Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google users locked out after 15 years' use

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 720 posts

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#121

Post by mattmanser »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #102
koonsolo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me explain what happens when my house burns down, taking along all my hardware: - I buy another laptop and install Linux. - I connect my Google, Dropbox (which contains google backups) and Github, and they contain all data I own. - I buy a new smartphone and connect it to Google Simple as that. And my house doesn't need to burn down for this, when I buy a new laptop or smartphone I do the same. Plus, all my email…

> Let me explain what happens when my house burns down Does your house burn down that often? Frankly, getting deplatformmed is a much higher-probability event. > and they contain all data I own. No, they contain all data you think you own.

Robbed, flooded will have similar effects.

I think you've got the probability backwards, in reality.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#122

Post by mjochim »

mellow-lake-day wrote: post #94
ajnin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML5 tag works just fine if you want to put a video up somewhere.

Not the person you are responding to but for the HTML5 video tag to work how does server have to be set up? What are you serving the video over? What protocol are you using? New to this so curious about your implementation.

Not the person you were asking, but you can host it the same way you host the HTML file containing the tag. Both files are served as static content by any web server you choose (eg nginx, Apache). You also get "streaming" for free because the browser will request the video file in portions instead of "the whole thing at the same time." Web servers support this out of the box.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#123

Post by mjochim »

afandian wrote: post #17
TheChaplain wrote: post #3

Tip: Get your own domain from a non-google registrar, then connect to Gmail if you prefer. If you ever are locked out, you can just move the address to another email-provider. Another trick is to use always have forwarding enabled in Gmail, to Outlook.com or another provider. All email will be forwarded despite your account being locked, so you will not miss out on important info. And use Google Takeout for backing u…

I've used a custom domain + gmail for the last decade. Earier this year I got sufficiently spooked and decided to switch email. The migration to fastmail.fm , including a decade of old mail messages, was flawless (if slow, but it's a lot of data!). I highly recommend this route.

Did you upload all the messages from your client to fastmail or were they copied directly from Google to fastmail?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#124

Post by hilbert42 »

goatinaboat wrote: post #82
hilbert42 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one who's never trusted my data to Google I really am curious why so many actually do so. Is the convenience truly that great that people are even prepared to gamble the loss of their data? Alternatively, why is it that some of us have always been mistrustful of Big Tech and most others not? They're completely opposite worldviews.

I really am curious why so many actually do so There was a time, maybe up until 10 years ago, when Google was cool . Everyone wanted a GMail address, it started out as invite only, like Facebook. "Do no evil" was the motto. And they ramped it up slowly like boiling a frog. The evil, I mean. And here we are today.

It would be interesting to know if that was the initial plan from the outset or that it evolved along the way.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#125

Post by nirui »

White_Wolf wrote: post #80
stiray wrote: post #30

Welcome to vendor locked-in world where you have willing-fully decided to become prisoners in exchange for few sweets that you dont really need. I hope you dont also own some google router or even better, "home security" device. This would make it a real pain. I am explaining this to people since the birth of gmail, but no one listens. Let me think for a moment, what would happen if google does this to me... [x] No g…

tbh not all people can run their own infrastructure (let alone manage/maintain it). I'm not sure about you but most non-techie people I know rely on online services to keep their data safe. some (maybe) have a USB drive to keep a copy. talking about the setup I'm a bit more flexible in some regards to save bandwidth Cloud/data storage/services XCP-NG + NextCloud + 3TB NAS (24/7) -local mail server+ Dynamic DNS on VPS…

I noticed a lots of people are doing this after they got a NAS. I think there is a business opportunity: NAS vendors can turn their NAS service to a platform that allows it's users to rent "apps" from the platform by paying a small amount of money every month or year. Most of the money goes to the app developers to support their development. When the developer updates the app, the NAS will then automatically download and apply the update.

There is no vendor lock-in as long as the user has the root control of the NAS device (Or at least get their data out of the machine). If the user decided to switch to another NAS vendor, they can simply migrate the data to the new machine.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#126

Post by dan1234 »

mellow-lake-day wrote: post #94
ajnin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML5 tag works just fine if you want to put a video up somewhere.

Not the person you are responding to but for the HTML5 video tag to work how does server have to be set up? What are you serving the video over? What protocol are you using? New to this so curious about your implementation.

As long as you don't care about advanced features like adaptive streaming, you can serve a video in the same way you serve an image.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/vi...

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#127

Post by hilbert42 »

mmkos wrote: post #100

It makes me think that it wouldn't be unreasonable to have regulation around blocking access to email. Google provides a number of services and seemingly, if you break the T&Cs on one of them, your entire account is disabled and you no longer have access to other Google services (including email). I can't imagine not having access to my email - at this point I'm kind of locked in. Google keeps a lot of my passwords a…

"I can't imagine not having access to my email - at this point I'm kind of locked in. Google keeps a lot of my passwords..."

That would worry me beyond belief. This is one of the reasons why I don't understand why people actually do it. To me, it's such an obvious problem and it's easily avoided.

(I use many of these services but they're outside Big Tech and I've no problem. For example, I use POP and IMAP email that's been around since the beginning of the internet.)

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#128

Post by eloisant »

acd10j wrote: post #59

All of the advice after fact would not help a person who actually lost his account. Nor if you are among 99.9 % of population who don’t know how to setup your own mailserver etc. Lots of advice here seems like victim blaming. If you have lost your google account then somehow it’s your fault. For me it seems a nightmare if it does happen to me as well. Can we discuss solutions that can help general public in these sit…

Even if you don't know how to setup your own mailserver, you can still decide to pay for your email (protonmail, fastmail, etc.) to have it managed by a smaller company who makes money directly from their users hence have an incentive to treat them well.

Also not putting all your eggs in one bag is a good idea.

The real problem is that most users don't understand why they should pay for a service that Google provides them for free.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#129

Post by manigandham »

jart wrote: post #25
manigandham wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have millions of dollars or millions of users to back you up.

You are not helpless as an individual. If the company wrongly disables your account and leaves you no other option, you are well within your power to fill out some paperwork and file a lawsuit. It should cost you $10k just to respond.

And then what? You cost them effectively nothing while you're out $1k. Are you prepared to keep spending to continue the lawsuit?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#130

Post by hilbert42 »

mhasbini wrote: post #109

Getting locked out of Google is a legit risk that I have: I'll loose most of my personal & professional data because of it: Emails (Gmail), Files & Photos (Drive), Contacts, Calendar... Google already offer a way to download backups from Google Takeout. But this isn't enough because: 1- I have to remember to download an up-to-date backup myself. 2- I have to store the backup somewhere. 3- Retrieving the data is cumbe…

Good one, automatic backups that avoid the user having to do it are an excellent idea.
Post reply on HN