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

My Google Workspace account suspension

zencapital.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 239 posts

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#151

Post by suzzer99 »

Arcuru wrote: post #80

If a service offers "Login with Google/Apple/Facebook/etc" you should never do that if they offer a username/password. It just increases the single point of failure. Avoid places that only offer the "Login with Foo" if at all possible (looking at you Tailscale). As an ex-googler, the only reason I was comfortable keeping even my personal email there was because I could reach out internally if there was a problem. I l…

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.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#152

Post by drnick1 »

Run your own email server, and give Google the middle finger. Letting Google own your email, and freely spy on your communications is insane. I think this incident clearly demonstrates that you cannot leave critical infrastructure like this in the hands of a third party.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#153

Post by drcongo »

FireBeyond wrote: post #148
gib444 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Avoid places that only offer the "Login with Foo" if at all possible (looking at you Tailscale). Tailscale is the only serious company that I can ever recall offering /only/ third party login. It's bit bizarre on the face of it. Anyone know the reason?

My other annoyance lately is companies that don't let you set a password. It's either passkey only (which I'm not sold on, yet), or "we'll email you a login link". Great, now I have to wait for the email to show up, click the link, hope it doesn't expire if I get distracted while waiting, and then also delete your emails, sometimes multiple times a day? What a shit tier authentication mechanism.

I despise this. Slack keeps doing this even though I have a password and 2FA configured.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#154

Post by cube00 »

jjav wrote: post #99
Klaster_1 wrote: post #3

This should be illegal. Megacorps eat more and more of our life and regular people are increasingly at mercy of these hostile entities. They should be pushed more against. If we can't have proper anti monopoly splits like AT&T, then at least ways to prevent them exerting too much power are long due. If you provide an essential service, responsibility should match that.

There needs to be a law that every cloud-based service which has accounts for more than (say) 1% of population, must have a physical service counter presence in every major town staffed by an employee who must be empowered to resolve all account access issues. Notice how phone carries manage to have a shop in every little strip mall, you're never more than a few miles from the nearest one. Google takes in far more re…

Staffed desks would just tell you they need to open a ticket.

No company will give full account unlock control to field employees.

Even the bank teller behind the glass needs to phone their internal fraud dept to unlock accounts.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#155

Post by mjlee »

ValentineC wrote: post #28
pbowyer wrote: post #8

Dealing with Google is a nightmare. I'm one of the volunteer sysadmins for https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/ , a DIY and self-build forum. For 10 years it ranked very well on Google, particularly in the UK, and then on 28 December 2025 it disappeared from Google's index. Nothing has helped, the Google forums are tumbleweed and there's no one to reach out to for what could be an algorithm change or something gone wrong.…

> Nothing has helped, the Google forums are tumbleweed and there's no one to reach out to for what could be an algorithm change or something gone wrong. The own-brand forum (Google, Microsoft, Apple) seem to be infested by netizens from lower-income countries trying to build online customer support portfolios by providing utterly useless answers. That, or trying to game the system and getting shortlisted for a free t…

I am genuinely curious if anybody knows of a non-trivial problem being solved on one of these forums, at least for a huge company that’s palming off customer support. It just feels like screaming in to the void, only for someone to (deliberately?) misinterpret your question and give you some generic advice.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#156

Post by drnick1 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #151
Arcuru wrote: post #80

If a service offers "Login with Google/Apple/Facebook/etc" you should never do that if they offer a username/password. It just increases the single point of failure. Avoid places that only offer the "Login with Foo" if at all possible (looking at you Tailscale). As an ex-googler, the only reason I was comfortable keeping even my personal email there was because I could reach out internally if there was a problem. I l…

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.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#157

Post by GeekyBear »

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 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.

It's been a decade since Google broke their promise not to use information gleaned from your use of their services to sell ads.

> Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand — literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits “may be” combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.

https://psmag.com/news/googles-broken-privacy-promise/

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#158

Post by wvenable »

deepsun wrote: post #139

I tried to read it assuming the blog post author is a hacker. The hacker could have stolen an OTP device with DNS access, but couldn't steal for the phone number (so they removed it, there was no explanation why phone number is removed). And honestly, how else could they prove they are legit? What if they really are a hacker? It would be cool if Google (and other media giants, especially IdP ones) had an office where…

Now try and read it assuming that instead of a screw up, this user was actually hacked. How do they recover?

Honestly, if you are using Gmail as your primary email I could probably ruin your entire year. I could just try and hack you (not even successfully) and Google will just shut down your entire life rather than attempt to work out who's right.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#160

Post by nhuser2221 »

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…

Protonmail is the solution, or hosting your own email server but that one is more complex.
Post reply on HN