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Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

danfabulich.medium.com

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Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#121

Post by moooo99 »

I've been thinking about how to monetize the game I'm building and AdMob seemed like the obvious candidate. I checked a bunch of sources including Youtube videos, blog articles and reddit posts, and stumbled across a whole bunch of apps that got their ad serving limited because of "suspected click fraud". Most of those apps have in common that they are relatively new and had massive download spikes thanks to ad campaigns.

Obviously that was a massive red flag for me, but the search for alternatives gave me a good impression on how massive Google actually is. Many developers don't even seem to consider any alternatives for AdMob/AdSense.

So far the best alternative I was able to find seems to be MoPub and to use their mediation capabilities. I really don't want to go all in on Google, but especially when working on mobile, it often seems like there are not too many choices.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#122

Post by bennyp101 »

inopinatus wrote: post #112
genuine_smiles wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. I wouldn’t do this with Facebook. Creating a second account is against Facebook policy, and they may ban both accounts.

Facebook's demand is this brain-damaged garbage: If you want to represent your business, organisation, brand or product on Facebook, you can use your personal account to create and manage a Page . We have a diametrically conflicting policy, by which personal accounts absolutely may not be used to manage company resources, for exactly the aforementioned reasons of minimising blast radius; so, we basically gave up on F…

Yep, I wanted to set up a Facebook page for my company, but as I don't want a personal Facebook account, I figured it wasn't worth it because it would end up being fake info, and they could then just shut it down.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#123

Post by numpad0 »

ryandrake wrote: post #41
genuine_smiles wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. I wouldn’t do this with Facebook. Creating a second account is against Facebook policy, and they may ban both accounts.

Legit question: is there any other service/company on earth that bans you for having multiple accounts? This seems like an insanely restrictive policy. One of the defining characteristics of internet communication is that you can have a “work persona” and a “home persona” and maybe another one for your hobbies, another one for your porn browsing and gambling, another one for your aunts and uncles. To deny this basic,…

Microsoft reportedly has internal one identity policy, Facebook is notorious for forcing people to expose, etc.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#124

Post by cy_hauser »

Lammy wrote: post #39
bogwog wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stories like this always scare me because they remind me that all of my domain names are on Google domains, including the one I use for my work email address. I gotta migrate out one of these days.

Forgive me for piling on yet-another-unsolicited-registrar-recommendation, but I'm a big fan of NFSN due to their terms of service and feel safe that none of my domains will ever get pulled without very good reason. I've never had that trust tested, but it's at least spelled out: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/domains https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/help/abuse

They haven't been easy to get a response from for me. Tried to ask a question that wasn't in the FAQ and got silence. That was a few years ago. Went elsewhere. Same situation different question last year and again no response. YMMV but I got zero mpg.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#125

Post by purplecats »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

I'd extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. Some examples: - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. - Nothing tied to your consumer accounts should be used for anything business related. - Your Amazon shopping account and your AWS account should defin…

Agreed. But this causes so much energy expenditure in setting up and maintaining these separate profiles for each project. We need more tools in this space, along the vein of password managers.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#126

Post by lattalayta »

GoOnThenDoTell wrote: post #8

Google needs a general support line that doesn’t involve a Medium post making the HN front page

I recently implemented AdMob ads in an app and I wanted to contact Google support with a question. However, any time their "contact us" assistant didn't know the answer to my question, it would respond with an Error Page saying the email the support team can't be found.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#127

Post by BMorearty »

Four months ago a friend of mine had his Google account suspended with a vague message about a terms of service violation. He escalated and appealed it with my help. It was no use. He lost everything. Files. Photos. Email. Calendar. Even his business domain registrations. He was paying for Google services like YouTube and storage. He couldn’t even get a download of his data.

This is why I never used Google Cloud. I’ve heard these stories for years. You can lose everything and have no recourse. It’s not worth it.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#128

Post by cy_hauser »

jraph wrote: post #96

Also teach people to use and prefer F-Droid over Google Play when possible, and make your open source app available on it: - no obscure ban for application vendors - no mandatory account for installing apps and from which you can be banned - no user tracking If you don't like vendor lock-ins and its consequences, push for the alternatives.

Would F-Droid have accepted them with an ad bundle included? I seem to remember that as an anti-feature for them.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#129

Post by avereveard »

dgs_sgd wrote: post #113
privacyking wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you use separate accounts, Google can and has banned all associated accounts (including personal accounts) in the past.

What do you mean by associated accounts? How does Google know they are linked?

Same device access, same email domain, same tax registration number, going off other answers in the thread

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#130

Post by BeyondLimits99 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

I'd extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. Some examples: - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. - Nothing tied to your consumer accounts should be used for anything business related. - Your Amazon shopping account and your AWS account should defin…

Couldn't agree more.

My Amazon retail account got flagged for fraud (cause I had an old CC attached to the account).

My AWS account got disabled as well

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