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My Google Workspace account suspension

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Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#61

Post by macintux »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #55
Jimmc414 wrote: post #46

Google needs to understand that watching this nightmare scenario play out over and over again is actively destroying trust in their platform. When your email, authentication, documents, payroll, and CRM all flow through a single provider and that provider can lock you out overnight with no meaningful recourse, you’ve invited customers to place their entire digital presence into a house of cards. The fact that this sa…

Yeah, loss of a google account in certain cases can destroy entire small businesses and there's no recourse. In the old world we had extremely deep bodies of case law around utilities and commercial leases and road access, insurance and all kinds of things to make business operation legally predictable, but for the digital equivalent it's still the wild west and everyone just throws up their hands like its unavoidabl…

Imagine being homeless, and your Gmail account is your online identity for what little financial presence you have, and how in the world can you recover from its loss?

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#62

Post by amelius »

brookst wrote: post #60
amelius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU isn't as bad as some Americans want to believe.

The EU’s heart is in the right place, which can only rarely be said of the US. But the EU’s approach is often backwards. When product managers have to ask the government if it’s ok to ship a feature, something is wrong. When the government responds that it can’t say in advance, you’ll just have to ship and see if you get fined, something is really seriously broken.

If a company is about to produce millions of physical products, I think it is quite ok if they first check with the government to see if that is a good idea.

Same with social media features that are rolled out to millions of users.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#63

Post by e40 »

This is why I do full Google Takeout every 2 months and have my own domain with Workspace. I don't rely on cloud file storage. The calendar is important, but I could switch easily.

IMO, the worst part of this is Workspace support is immune to ANY explanation. I mean, credit card companies are well used to "is this your transaction?" emails.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#64

Post by Lihh27 »

r_lee wrote: post #48

this is actually scary as fuck I thought with Workspace you'd actually be spared from this kind of BS I guess not?

you're paying for the privilege of getting locked out by the same algorithm that locks out free accounts. the only difference is you get an invoice.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#65

Post by Rastonbury »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #55
Jimmc414 wrote: post #46

Google needs to understand that watching this nightmare scenario play out over and over again is actively destroying trust in their platform. When your email, authentication, documents, payroll, and CRM all flow through a single provider and that provider can lock you out overnight with no meaningful recourse, you’ve invited customers to place their entire digital presence into a house of cards. The fact that this sa…

Yeah, loss of a google account in certain cases can destroy entire small businesses and there's no recourse. In the old world we had extremely deep bodies of case law around utilities and commercial leases and road access, insurance and all kinds of things to make business operation legally predictable, but for the digital equivalent it's still the wild west and everyone just throws up their hands like its unavoidabl…

On the surface it seems like it would be a good idea for all these users who were suspended to do a mass arbitration like what happened to Uber to get them to start taking it seriously, this comes up like monthly people getting account pulled up from under them and impacting business. Maybe there a legal differences or something https://www.mbelr.org/mass-arbitration-how-ubers-own-alterna...

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#66

Post by quadrifoliate »

Spooky23 wrote: post #59
Jimmc414 wrote: post #46

Google needs to understand that watching this nightmare scenario play out over and over again is actively destroying trust in their platform. When your email, authentication, documents, payroll, and CRM all flow through a single provider and that provider can lock you out overnight with no meaningful recourse, you’ve invited customers to place their entire digital presence into a house of cards. The fact that this sa…

I don’t disagree, but the reality is SaaS is the model that most companies depend on and these risks exist everywhere. If your business is dependent on services you need to take a modicum of effort to protect yourself - the posts author was literally walking around with his entire business at risk from him dropping his phone or having it pickpocketed. At the end of the day, the protagonist in this story is mad becaus…

> He deleted his sole token (Google makes it trivial to add many) in the most fraud signally way possible.

Are we reading the same blog post? He had his password, 2FA authenticator set up, and backup codes -- everything Google asks you to have to be on the "golden" auth path.

He only deleted his SMS authentication path (one thing I don't understand is how he was able to do this in the first place without being logged in), which is in any case the least secure method of 2FA. Also, It should be fairly obvious that SMS is not expected to work seamlessly while traveling, how is this not a scenario that's hit by millions of Google users worldwide?

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#67

Post by HumanOstrich »

protimewaster wrote: post #20

I think Google has done some cool stuff, and I think in a lot of ways they're, at least historically, one of the less evil big tech players. I gotta say, though, that my experience with trying to get them to sort out any kind of issue with their services makes me reluctant to spend any money with them. I bought a Pixel phone. As per the sales terms, the phone came with one year of Gemini AI Pro service. Except, the r…

I agree with your sentiment, but I wanted to call out that they've always been just as evil as other big tech companies.

I think their motto of "don't be evil" was some pretty clever PR.

I started questioning it c. 2008 when they ghosted me on resolving an issue with my blogspot site that was a bug in the platform. All I could get was a condescending non-response from a "diamond" volunteer on a forum. They were apparently the gatekeepers to reaching actual support.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#68

Post by jimbocyou »

Hackbraten wrote: post #54
jimbocyou wrote: post #51

OP triggered every possible red flags for suspicious account takeover in Google systems: deleting his recovery phone number, moving to another country and cellular provider. And then he gets surprised that the account is in 30 day cool down period??? I don't understand people sometimes.

They didn't willfully delete their recovery phone number. They tried to delete a shitty, known-broken 2FA mechanism after they had set up passkeys. Poor UX conflated the two things, so their recovery phone number ended up being deleted. This is 100% on Google. Why the fuck would Google care in which country I live? It's a personal decision, and no corporation should have any say in this. They certainly don't have to…

The problem is the rapid succession of changes to recovery phone number, country, cellular provider. There is no way to differentiate, at scale, between an account takeover currently in progress that needs to be stopped immediately to minimize damage, and a legit user deciding to change all his personal info at once.

30 day cool down period is a reasonable response, at scale.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#69

Post by ryandrake »

It's been [0] days since the last "Cloud provider banned me and I lost everything" article.

Everyone who depends on the good graces of a cloud provider for something (not just Google, but Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, whatever) needs to at the very least, take a moment, and figure out what their plan is when they are suddenly banned and locked out permanently, without any way to contact the company.

Does life just go on, since you don't have anything important hosted there? (Best Case)

Do you lose some precious family photos and use it as a tough learning opportunity to stop doing what you're doing? (Next best)

Do you lose access to your E-mail and are suddenly not able to do 2FA, reset passwords, communicate with the company or the Internet in any way, and so on, and now have to panic?

Do you complain online, hoping that someone in the company sees your post and has the ability to restore your account, which you then continue to use because you learned nothing?

Having an online account suddenly suspended is a real, non-zero, but unlikely risk. You should at least have a disaster plan if you rely on these things for anything important. Or better yet, stop relying on them for important things like your identity or precious files!

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#70

Post by zenincognito »

jimbocyou wrote: post #51

OP triggered every possible red flags for suspicious account takeover in Google systems: deleting his recovery phone number, moving to another country and cellular provider. And then he gets surprised that the account is in 30 day cool down period??? I don't understand people sometimes.

Have backup codes, Passkey, access to the said number, same laptop logged in, phone logged in, recovery email address access and nothing works...
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