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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

#241

Post by howlgarnish »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #216
g_p wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting point here actually - number porting was viewed to be core to a telecoms service operator. They have to provide it free of charge as a cost of doing business. Perhaps we need similar for email forwarding - it's clear that the major email platforms (Google, Microsoft) can already handle mail that is simply deferred to another mail server (see partial cloud email transitions). Perhaps we need the same fo…

It's easy to forward from gmail to any address if you want that.

Does that continue to work if you get locked out though?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#242

Post by yowlingcat »

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.

Yeah that's just not correct. If you're paying Microsoft for an Office subscription, they will offer you support because that's your gateway into becoming a lucrative business whale of a customer. It's been that way for decades.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#243

Post by cm2187 »

_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…

If you are a “customer”. How many people pay for google services? I know it’s kind of jerky but I still agree that if you aren’t paying for the service, you have no leg to complain about it.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#244

Post by hilbert42 »

wegs wrote: post #174
Symbiote wrote: post #22

The second person lives in Britain. I wonder if he tried submitting a GDPR request, and if Google has any obligation to keep the data, or if they delete it immediately?

I wonder how Brexit fits into EU regulations.

It probably won't if Big Tech gets its way with government. Remember, GDPR isn't in their best interests.

Brexit allows them to start again on that side of the Atlantic, albeit on a smaller scale.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#245

Post by exo762 »

cm2187 wrote: post #243
_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…

If you are a “customer”. How many people pay for google services? I know it’s kind of jerky but I still agree that if you aren’t paying for the service, you have no leg to complain about it.

The thing is - google makes more per user than users are willing to pay for google services. Also, their totaling vertical integration makes things hard to disentangle. If Google were to introduce paying subscription tomorrow (just shooting, 60 USD per month), what what I would be paying? Youtube? Search? Everything? What if I were willing to drop youtube and just pay for search?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#246

Post by donny2018 »

hilbert42 wrote: post #198
donny2018 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you are even on Office 365 Home account, you actually can interact with human support in case of issues.

Why should you ever need to? MS Office should be so terribly mature by now that you should never need to. By now, it ought to be faultless. Surely, you don't still have problems with it. Do you?

It was a minor issue with Outlook.com web mail a few years ago. I contacted support, they asked to see the problem through remote access. My problem was escalated and fixed. Maybe their spam filter is not as good as Gmail, but customer support is another league.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#247

Post by koonsolo »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #102
koonsolo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me explain what happens when my house burns down, taking along all my hardware: - I buy another laptop and install Linux. - I connect my Google, Dropbox (which contains google backups) and Github, and they contain all data I own. - I buy a new smartphone and connect it to Google Simple as that. And my house doesn't need to burn down for this, when I buy a new laptop or smartphone I do the same. Plus, all my email…

> Let me explain what happens when my house burns down Does your house burn down that often? Frankly, getting deplatformmed is a much higher-probability event. > and they contain all data I own. No, they contain all data you think you own.

> No, they contain all data you think you own.

I created that data, so it's mine by law. Or it is data that was never mine in the first place. Plus, my google data is stored in 3 places: Google, Dropbox and local system. If 2 of them fail, I still have the other.

As to who can access that data, well, that's a question for everybody isn't it? If I would run my own server on the internet that would also be the same question.

So yes, I'm pretty sure it's MY data. I'm also protected by EU laws.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#248

Post by beowulfey »

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.

Google is huge and they run a vast portion of the internet now. If they were to suddenly decide that all FastMail accounts should go to spam tomorrow, any users of FastMail would be SoL—they would be unable to communicate with a huge majority of the internet.

They could decide to randomly throw every 5th email that is not a gmail into spam and blame it on other providers having low reliability. Make it random enough to gently encourage you to get a gmail account again.

These are extreme examples, but Google could easily do these kinds of things and there is nothing any of us could do whether we use Gmail or not; it will affect us because they control so much.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#249

Post by afandian »

blunte wrote: post #158
kioleanu wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just connect your Google account in the Fastmail settings and they set everything automatically

I wonder how long this will last until Google finds a way to prevent the migration out...

All the better to get out while you still can!
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