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Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

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Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#171

Post by mirimir »

weberc2 wrote: post #144
mirimir wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the spam filtering in the world won't help you after your account evaporates.

No, but the odds of my email account going away (while catastrophic) seem pretty unlikely, and not having to sift through spam every single day is a pretty nice perk. Basically strong spam filtering support is a requirement for any tool I use, and I'm happy to hop off of Gmail if another tool delivers comparable value.

I do get that. And perhaps you're discreet enough online that your Google account will never attract scrutiny. But it's something that every Google user ought to keep in mind, I think. I'm guessing that Salil Mehta never even considered it.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#172

Post by jxramos »

cmurf wrote: post #134

Google Takeout https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Takeout Problems though: if your account is already disabled, you can't use this as far as I can tell; and there's no diff option, it's a monolithic backup each time. But it might provide a strategy to limit data loss resulting from having an account disabled for whatever reason.

What exactly is the file format that one downloads?

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#173

Post by jerf »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #131
jerf wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a personal mail server that collects my mail, but use my "default" Comcast MX to send. I'm sure metric craptons of email flow through that, but a lot of ham does too, so I've never been blacklisted. I'd suggest that rather than the goal being to instantly leave this service or that the instant that they offend you, that you envision your policy as one of being ready to leave if you ever need to. The biggest ke…

What prevents your domain name registrar from shutting you down arbitrarily? Also, I'm not sure what you're referring to as Comcast MX, but if you mean a Comcast provided server, that's a huge privacy hole. If you mean your own server on a Comcast line, then your IP is leaked to everyone you email, which is also a privacy hole since it ties your IP directly to your identity.

"What prevents your domain name registrar from shutting you down arbitrarily?"

I did say "even with the events of last week". It's the biggest stick you can get right now. It doesn't make you invincible.

"If you mean your own server on a Comcast line, then your IP is leaked to everyone you email, which is also a privacy hole since it ties your IP directly to your identity."

I don't email out much. Everyone I email is pretty much already going to know I'm me. Comcast already has arbitrarily large amounts of surveillance they can perform on me, sitting here worrying about my "outbound email hole" is a waste of time.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#174

Post by throwaway613834 »

Clubber wrote: post #156
throwaway613834 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your IP is leaked to everyone you email (and if you receive mail, to everyone who emails you), which is a privacy hole since it ties your IP directly to your identity. I assume you don't mind, or did you not realize this?

The whois shows my company name. I mean since I run a company, I don't really want that private. Also, those IPs are accessible through a simple DNS lookup of the sender domain, so I'm not really losing any security.

Oh, I thought you were recommending this for consumer usage. Yeah, if you have a company then there's probably nothing to keep private.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#175

Post by Clubber »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #174
Clubber wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whois shows my company name. I mean since I run a company, I don't really want that private. Also, those IPs are accessible through a simple DNS lookup of the sender domain, so I'm not really losing any security.

Oh, I thought you were recommending this for consumer usage. Yeah, if you have a company then there's probably nothing to keep private.

The hosting provider will probably put whatever you want in the whois.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#176

Post by throwaway613834 »

Clubber wrote: post #175
throwaway613834 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I thought you were recommending this for consumer usage. Yeah, if you have a company then there's probably nothing to keep private.

The hosting provider will probably put whatever you want in the whois.

The whois wasn't my concern though (since I already knew it was solvable); my concern was the IP address leakage, which gives away your location among other things...

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#177

Post by nailer »

metalliqaz wrote: post #64
joatmon-snoo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP, as pushed by Google, is essentially Google re-hosting a pared-down, mobile-friendly version of your site. Alex Kras has two blog posts that got a lot of traction early on that highlighted some issues with this trend [1] [2]. [1] https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-... [2] https://www.alexkras.com/please-make-google-amp-optional/

Thanks much, I was wondering how AMP made him suspicious of google.

Essentially Google only allow Google-hosted AMP content in their search carousel. You could create an AMP (or otherwise fast) page on your own CDN and Google won't show it unless it's on their domain.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#178

Post by nailer »

amrrs wrote: post #94
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accelerated Mobile Pages It's a weird accelerator thing for mobile. I've never quite figured out its use case except to hoover up more metrics for Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages

The use case is simple: Transcend through adblockers and show ads in mobiles. Mobile users primarily use adblockers because websites suck their data and also speed. AMP ensures faster content delivery and lite data and also comes with ads.

Doesn't explain why they don't allow you to host AMP pages on your own domain and still be in the search carousel.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#179

Post by balladeer »

theWatcher37 wrote: post #8
xiaoma wrote: post #2

No idea what all was on his blog and other google accounts, but according to the article they were used for his work at the university. Also some credible sites like the NYT linking into the disabled blog: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/business/the-stock-market... Google may have had some good reasons or it may have just been an example of ML discriminating against a name like Salil. Either way, it's very distur…

This type of behavior + AMP has pushed me off google completely. I'm determined to cut them out of my technical life entirely, I've even switched myself and everyone I know/support off their DNS. I can't support their shady practices anymore.

This is why I have been religiously adding my first-name@outlook.com and mail@my-personal-domain as recovery emails or primary email wherever possible on the Internet. Effort is to try and keep email on my own domain as primary and hopefully move off Google ecosystem completely.

I recently moved to iPhone. Now I am not an iFan or so (and I am an Android developer at my day job) but what I like about it that there are couple of service centres in my city and I can actually go and talk to a person directly employed by Apple. Their reps are a phone call away and in fact I can just get a call from them in a few click, or send an email and a human being will respond to me.

I don't like robo bans. I think nobody does. I had really bad experience when Uber banned my account based on some false alarm and it took almost a week to get it revived. Just imagine a robo ban where there's possibly no remedy or in most cases no hopes to contact with an actual human being.

There are also very good paid hosts like https://mailbox.org/en (I moved to them as my third non-throwaway email address after I realised sdf.org can't be anything more than a site for hobby, chitchat, and nostalgia).

I hardly use Hangout now so there's little incentive in sticking with Gmail anyway. Office moved almost entirely to Slack (but it's still GApps mail and GDocs sadly) and friends and family to WhatsApp and Fb Messenger long ago. But this is risky too - Fb owns both. My effort to move them to something like https://signal.org has failed spectacularly (any tips on this? Or alternate services?). Some of them are on Telegram though, and some still on Viber.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#180

Post by balladeer »

thegayngler wrote: post #82

What if you have your Android Phone tied to their services etc and this is the way Google behaves. This type of unexplained behavior from Google could literally ruin someone's life.

It happened with a phone and he had to create another Gmail account. He was locked out iirc. But his online life mostly revolves around Fb so he didn't care much I think.
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