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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

#221

Post by tzs »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #106
LoSboccacc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what happens tho to all your google authenticator linked stuff?

People need to stop calling this "google authenticator". It's called TOTP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_One-time_Password... It's an open standard, RFC 6238: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238 Calling it "google authenticator" is like saying "I'm going to GMail that document to you".

TOTP being an open standard doesn't really help, though, if the only place you have the key for a given site is Google's authenticator.

You need to actively take advantage of it being an open standard.

There are a few ways you can do this.

1. When you set up TOTP for a site, scan that QR code or enter the text version of the code in two different TOTP authenticator apps.

You might even consider scanning the code on different devices, too.

2. You can save the QR code or text version of the code, so that you can set up another authenticator app later if you lose access to the one(s) you scanned the code in originally.

Only consider this approach if you are confident you can protect the saves code, such as with strong encryption.

3. Many sites will give you one or more one-time codes that can be used to bypass TOTP. These are meant to allow you to get in so you can set up a new TOTP authenticator if you lose access to your current authenticator.

As with #2, you need to be confident that you can securely store these codes if you want to safely use this approach.

For #2, I recommend both saving both the QR code and the text version of the code. You can get command line tools that do TOTP, such as oathtool [1]. Having the text version of the code will make it easier to use such tools, which might come in handy if your phone gets lost or destroyed and you need to generate TOTP codes before you can get a new phone.

[1] https://www.nongnu.org/oath-toolkit/

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#222

Post by classics2 »

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…

Use your smtp server for inbound only. I much prefer to let people with deeper pockets to maintain the outbound mess. Your domain provider probably provides just such an email server for its customers.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#223

Post by TomSwirly »

When I was working at Google, I got locked out of an account, luckily one I had used for a band that wasn't active anymore.

I had barely used the account for months, and all of it was, "Thanks for your interest, here's our music, we don't play anymore."

Even working there, I wasn't able to get it turned back on or get any explanation as to what had happened.

I didn't really care. If it had been my prime email account, I would have cared.

I see this as theft. It's not like Google ever throws anything away, so if they cancel your account, they are literally stealing your data from you.

We can't force Google to give service to people they don't want to, but they should be transparent about it, and at the very, very least, there needs to be a way for you to retrieve all of your information if they close your account.

In a government of laws that tried to protect the average person, this would have been a given. Unfortunately, America has never had that.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#224

Post by hilbert42 »

cute_boi wrote: post #193

this is reason why I want to own everything. Silicon valley wants everything to be subscription based which many people are fine . But the day they lose the account they realized the problem created due to subscription model. Own More Rent Less should be encouraged.

As soon as the internet came along out came that damn let's rent everything mentality. The internet allowed vendors to lock users in to renal agreements as they're a much more profitable business models. Never mind the fact that the rental model doesn't guarantee you better software - in value for money terms, you'd be better off having stuck with traditional upgrades.

Remember, this model has been around for yonks. Go away on holidays and you've turned the power and gas off beforehand and you still have to pay a connection fee even though you've used nothing - and despite the fact that the wires and pipes to you house were fully amortized many decades ago. Same goes for phone and internet services.

Right, it's a ripoff, that's why I use open software whenever and wherever possible.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#226

Post by TomSwirly »

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.

It's not just harsh, it's wildly unreasonable.

What do you expect your average person to do? Set up their own mail provider?

A tiny number of companies set out to have an unbreakable joint monopoly over the Internet, and succeeded. Now you're blaming the average person for this - like the average person has the skills or the time to do anything about it.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#227

Post by TomSwirly »

_trampeltier wrote: post #211
411111111111111 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

Google is a private company. So they can choose there customers. If they don't want you, they are free to throw you out.

And steal your data? Bullshit.

The worst is that they are certainly keeping your data, because they never throw anything out, while they are preventing you from getting to it.

That is theft, pure and simple.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#228

Post by prepend »

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.

You need a government regulator to stop large companies from buying up lots of small companies and adding them to this risk pool.

I bought 3 Nest thermostats long before Google bought them. I wouldn’t have done so after the buyout.

If google bricks my thermostats because my kid does something dumb on YouTube (through the linked tv accounts) that will suck.

I suppose regulators could also prevent companies from bundling lockouts in that shutting down gmail for YouTube problems. Or shutting down Nest for gmail problems, etc.

The phone company can’t just randomly cut off service and ghost me. Regulators are the reason for that, as I’m sure they’d love to if they could.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#230

Post by rapsey »

harha wrote: post #210
wegs wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is pretty unique here. You can have a dedicated support team at Google with a multimillion dollar account, and still be wack-a-moled by Google's automated systems. The root issue is Google. This doesn't happen with most companies. This is specific to Google's culture, which treats customers as statistics. That comes out of how Google thought about search and ads, and doesn't work for anything else. The seconda…

To be fair, I don't think other providers like Microsoft are much better, but also note that the service is equally bad if you pay for ads or cloud. I'm generally against too much regulation, but given how important e-mails are (access to all sorts of accounts, important messages from clients, tax, etc.), this is a case where a certain service level needs to be mandatory, e.g., unlocking within few hours.

Every time I needed support for my office365 account I got it and it was resolved quickly and professionally. The account size is very small. Microsoft is in another universe compared to google.
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