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Google banned me from Google Voice

dannyguo.com

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Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#121

Post by precommunicator »

thatsnotmepls wrote: post #86
ffsm8 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While rare, there have been cases of people losing their paid-for domains too - because a company wanted them and had a lawyer convince the registrar that it should really be theirs (obviously exaggerating), or because the registrar made an error and accidentally put it back on the market etc. These cases are super rare though, Google users getting rekt are much more frequent, that's for sure!

People forgetting to renew happens frequently too. Now what's more rare, Google banning someone for no reason or a person forgetting to renew and losing its domain?

If you care, pay for 10 years in advance, and still extend every year to keep the 10 year rolling window.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#122

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

nobody9999 wrote: post #118
tzs wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever. There's an easy way to address this that a lot of people overlook. Seriously, I'm not being snarky or sarcastic in what I'm about to say. A lot of people seem to really not considered this. Use a calendar. Every major desktop OS includes calendar software, I believe, as does every major mobile OS. Create a calendar on one…

As I implied elsewhere, how does anyone manage to keep their house? I mean what if you forget to pay your mortgage? How does anyone keep their job? What if you forget to go to/do your work? How does anyone keep the electricity flowing/put food in the refrigerator/keep gas in the gas tank of their vehicle/maintain their internet access/etc./etc./etc. If something is important to someone, they'll take whatever steps ar…

Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#123

Post by cromka »

I use Google Voice with my number after having left the US for Europe. I don’t need any of the Voice features and could rely on VoWiFi when roaming instead, except maintaining even the most basic line in the US was costly, at least the last time I checked a few years back. Any idea if this has changed in any way? Are there any plans that cost little to none that won’t be cancelled with little use?

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#124

Post by nobody9999 »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #122
nobody9999 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I implied elsewhere, how does anyone manage to keep their house? I mean what if you forget to pay your mortgage? How does anyone keep their job? What if you forget to go to/do your work? How does anyone keep the electricity flowing/put food in the refrigerator/keep gas in the gas tank of their vehicle/maintain their internet access/etc./etc./etc. If something is important to someone, they'll take whatever steps ar…

Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible.

>Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible.

And losing access to your email/other domain assets doesn't have "tangible, real world effects"?

In fact, those "real world" effects is what prompted[0] this discussion of custom domains to host one's email.

Or am I missing something?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42078868

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#125

Post by bastard_op »

xethos wrote: post #103
bastard_op wrote: post #89

This is actually fairly terrifying, I have used google voice for around 15 years myself (since acquisition), and use it as my main inbound line for multiple numbers actually. After verizon screwed me too circa 2009, I treat cell phones like burners, and really only use GVoice as my main inbound. It is all my mfa, sms, professional identity number, etc, and has always been solid as such as I use it with a paid gsuite…

Oh hey, I've seen people like you. and it prompted me, several years ago, to do something similar with Voip.ms. My "one number" was ported from a telco, and has lived at this paid service, with customer support, for over six years now. One side affect of this is, because it started out as a telco number, on't blackball it like they might other VoIP numbers. Now all my SMS OTPs, real SMS, MMS, and transcribed voicemai…

Thanks for the tip with voip.ms! Interesting, usually most voip providers for what I would like require more than 1 user, hadn't really found anyone with all the features that would sell to an individual.

I hadn't thought much about using android as a sip client raw, I forget it does that and never have used to know how good it is, but I'll take your word for it as usable. The rest is just having a suitable sms method to respond through it like a cell phone as natively as possible. Not sure I'd like dealing with sms as email fully.

Back around 2015 I was using switch.co for my business, which was pretty awesome for like $15 a month. I setup a full IVR with voice prompts, had a great android client, web client, pretty much did everything too. Sadly they seem to have went poof when last I went looking for google voice alternatives, but was thinking of using them again for my personal line too.

I'll certainly keep voip.ms in mind for if/when google puts the axe to voice finally.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#126

Post by tzs »

nobody9999 wrote: post #124
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible.

>Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible. And losing access to your email/other domain assets doesn't have "tangible, real world effects"? In fact, those "real world" effects is what prompted[0] this discussion of custom domains to host one's email. Or am I missing something? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42078868

I think you missed the word “before” in their comment.

Miss a mortgage payment and the mortgage holder will try to contact you through many channels. If that fails and you keep missing payments and they decide to evict you, that process takes a while and will include even more attempts to contact you including printed notices left at your house.

Miss renewing your domain and you will probably get email from the registrar about it, but if you didn’t have the foresight to set up a filter to whitelist those it might look like spam and you might miss it. You then only find out when your domain stops working.

Also mortgage payments are typically monthly. When you have to do something monthly it is a lot easier to remember than things that are yearly, especially yearly things that aren’t associated with a holiday or other special day.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#127

Post by nobody9999 »

tzs wrote: post #126
nobody9999 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible. And losing access to your email/other domain assets doesn't have "tangible, real world effects"? In fact, those "real world" effects is what prompted[0] this discussion of custom domains to host one's email. Or am I missing something? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42078868

I think you missed the word “before” in their comment. Miss a mortgage payment and the mortgage holder will try to contact you through many channels. If that fails and you keep missing payments and they decide to evict you, that process takes a while and will include even more attempts to contact you including printed notices left at your house. Miss renewing your domain and you will probably get email from the regis…

>I think you missed the word “before” in their comment.

Nope. Didn't miss that at all. What is it that the kids call it these days? "Adulting?" It really ain't that hard.

Then again, perhaps I'm some sort of superman, or maybe paying my bills on time is my super power.

Somehow I've managed to pay all my bills, keep up my house and renew multiple domains for decades. And it wasn't even hard to do. I have a whole bunch of payments I need to make that aren't simply monthly payments of equal size -- and yet I manage to do so without issue.

Do you think that's unusual or uncanny and folks shouldn't be expected to manage their financial affairs competently? Is that your point?

Then again, millions of others seem to do that just fine too. As I said previously: If it's important to you, you tend to make sure it gets done.

If you (or anyone else) is unwilling or unable to do so, then you should hire an accountant to take care of it for you. Or not.

Regardless, I take care of myself without issue. If you and/or others cannot or will not, that's a you problem.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#128

Post by meowster »

tech234a wrote: post #96
dzhiurgis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 weeks is not enough. People frequently go away for months.

Google Voice deletes your phone number after 3 months of inactivity. Years ago it was longer, about 9 months IIRC.

For military service members, 3 months may not be enough.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#129

Post by mafuy »

causal wrote: post #27
sbuttgereit wrote: post #9

Not to address the author of the article specifically, but only all readers generally.... I would suggest that the moment you chose to have a critical dependency on someone else's services, it becomes incumbent on you to have a disaster recovery plan should that service suddenly become unavailable to you. How formal or intense such a plan is may depend on if you're an individual or a small/mid-sized business that's t…

You are right that this is wise, but it's too much to ask the average user to do. At least in the US, most people lack the technical literacy to do anything but depend on big tech. What we really need is legislation to regulate big tech services as the utilities they really are.

That we can just rely on some basic, useful properties is, in my mind, one of the key differences to "third world countries". I don't need to check if my tap water has lead in it because I know that I won't, so I can use this time more effectively to "increase the GDP". I've lived in Vietnam for a year and learned there how impactful these guarantees can be. It is absolutely possible to deal with the problems, but especially in sum it wastes a lot of time and money.

In the west, I should not need to check that my utility or email provider is trying to screw me over. I should be able to rely on clean water coming out of the tap all the time, with minimal effort (paying fair bills) on my part.

The provider cannot claim that is would be too expensive, or that it would scale worse - that's a solvable problem. If it is more expensive, then that's the true cost that just has to be paid. Yes, the company cannot just dump your waste in the river. Yes, the company cannot just deactivate an email account with sending a paper letter.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#130

Post by Aachen »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #99
gpspake wrote: post #58

Life pro tip (I believe that everyone should do this): - Buy a domain and set up a custom email that represents you like firstname@firstlast.com - you own this domain and email address and no company, with the exception of your registrar maybe, has any control over it or authority to take it from you. - Set up a dummy gmail/proton/whatever acct with a random address - this address will never be used or exposed public…

This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever. What then? Whoever owns your domain owns your email address. It's a good solution but it's got its faults too.

Related: .NL domains will warn you if they detect you're still being sent email after the domain expired. I think they do some analysis on' who's looking up your MX records. Of course, there's also the usual grace period
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