been data mined.

I hear OSM has some decent map and navigation solutions now, but for me Apple maps long ago passed the touring test. I only trust that Apple with all their positions and statements on privacy will suffer irreparable harm if it is discovered they sell user behavioral data like google blatantly does.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#290

Post by berniedurfee »

morpheos137 wrote: post #251
berniedurfee wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge for the service and show you ads and sell your data like cable. It’s a win, win, win! I long for a post advertising world. What cataclysmic event or human evolutionary change could cause that, I wonder. Is there any sci-fi that has a world without advertising or is that so far-fetched it’s unimaginable to even futurists?

Funny enough advertising was relatively small part of the economy until the last several decades. Now it is an "industry" in the multi-trillion dollar range. Even funnier, if Google search worked effectively for product discovery the vast majority of advertising would not be necessary.

Good point. Maybe the death of advertising comes when some entity knows us so perfectly well it automagically provides the exact thing we want/need exactly when we want/need it.
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