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Updating our inactive account policies

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Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#161

Post by grose »

tech234a wrote: post #147
grose wrote: post #82

I seem to have lost my old YouTube account. I used a username (not email) to login, and then I used that same email for a different account, and now YouTube doesn't let you log in with usernames anymore, so it's in limbo. Now it looks like they'll delete all my videos and there's nothing I can do about it.

You can still use a username to login at https://www.youtube.com/gaia_link which will let you link the channel to a Google account if you still have the password.

Thank you! I will give it a shot. Much appreciated.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#162

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #136
Gustomaximus wrote: post #135

Also note google have a trusted contact option for inactive accounts. I haven't seen this mentioned in the thread and worth doing for some peeps. I set this up so after 6 months of no activity my sister and wife get access to my accounts. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en Quite useful if you die or become incapacitated etc so emails, files and photos etc can be kept as needed.

This is as good a time as any to remind people to get their estate planning sorted. I recently turned , and had a death in the family who was nearly 100 and had their estate in order which made things a lot less complicated their executor and kin. We now have Enduring Power of Attorney and Enduring Guardian delegated to each other plus two other well trusted people, one local and one distal, jointly and severally; an…

redundant* pair

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#163

Post by brigandish »

sjfidsfkds wrote: post #140
tedunangst wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The storage costs to google are also asymptotically approaching zero, too, no? Last year I was using $1 of storage, this year it's 0.50, ...

Cost per GB of hard disk has not dropped much in the past few years, the money has to come from somewhere.

They make more than 50 cents per year of off people’s info, even from inactive accounts I’d reckon.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#164

Post by withinboredom »

nullityrofl wrote: post #88
withinboredom wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we saw the same thing. But when spot-checking the activity we realized it was super-low-effort legitimate activity. IOW, it could have been sweat shops or scripted bots going through some motions.

I promise you Google is running user activity learning models that go well beyond spot checking the occasional account. Google deals with abuse creation accounts in the tens of millions.

You still have to supervise the models and ensure they're working as designed and general quality control. Though with the number of 'Google disabled my account for no reason' posts, I assume they're not doing that, especially when I read comments like this, I assume its a part of maintenance that people don't consider when it comes to AI.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#165

Post by pizza »

ajross wrote: post #146
cj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photobucket (remember them!) kept hundreds and hundreds of photos in my account with them despite complete inactivity for over a decade. I simply forgot the account existed, and remembered one day to find a ton of amazing decade old photos. There’s something to be said for doing things that earn your company respect from consumers. Had photobucket deleted my decade old photos because I didn’t log in frequently enough…

> Photobucket (remember them!) kept hundreds and hundreds of photos in my account Photobucket doesn't even offer free service anymore . Isn't this proving the opposite of your point? They couldn't afford to do what you're asking, so they stopped.

It’s hard to say from outside the org whether they did it because the costs were too high rather than because someone just wanted to so it to make even more money per new user

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#166

Post by mike_d »

kortilla wrote: post #152
silverpepsi wrote: post #145

This is unbelievably generous, I'm happy. I feel like people forget Hotmail et al. circa 2001 when 60 days passed and you lost everything. Sometimes you could keep your account and just the data was wiped out. This was ABSOLUTELY THE NORM on the internet. Google overturned it single-handedly. In Texas my automatic payment for my storage garage where I have $10,000s of my designer clothing collection didn't go through…

Find a different storage provider. Seizing possessions is a pain in the ass and only shady ones would try to make that the business model.

Storage units are a strange business. Most of them are just ways to hold property long term while extracting value from it, the same as if you just grew hay on your farmland.

Auctioning off unpaid units is both a liability thing (there is a clear process for the eviction so units can be turned over) and a bonus revenue source. Literally every storage place has it buried in their terms somewhere.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#167

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

silverpepsi wrote: post #145

This is unbelievably generous, I'm happy. I feel like people forget Hotmail et al. circa 2001 when 60 days passed and you lost everything. Sometimes you could keep your account and just the data was wiped out. This was ABSOLUTELY THE NORM on the internet. Google overturned it single-handedly. In Texas my automatic payment for my storage garage where I have $10,000s of my designer clothing collection didn't go through…

General improvement, if you have important documents and possession considered storing them with a safety deposit box provider.

In my neck of the woods these are typically big banks and security services companies.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#168

Post by orbital-decay »

vore wrote: post #8
withinboredom wrote: post #6

This ... is not what is going on. When I worked at $bigcorp serving billions in traffic, what happened is that botnets would create accounts and leave them dormant for weeks/months/years (thousands of them), then start doing their bot thing. Account age says a lot when it comes to trust (usually) and spam detection. That's more than likely what they're seeing, not 'compromised' accounts. All this does is tell the spa…

I am sure Google of all companies has enough insight into account behavior to conclude this is the case for them. It's not like they can't verify it either: if the account previously had legitimate activity and is now compromised, it's not really a sleeper account.

Bots, antidetect browsers, and residential proxies exist specifically to imitate the activity and circumvent fraud prevention systems like Google's. Most accounts get caught, but many slip under the certainty threshold. This is a cat and mouse game, and sometimes mouse wins by blending into the crowd.

With LLMs it suddenly became much easier. I suspect that the timing of this decision might be not random.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#169

Post by iggldiggl »

I wonder, does using a delegated calendar also count as activity, or do I now actively have to sign in into that account from time to time?

At least some time ago there used to be some wonkiness regarding replies to calendar invitations if somebody sent an invitation to my private mail and I would then accept or decline that invitation via my calendar on my regular Google account, which is linked to a google-specific mail address. So ultimately I ended up creating a secondary Google account for my private mail address and then delegated full calendar access from there to my main account, which is also the one signed-in on my phone.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#170

Post by silverpepsi »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #167
silverpepsi wrote: post #145

This is unbelievably generous, I'm happy. I feel like people forget Hotmail et al. circa 2001 when 60 days passed and you lost everything. Sometimes you could keep your account and just the data was wiped out. This was ABSOLUTELY THE NORM on the internet. Google overturned it single-handedly. In Texas my automatic payment for my storage garage where I have $10,000s of my designer clothing collection didn't go through…

General improvement, if you have important documents and possession considered storing them with a safety deposit box provider. In my neck of the woods these are typically big banks and security services companies.

Honestly after the FBI cleaned out all those safety deposit boxes in California and didn't even have to explain themselves in any meaningful way, I wouldn't even consider one for the normal purposes. Maybe I can get one in Singapore.....
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