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My Google Workspace account suspension

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Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#201

Post by brookst »

amelius wrote: post #62
brookst wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the EU was prepared to give advance permission, that would make sense. It would be slow ("Hey we want to rename 'username' to 'login'" -> "we'll get back to you in a couple of months"), but it would make sense.

But, if you'll re-read my comment, my complaint is that the EU will not pre-clear features. They will only punish after the fact if they decide it was a bad feature.

And that's even assuming you're correct that the bureaucrats themselves know what is a good idea. Which I'm skeptical of. I think they're more likely to be correct than, say, Facebook... but that's a pretty low bar.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#203

Post by anotherevan »

ryandrake wrote: post #69

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,…

In the case of Google Workspace for our company, I'm using Cubebackup[1]. I've been going through the disaster recovery exercises lately, and thinking about what I've been calling "external backups", which are backups of a service that are stored and restorable outside that service.

It can be surprisingly difficult with a lot of SaaS products (including Google).

[1] https://www.cubebackup.com/

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#204

Post by TimBurman »

qingcharles wrote: post #83
r1ch wrote: post #44

I recently had to go through the recovery flow for an admin account and it was wild. Despite Google manually unlocking the account and giving me a reset link, every login was forced to authenticate via SMS using the (removed) phone number. Luckily I was able to get a hold of it and get the code, but even after adding a TOTP and security key 2FA, further logins still required SMS. It feels like the security team made…

Google enabled 2FA on my Gmail account without any prior notice. I have the username, password, recovery email, and all emails from the account are forwarded to my Fastmail, but I can't ever log into the account again because it is trying to do 2FA by SMS to a number I don't have. I've tried everything to find someone inside Google to fix this, but so far no luck. At least with Meta you can find someone on a forum li…

You could try logging into Gmail just to the point before the SMS is sent, then phone the number you used to have and speak to the current owner. Apologize that you forgot to take the number off your account and so they are receiving text messages meant for you, but you would like to get one more message from them and they won't be bothered anymore. Then you will switch to a new number on your Gmail and they will not receive your messages. Many people will be happy to help a stranger if you are nice and polite to them.

The other option is to contact the phone company and explain, asking an open ended question if there is any way they could help you, with the permission of the current owner of the number, to get one more text message and move your Gmail to a new number. It doesn't sound in any way like you are trying to pull a scam, so they might help.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#205

Post by gchamonlive »

walterbell wrote: post #25
gchamonlive wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always keycloak you can rollout yourself. It's not trivial but it's quite doable.

Thanks for the pointer, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47649354 edit: looks like there are affordable managed hosting providers for keycloak.

I was a long time k8s skeptical, but I think it's solid now. If there's good support for keycloak for k8s with support for backups I wouldn't think twice.

Not sure the state of keycloak now, but it was a lot of work to manage keycloak configs with the IaC pipeline. That could have gotten better now, but I think having access to the data is important because migration might not be trivial if for instance a provider starts acting up.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#206

Post by John23832 »

HumanOstrich wrote: post #67
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 appar…

Sounds a lot like Cloudflare at the moment.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#207

Post by suzzer99 »

drnick1 wrote: post #156
suzzer99 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We offer Login with Google and Login with Facebook on our apps. The fun part is both FB and Google started blocking Selenium and any other automated agents from logging in. So basically there's no way to run end to end tests that confirm the login flows using FB or Google, which have wrinkles that our normal login doesn't hit.

> We offer Login with Google and Login with Facebook on our apps. This has the nefarious side effect of allowing Google or Facebook to track people across the Internet and apps. Webmasters like you are, often for no imperative reason, complicit of this by providing such login options.

I work for a university. It came down as a requirement from above because our most important users are older (rich) donors who struggle with even basic login.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#208

Post by [deleted] »

thephyber wrote: post #190
drnick1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We offer Login with Google and Login with Facebook on our apps. This has the nefarious side effect of allowing Google or Facebook to track people across the Internet and apps. Webmasters like you are, often for no imperative reason, complicit of this by providing such login options.

“For no imperative reason” App developers have repeatedly stated that offering those options increases user account creation. There is lower friction to using “login with ” than to create username/password creation flow. My guess is that most of the world hasn’t figured out a password manager workflow that works for them (or they aren’t willing to pay for it).

[deleted]

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#209

Post by quadrifoliate »

thephyber wrote: post #188
calvinmorrison wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree it should be regulated like a utility, however I believe contracts and suspensions should require more work than a click of a button.

The ease of suspend isn’t the problem here. It’s that there is functionally no recourse once the suspension happens, justified or not. The only people who seem to get un-suspended are the ones who can generate news media outrage or who can call their friend who is a director/exec at the company. (Obviously this intuition is flawed, but it’s hurting the reputations of these SaaS providers.)

> it’s hurting the reputations of these SaaS providers

It's not hurting them enough. Hence the regulation is needed.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#210

Post by Spooky23 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #138
Spooky23 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re hearing one side of the story from a frustrated user recounting a borderline traumatic and stressful event. The SMS only fallback is when other things have failed and they suspect that there’s been a takeover. Microsoft does something similar to tie it to some tangible thing. I’m not excusing Google. Their exception handling is poor at best. I’ve seen issues at customers where phones left in flight get flagged…

> Point is, this type of shit happens and you should have a contingency. Let's work through what the contingency could have been. Always make sure you buy international roaming everywhere you go? Always be able to switch your MX records (from a provider whose account isn't tied to a Google-controlled email)? They seem to get increasingly less practical to be honest. People travel all over the world everyday, this shi…

Ok, sure man. In the meantime before the Lenin of our age appears…

In this case, don’t run around with a business account with a single user with admin privileges. Segregate privilege. Don’t share a phone number with other accounts. Don’t use SSO as the key to your business.

If you run a business you need to manage risk. If a customs officer thought he looked funny and seized the phone, he’d be boned as well.

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