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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

#431

Post by jabroni_salad »

lordnacho wrote: post #384
_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…

This raises a question. If you're well marinated in Google services, like me, what do you do? Is there a comprehensive, simple, and easy way to port everything? Perhaps there's some authoritative site about what exactly you need to do?

You can export a lot of your content at takeout.google.com. Debundling these into other services is the main challenge, you have to shop around.

If nothing else you should set up your own email address, even if it is just a simple forward to your gmail. Google blocking access to your mailbox would be pretty bad, having control of your MX record gives you an out.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#432

Post by wolco2 »

VLM wrote: post #377
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…

> The issue seems to me that it's a global ban. Global bans "seem" to be new. I've read many stories of shell scripts randomly permanently banning android developers for life from their platform, but those stories always involved being banned from the play console and so forth, not being banned from search / maps / gmail / youtube / etc. It seems to be news that if you tell people in public youtube comments that you…

Google+ banned accounts globally if they discovered a fake name. Fun way to roll out a facebook killer. Kind of killed Google+ but that's a story for another day.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#433

Post by dheera »

_imba_ wrote: post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

I once created a location-based file sharing web app [0] to simplify sharing non-sensitive content with people nearby, e.g. sharing slides for a public presentation with a room full of people. Anyone nearby just had to go to http://quack.space -- no funny long URLs.

I never monetized it, but it got quite a few users and I definitely could have started a path to monetization. I had ideas, such as incorporating location-based ads.

Unfortunately Chrome decided at one point it was malware for some reason. I have no idea why. On the backend I had a 1-hour time limit on files and didn't store either files or location data beyond that. Chrome would throw up a malware warning whenever someone visited the page, and that was pretty much the end of the project.

It's frustrating that they play gatekeepers to the internet, and they don't even have a fair arbitration process. They should have at least made efforts to contact the owner of the website. This should be downright illegal.

[0] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/quack-space

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#434

Post by a3n »

fullstop wrote: post #308
_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 got gmail accounts for my kids after they were born. My youngest, 12, attempted to sign in from a Windows PC in our house and was told that they could not verify that it was her. Keep in mind, this is the same public IP address that we've had for ages. I am the recovery contact for the account since she is a minor, and have filled out the forms several times now, even giving the exact date and the "verification cod…

The only thing worse than hanging your identity on @gmail.com is @comcast and the like.

If you can, your own domain backed by a fastmail or a proton is the sweet spot of easy and flexible, or at least an @fastmail, @proton or similar. With payment comes the possibility of human support, which I have received easily from fastmail.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#435

Post by psykus »

I'm starting to wonder if the random Google account lockouts are caused by account hacks, where the account proceeds to be used by spammers and other nefarious people. Has anyone here that has been randomly locked out of their Google account like this been using 2FA?

It still sucks that Google has no real appeal process for this.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#436

Post by a3n »

caseysoftware wrote: post #428
_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…

> How is this not regulated? Cue the "businesses can choose who they do business with!" and "if you don't like it, build your own!" people. We signed up for many of those things individually and they've connected them more and more. Now we have a single point of failure that can take down everything across all your sytems. And it's not just those. Don't forget about Google Voice, Android, and every service where you…

How novel, for the "product" to demand rights and regulation. :-(

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#437

Post by Covzire »

_imba_ wrote: post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

I wonder how vulnerable Google's practices are to corruption. Say you've got your new business on the up swing and one of your competitors has a friend at Google who they offer a bribe to shut down your entire business, at least for a few weeks under dubious or non existent reasons.

Seems like an extremely easy way to make copious amounts of shady cash if you've got that magic ban button at Google.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#438

Post by driverdan »

stareatgoats wrote: post #188

It should be illegal. Companies that provide public utility type services should be obliged to follow certain laws, one of them being that they are not allowed to shut people out from their own data. They could provide the service as read-only on alleged breach of terms (allowing the user to migrate) for example. Shutting them out completely: just no.

> Companies that provide public utility type services

The only "public utility type services" Google provides is phone service through Fi. Nothing else counts as a utility. Even then I'm not sure if being an MVNO counts.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#439

Post by xdavidliu »

Anarch157a wrote: post #334

Everyone saying "I would lose all my e-mail" apparently doesn't know about fetchmail, getmail or even Thunderbird. Just download your mail using IMAP or POP3 and archive it locally. I recently deleted my last Gmail account (that I had since 2001). Before doing it, I tried Google's Checkout to get the data, but it was adking me for "verification" (i.e. more info about me) to finish the download. I just fired up Thunde…

you had a gmail account since 2001?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#440

Post by chkaloon »

After a bit of a scare a few weeks ago, I've started doing regular Google Takeout data downloads of email in addition to my normal backup procedures. I also verify that I can load the resulting mbox files into Thunderbird or another client.

I don't use Google Photos, I have my own local storage, backed up in triplicate by three different processes.

Finally, I'm a heavy user of Google Drive, but that is synced locally on several machines, and backed up in triplicate using the same processes as the photos.

Never rely solely on a 3rd party for your critical data. Always have an exit plan. And test it regularly.

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