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Google users locked out after 15 years' use

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#171

Post by ekns »

Currently I'm using namesilo as a registrar, and my own domain for email, albeit with G Suite.

I hope that with G Suite you won't get kicked out arbitrarily, but I think I could still recover from that. Hopefully the registrar will never need email confirmation to log in (assuming my DNS setup is there).

Still, I'm worried that could get me kicked out of my registrar illegitimately. Is there anything that can be done to mitigate this aside from using something super expensive like MarkMonitor?

Earlier my account at namesilo got disabled silently when they decided by themselves that my corporate credit card was somehow fraudulently used by me. I got it resolved eventually, but I fear something similar could eventually lock me out completely.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#172

Post by blunte »

TheChaplain wrote: post #156
mbeex wrote: post #151

Many commentators mention e-mail here: I'm a conservative oldtimer with my own domain (since the Ninetees) and associated e-mail, of course. The problem is that it happens to me more and more often that especially with my business contacts in larger companies my e-mail is filtered out / ends up in their junk folders / disappears for other, unspecified reasons. Simple public black lists do not show anything. I am more…

That is a hassle indeed, you need to set up SPF, DMARC and DKIM to at least have a chance to reach the inbox on gmail or outlook.

I do all three for all of my domains (hosted on another provider). It's actually very little effort. It does help immensely if your provider has systems in place to facilitate this.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#173

Post by drtillberg »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #153
grandpoobah wrote: post #147

This article finally prompted me to do what I should've done a long time ago, which is to create a Fastmail account and begin importing my Gmail into it. I've seen this story far too many times, and no longer will I say "yeah but it'll never happen to me". Setting up the import was insanely easy, and my Fastmail account is now configured to enable me to send using my Gmail address from directly within Fastmail. Plus…

But even then you have to trust FastMail not to lock you out. Sure it's a paid service so less likely and I'm sure their customer service is better. But it doesn't fix the root issue of being dependent on one party.

You can integrate with Thunderbird for local backup, and anyway Fastmail customer service is capable and responsive.

The critique on the earlier post is a little like saying it's still a problem that you need to trust your local supermarket for food. Which is true, but still much better than relying to avoid starvation exclusively on just-in-time shipments from an automated unstaffed ACME Growers Warehouse in Nowhere, USA.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#175

Post by wegs »

knbknb wrote: post #110

fellow chromebook users: If you had a Chromebook, and Google locked your account. Does the scenario described in the article imply that you can no longer can log into your own laptop?

A Chromebook isn't your own laptop. It's a lease from Google for 0-6 years, after which they effectively disable it. You can look up when your lease ends here:

https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en

If this scenario happens, you can think of it as Google terminating the lease early. No biggie.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#176

Post by arkitaip »

locusm wrote: post #52

If you need to migrate out of Google Apps or for that matter from any IMAP server I highly recommend IMAPSync. It has a number of features built in when having to go in/out of Google. https://imapsync.lamiral.info/

This is an amazing service that has saved my ass on several occasions. It's actually surprising how well and easy it works.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#177

Post by blunte »

The only Google service I still depend on is gdocs. I am not aware yet of any collaborative document/spreadsheet tool of similar quality. Even without the collaboration benefits, google docs or sheets is just so much faster than native Office apps on my otherwise fast Macbook Pro.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#178

Post by eythian »

tjoff wrote: post #47
Tor3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search and find old emails.. that's where gmail works. I guess that's why I keep using it. For work I use Thunderbird (the best of the bad alternatives), and search is horrible and extremely slow (and usually never find what I want to find). If I had something which was as easy as gmail for handling tens of thousands of emails I would switch.

People constantly bash on thunderbird search, when it is actually the opposite. Gmail will often fail on exact-match searches. Unbelievable frustrating and next to useless. Thunderbird is a bit clunky but does what you ask of it and has much better+simpler filtering options. Which makes sense, gmail is in the cloud so it can't perform intensive search queries because that would cost way to much. Thunderbird has a ded…

I was wondering the same thing, I have quite a few years of email in Thunderbird and I generally find the search to be very effective.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#179

Post by 411111111111111 »

roenxi wrote: post #168
_jjca wrote: post #60

This is genuinely scary. Photos, Yale locks, Fi, WiFi and Nest thermostat can all be poof gone because I made a silly YouTube comment? How is this not regulated? Google photos also 'helpfully' offers to delete your uploaded photos with 'some guarantee'!!! If this isn't an indication of a giant shitty monopoly that doesn't care about its customers at all, I don't what is. They have some AI ML fucking crap but can't fi…

I'm trying to not make this sound harsh; but you really don't need a government regulator to tell you that centralising all your data with Google, who are providing largely free services, is risky. It is like building a house on the edge of a cliff then falling off the cliff one day. It was always a real possibility. Being locked out of your stuff is quite a likely end of the story with Google.

I disagree actually.

The issue seems to me that it's a global ban.

If Google only locked you out of the functionality you seem to have violated somehow, it would still be a viable strategy to use their services.

Imagine losing the ability to comment or upload videos on YouTube because you wrote something offensive or published a video with copyrighted materials.

Potentially bad for YouTube creators, but definitely not dangerous for normal users which also use other services.

Reports like this were the reason why I removed almost all Google services from my life a few years ago, but I wouldn't have done it if the bans had been granular.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#180

Post by gsich »

TheChaplain wrote: post #156
mbeex wrote: post #151

Many commentators mention e-mail here: I'm a conservative oldtimer with my own domain (since the Ninetees) and associated e-mail, of course. The problem is that it happens to me more and more often that especially with my business contacts in larger companies my e-mail is filtered out / ends up in their junk folders / disappears for other, unspecified reasons. Simple public black lists do not show anything. I am more…

That is a hassle indeed, you need to set up SPF, DMARC and DKIM to at least have a chance to reach the inbox on gmail or outlook.

You also need a clean IP and PTR records.
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