My Google Workspace account suspension • Hacker News Board

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#211

Post by HumanOstrich » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:03 AM UTC

dismalaf wrote: post #199

tartoran wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still worth it, even without free months or whatever Until you go of the rails of their processes and have your account closed with no recourse.

Sometimes I worry about this but everytime I see an example of it I feel better (because most examples involve the person doing weird things).

> most examples involve the person doing weird things

That doesn't make any sense. There are still plenty of people who are not doing weird things and getting screwed over.

Google fanboys have always fallen for their "don't be evil" nonsense, and it looks like they still are even after it was changed.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#212

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:23 AM UTC

nhuser2221 wrote: post #160

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.

[deleted]

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#213

Post by antisol » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 8:08 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #69

It's been [0] days since the last "Cloud provider banned me and I lost everything" article. Everyone who depends on the good graces of a cloud provider for something (not just Google, but Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, whatever) needs to at the very least, take a moment, and figure out what their plan is when they are suddenly banned and locked out permanently, without any way to contact the company. Does life just go on,…

Yeah. And every time I see a new "cloud provider banned me and I lost everything" article (i.e: every few days), I always just want to ask the same question(s):

"I'm sure it's very sad that you've lost all your [email|calendar|photos|whatever]... but, were you, a person who has chosen to rely on a service provided by a cloud provider with a track record which goes back well over 15 years of locking people out of their accounts with no recourse for the user, not aware that said provider has a track record of doing so, in some cases without even giving an explanation why?

Were you not aware that the service you were relying on them for was critically important to you? Or were you unaware that the provider of this service has the capability to completely disable the service you're relying on with the simple flip of a switch?

I'm fascinated by this decision you've made - could you please explain the thought process by which you chose to use this service which you have no control over for critical things?"

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#214

Post by Ferret7446 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 8:20 AM UTC

827a wrote: post #196

Ferret7446 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My favorite bit of Googleism: Go to any site you sign in with Google SSO and watch the URLs in the eight redirects it has to do before it signs you in. You'll see a "youtube.com" in there. Even on a Workspace account. Youtube.com is a load-bearing website in their core auth flows. I assume that's just because they need to set a cookie on the YouTube domain in case you visit YouTube later on the workspace account, a…

If the youtube.com 302 failed to itself 302 back to the next destination; because the site is down; would that not be load bearing?

You do not hit YouTube directly. You hit Google's frontend server which then does internal routing. Likely it would be able to route around it. Or rather, the auth part of YouTube is not the same as all of the other parts of YouTube. For big tech companies like Google, a website is not one single binary that serves requests, but a ton of services handling different things (and some of those services being caching so it doesn't show things down as you might think). It is highly unlikely that the main services comprising YouTube as a video streaming site would bring down Google auth

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#215

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

profsummergig wrote: post #142

Evidlo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone have an idea whether it would be practical to go to small claims court? I'm curious if this is a path consumers can take if a corporation breaks an agreement?

You'd have to go in the same jurisdiction as they're incorporated. I think (IANAL).

That's most likely Ireland for UK customers, which has a similar small claims court system.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#216

Post by nektro » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 9:06 AM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #172

shakna wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the other articles on HN's front page right now, is that Germany's implementation of eIDAS will require a Google or Apple account.

I genuinely feel like there is something happening where hackernews articles come in bunch/reference-to-each-other :] So one of the comments on one hackernews post on front-page almost somehow always refer to something within a hackernews post on the same front-page. I have seen this witnessed too many times that it might be time to name this phenomenon.

people see one article reach the front page and it reminds them of another article and they post that one too. cycle repeats.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#217

Post by ThePowerOfFuet » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 9:21 AM UTC

>Update 1 - I know I can simply change the MX record to someone else but It has its own challenges.

>Update 2 - Sadly, its 2 PM in the UK and I will miss the meeting that I had scheduled via Google Meet because emails are not working

Srsly?

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#218

Post by Terr_ » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 9:26 AM UTC

antisol wrote: post #213

ryandrake wrote: post #69

It's been [0] days since the last "Cloud provider banned me and I lost everything" article. Everyone who depends on the good graces of a cloud provider for something (not just Google, but Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, whatever) needs to at the very least, take a moment, and figure out what their plan is when they are suddenly banned and locked out permanently, without any way to contact the company. Does life just go on,…

Yeah. And every time I see a new "cloud provider banned me and I lost everything" article (i.e: every few days), I always just want to ask the same question(s): "I'm sure it's very sad that you've lost all your [email|calendar|photos|whatever]... but, were you, a person who has chosen to rely on a service provided by a cloud provider with a track record which goes back well over 15 years of locking people out of thei…

Come now, are those really the rhetorical questions you'd fling at your Aunt Tillie panicking on the phone, because she can't email anybody or renew her important drug prescriptions or whatever?

Most people expect better because in most other walks of life it is better with some kind of plausible appeal route, and the deficiencies we're discussing don't really get publicized. These service-outcomes are the outliers in need of repair, not the consumers.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#219

Post by mjlee » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 10:00 AM UTC

locao wrote: post #173

mjlee wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It depends on what you call "non-trivial". I found answers on how to circumvent dumb macos bugs on Apple forums at least twice in the last 6 months. One related to displays, I was about to return a new USB-C monitor which wouldn't turn on. A silly issue, but it's a bug on my book, I wouldn't find the answer on the docs.

That counts! I suppose I’m lucky enough to know of more reliable resources (macadmins.org Slack is an excellent community), and so I turn to them after reading more than a couple of threads on the Apple Support Community. Perhaps it has improved or I never dig deep enough.

I’d be at a complete loss for any obscure Windows issue though.

Re: My Google Workspace account suspension

#220

Post by herewulf » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 10:38 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #77

If you wanted to intentionally trigger every account abuse system at Google, follow this guy's script.

Recently I cleaned up a SMB client's Workspace users after archiving their data (former employee accounts that had been languishing). In the space of a day or two I did the following for half the ~20 total accounts:

  - Moved to no 2FA sub-organization
  - Reset password
  - Disabled security check for ten minutes
  - Logged in as the user in a fresh browser profile
  - Exported data with Takeout
  - Deleted the account in the admin console

I fully expected to hit some kind of roadblock or delay or for alarm bells to go off for the other admins, but nope, I literally "absconded" with hundreds of gigabytes of data and nuked half the org in short order.

There is a Workspace Admin option to export users' data but it warns of an automatic 48 hour delay to let "other admins take action" if something is amiss. The client wanted the task done before getting hit with the full monthly license fees again so I had to go the manual route.

Granted, out of paranoia, I was using the client's office VPN as my traffic egress so maybe that helped.