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Inactive Google Account Policy

support.google.com

41–50 of 83 posts

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#41
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don't depend on "free" for critical functions. All the cards are stacked against the users though. It's not that easy for a non-tech person to use any sort of email/photo library etc that isn't free from Google/Apple etc. Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you. If Google intentionally incentivized everyone to move their entire digital lives into their p…

> for reasons that even Google can't explain, and there is no recourse or action they can take. It's even worse. When it was publicized that Google wrongfully flagged multiple accounts and tipped the police for child porn, they refused to reinstate those accounts. Instead, they chose to retaliate by further defaming the account owners on the record . That was after the police cleared their names and they haven't made…

This is my judge/jury/executioner thing. Objectively only google decides what Google does with our data, and only google decides if they are right or wrong. "We can't be sure we're wrong" is their getout clause in the court of public opinion regarding CSAM.

Another line of reasoning i see frequently is "you don't know all the material facts" which is of course also almost always true. So the original complainant may have multiple things going on, may have been abusive, using facilities otherwise for commercial gain against T&C, had innocuous but IPR abusing files, you name it. None of this would ordinarily trigger lockout. Google just avoid having to say sorry and re-enable by handwaving "other reasons" statements.

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#42

Given that G states that "doing a search" is considered to be "activity" it shouldn't be too hard to rig up an automated account shaker which at large but not too large intervals - something between 16 and 22 months - logs in on some headless browser, searches Google for a random thing and logs out again.

> logs in on some headless browser

What if the account is secured by 2FA? Are you advocating to disable 2FA for the sake of your automated continuity of the account?

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#44
post #19
post #7

I don't work for google. I use Google, I have multiple Gmail as well as hosted by Google workspace domains. Overall I think this is reasonable. I can't see why people are upset, when the general burden to make it "live" is low. There are specific corner case problems: people who cannot login for various reasons, can't get Google humans to help, and who get mail forwarded so are limping along. And, there are a surpris…

> Google also reserves the right to delete data in a product if you are inactive in that product for at least two years. This part is unreasonable no? I sometimes don't use a product for a while, like google drive for instance, and the prospect of coming back to it and discovering that all my data has been deleted is a bit on the dreadful side. I don't want to have to keep track of which product Ive been using and ho…

[deleted]

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#45
post #2

Wish you could check your inactivity status more closely than their suggested "if you're not sure, just sign in to the Google account". I have a couple Google accounts that are just pulling email to a separate mailbox and who knows if that's active or not. Maybe I'll have to buy something on one of those accounts just to get it exempt? Also reading this closely there's separate timers per product? This is worse than…

[deleted]

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#46
post #28

Two years it too short. The reason I now use gmail and not hotmail is because Microsoft did a similar thing 20 years ago. When I lost my hotmail account, I thought I might as well use gmail from now on. Reason I didn't log into my hotmail account was because I used the mail address I got from the university.

[deleted]

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#47
I forward multiple gmail accounts to a single account and use the "Send mail as" feature to also send mail from those other accounts. Will either of those actions trigger the "Reading or sending an email" activity that Google referred to?

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#48
Now if only I could get the data out of my account. I've spent far too long arguing with people at Google, but I can't get into my account because I lost the phone number attached to it, even though I have the password, and a recovery email address and all the mail from my Gmail gets forwarded to that address as it comes in.

They say I have no right to my data since I can't log into the account, but I don't think the law works that way. I have a right to my data, they are entitled to give it to me if I can prove I am who I say I am, which I can.

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#49
post #20
post #7

I don't work for google. I use Google, I have multiple Gmail as well as hosted by Google workspace domains. Overall I think this is reasonable. I can't see why people are upset, when the general burden to make it "live" is low. There are specific corner case problems: people who cannot login for various reasons, can't get Google humans to help, and who get mail forwarded so are limping along. And, there are a surpris…

>Don't depend on "free" for critical functions. All the cards are stacked against the users though. It's not that easy for a non-tech person to use any sort of email/photo library etc that isn't free from Google/Apple etc. Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you. If Google intentionally incentivized everyone to move their entire digital lives into their p…

Ive been selfhosting email for past 3 years now.

Got a second parallel email server last year.

Mailinabox. A cheap vps.

I had trouble one time when I stupidly used my email as credentials for local testing SMTP server, I was banned for like a day. Had to send an appeal to spamhaus or something.

Other than that, it has been pretty smooth sailing.

Re: Inactive Google Account Policy

#50
post #20
post #7

I don't work for google. I use Google, I have multiple Gmail as well as hosted by Google workspace domains. Overall I think this is reasonable. I can't see why people are upset, when the general burden to make it "live" is low. There are specific corner case problems: people who cannot login for various reasons, can't get Google humans to help, and who get mail forwarded so are limping along. And, there are a surpris…

>Don't depend on "free" for critical functions. All the cards are stacked against the users though. It's not that easy for a non-tech person to use any sort of email/photo library etc that isn't free from Google/Apple etc. Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you. If Google intentionally incentivized everyone to move their entire digital lives into their p…

> Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you.

That's not been my experience - I've successfully self-hosted email for nearly a decade now.

Really nice guide here: https://thomas-leister.de/en/mailserver-debian-stretch/

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