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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

#561

Post by tetraodonpuffer »

Mikho wrote: post #362

Happened to me too after 10 years of Gmail use. Exactly the same story. No explanation. As I remember at that time I checked Google servers data as to uptime—the data was public, not sure about now—and it appeared that there was a serious problem with servers right before I was blocked. It looked like Google just completely lost data in some server cluster. Anyway, there was no way to get any response from Google or…

It would be nice if in these cases the “lock” allowed read only (as in, can still receive email, just not send it) gmail access so one could at least move whatever account they were using gmail as contact for. I think it should not be that hard for google to add this and would help with a lot of cases where losing gmail access means severe disruption to one’s life.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#562

Post by yladiz »

hedora wrote: post #491
a3n wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have my email going to my own domain, but can’t figure out how to ground it out in anything other than someone else’s tld. So, now I’m in a situation where, if my gmail account gets banned, and the DNS provider decides to reset my password, then I’m permanently locked out of everything. I could point my DNS provider at my “real” email address, but that’s even worse, since needing to update the MX record could lock…

I would probably recommend two things: 1. Move away from Gmail as soon as possible, to a service like Fastmail or Proton Mail; 2. Have an email from that provider as the “last resort”, i.e. hedora@fastmail.com, while using your domain name based emails for most other things.

This doesn’t solve the “everything is in one basket” issue, but you don’t hear stories of these email providers just “closing” an account and causing immense trouble for the person, at least in part because they have actual support.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#564

Post by politician »

robomartin wrote: post #530
_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…

This, I think, is one of the most important things legislators need to look at going forward as they dig into the practices of companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. The massive paradigm shift that occurred once these companies grabbed prominence in commerce is to go from a system where humans interacted with humans in business-to-business commerce to solve problems to a cold, hard, heartless and decidedly dan…

Another way of saying it is that such businesses have become governments unto themselves. Your account is your passport.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#565

Post by kube-system »

syshum wrote: post #529
caseysoftware wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Business should be allowed to choose who they do business with, they already choose to do business with these people. The problem here is they want to unilaterally have the power to termination the business relationship This is a problem with one sided none negotiable terms of service being considered valid contracts under the law They should not be. We need to change data ownership laws, and force companies to do ve…

> This is a problem with one sided none negotiable terms of service being considered valid contracts under the law

Are they even valid contracts now? Many gmail accounts are missing consideration or capacity -- which are required elements of a valid contract.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#566

Post by acd10j »

snazz wrote: post #351
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 can also schedule Google Takeout, which gives you a nice .zip or .tgz with mbox files, in addition to all of your other Google information. I have it set to deliver one of these backups every two months automatically.

How would you do google checkout once they have banned your account with no access ? Even if you have done it majority of people suffering from this fate will not have google checkout data or access to it !

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#567

Post by kube-system »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #513
cm2187 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why should people have to pay money for a product to expect fair treatment? Is an exchange of services without money not subject to rules and regulations? Google chooses not to charge people because they've found it more beneficial to offer many of them for free. It's a model many tech companies have followed to great success. That doesn't mean they should have free reign to do whatever they please.

> Is an exchange of services without money not subject to rules and regulations?

A contract without consideration is not a valid contract. There are a few laws in some places that require companies to provide service outside of a contractual service agreement, but those are typically limited to public utilities, emergency services, etc.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#568

Post by anonymousab »

surajrmal wrote: post #495
jabroni_salad wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might be useful to note that in the event that google does ban your account, you can still use the takeout service to retrieve your data.

You can lose access to takeout as well. Some users retain access, but for some of them, takeout will mysteriously never complete.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#569

Post by anonymousab »

feduphn wrote: post #409
indigochill wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is this not regulated? It doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be). Just use an email provider that respects you as a customer and don't put all your eggs into one corporate basket (especially not one that treats you as nothing more than data cattle). Horror stories like this one will, over time, educate people that this behavior pattern is dangerous. IMO self-hosting is the ideal because that aligns responsibilit…

This victim-blaming needs to stop before the tech industry backlash hits. This is exactly why we need regulation. I swear, if "just go somewhere else" were good advice (and it's not), we wouldn't be having this conversation. How many years has it been, though, that Google and other consumer-ignorant companies have been able to get away with this, helped along by people who tell victims to just "go somewhere else"? No…

I think it is reasonable to have the position that Google is big and powerful enough that it cannot and will not be regulated by, say, the US government. Or rather, that it has enough permanent influence such that any regulations will be watered down to be de-facto meaningless, or in most cases, strategically beneficial to Google themselves (substitute chosen megacorp here).

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#570

Post by boringg »

vorpalhex wrote: post #461
boringg wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sense that this was related to the content of OP's blog. The fact that he was concerned that he would get blocked from gmail and facebook sounds like a level of paranoia, from my perspective, related to the content of the site that's why they didn't push farther. I do see how if you were naturally a paranoid individually you might be concerned about losing those connections, though seems high unlikely they…

That seems like a bad faith assumption without more evidence. If your gmail is your main way of interacting with the web then any user is going to be a bit paranoid about protecting it even when doing nothing bad or wrong. Likewise just having content Google deems unacceptable doesn't mean you aren't owed an explanation of the policy. "Hey, sorry, we've decided that blogs on breast feeding violate our policies on con…

Maybe it is a bad faith assumption on my part and I don't disagree with you that silence on the end of Google isn't right and I am in no way a large tech company booster.

That said, my point is that there is likely something specific to the OP blog that is the reason for Google turning off the ad dollars rather than the counter argument: some arbitrary nefarious business decision by a large corporation to the shut down the owner's blog revenue source to the point that OP is concerned that they will be removed from the platform as a result.

I get the sense that the content is missing part to the story.

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