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Google banned me from Google Voice

dannyguo.com

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Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#71

Post by zippergz »

jtbayly wrote: post #13

He should be more mad, in my opinion. It’s ludicrous that Google can simply kill your phone number and nobody bats an eye. It’s such a fundamental part of life at this point. At the minimum, users should get a “We are no longer willing to provide you service. You have two weeks before service will end. Please switch your number to another provider if you want to keep it.” Other than non-payment, are there other phone…

Similar problem with email addresses. Tons of stuff relies on it, and providers can shut it off at will. Which is why I use my own domain - at least I can move it to another provider if I get shut down. But that has its own limitations and is not reasonable to expect a normal person to deal with.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#72

Post by mdaniel »

oreoftw wrote: post #4

The author should consider himself lucky. Just one google service has been suspended. I got my account banned for no reason and lost access to more than 10 years worth of emails, documents, single sign ons to different apps, etc. Only invoking GDPR and the ownership of a domain name allowed me to regain access and restore email service. Without GDPR I would've got nothing at all.

Every one of these threads serves as my bi-annual[1] reminder to invoke the Takeout https://takeout.google.com/> for fear that some AI process goes rogue and nukes my account

1: I just noticed that Takeout now offers a scheduled export option, including cloud-to-cloud transfers, so I am definitely going to turn that on

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#73

Post by miloignis »

kuczmama wrote: post #10

I have been using Google voice for 10+ years, and it's always been something that concerns me. I've been worried about Google either banning me or dropping the service. Does anyone know of a good alternative, I'm happy to pay for something but the main thing is it needs to be able to work from the browser like Google voice.

I've been playing around with https://jmp.chat/ (SMS and Voice over XMPP) and might make the switch for my main number soon.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#74

Post by jtbayly »

zippergz wrote: post #71
jtbayly wrote: post #13

He should be more mad, in my opinion. It’s ludicrous that Google can simply kill your phone number and nobody bats an eye. It’s such a fundamental part of life at this point. At the minimum, users should get a “We are no longer willing to provide you service. You have two weeks before service will end. Please switch your number to another provider if you want to keep it.” Other than non-payment, are there other phone…

Similar problem with email addresses. Tons of stuff relies on it, and providers can shut it off at will. Which is why I use my own domain - at least I can move it to another provider if I get shut down. But that has its own limitations and is not reasonable to expect a normal person to deal with.

Agreed. I got my own domain and moved off gmail because of this, but I can’t afford the time to help support everybody else doing that. (I do encourage them to at least move to a paid provider, though.)

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#75

Post by runjake »

jtbayly wrote: post #63
runjake wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s actually not Google’s phone number IANAL, but according to the Reddit post mentioned in this thread, the number isn't yours: " Consumer Google Voice is not a FCC-regulated Local Exchange Carrier, and you have no explicit nor implied rights to the indefinite use of Google Voice telephone numbers. " "If you want to port the number out of the suspended service, you can file a FCC Consumer Complaint, asking for th…

That’s interesting. Very unclear to me whether it says what you think it says. The emphasis seems to be on Google Voice service, not the number itself. I would expect the FCC complaint asking for number porting to go nowhere if Google didn’t believe they were required to release the number for porting.

Yeah, like I said, I'm not a lawyer, but I zeroed in on "you have no explicit nor implied rights to the indefinite use of Google Voice telephone numbers" in particular, for intent.

This is just a Reddit post and not a legal document, but the post is effectively the crowdsourced findings from a heck of a lot of Google's victims who have tried a number of different tactics.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#77

Post by oreoftw »

rmonvfer wrote: post #53
oreoftw wrote: post #4

The author should consider himself lucky. Just one google service has been suspended. I got my account banned for no reason and lost access to more than 10 years worth of emails, documents, single sign ons to different apps, etc. Only invoking GDPR and the ownership of a domain name allowed me to regain access and restore email service. Without GDPR I would've got nothing at all.

Could you provide a little bit of detail about how you did that? Just in case…

Find google data protection officer email. State your request to get the data with a mention of escalation to the Irish Data Protection Officer if no action is taken within a reasonable timeframe.

This has magically unbanned me in less than two days. In contrast to two months of tweeting, emailing support, nagging my google eng friends and even support folks via linkedin.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#78

Post by ToucanLoucan »

BadHumans wrote: post #6
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm the first to dogpile on the Democrats in a lot of areas but I feel they have done very well with the FTC in the past 4 years and it is a shame they did not do a good job at highlighting their accomplishments. This short-lived era of attempting to hold corporations accountable is likely done though now that Republicans are in complete control.

I'm well aware of it, but if it can be undone entirely on the first day of the next admin, then it's not progress, it's band-aids and we've had too damn many band-aids from the Democrats for decades. Are band-aids good? Sure. Are they a replacement for a cast and splint? No.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#79

Post by oreoftw »

wetpaws wrote: post #5
oreoftw wrote: post #4

The author should consider himself lucky. Just one google service has been suspended. I got my account banned for no reason and lost access to more than 10 years worth of emails, documents, single sign ons to different apps, etc. Only invoking GDPR and the ownership of a domain name allowed me to regain access and restore email service. Without GDPR I would've got nothing at all.

Could you please share how did GDPR help in this case?

Invoking the right to retrieve and correct information helped me to get Google’s attention to my case and unban me.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#80

Post by BadHumans »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #78
BadHumans wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the first to dogpile on the Democrats in a lot of areas but I feel they have done very well with the FTC in the past 4 years and it is a shame they did not do a good job at highlighting their accomplishments. This short-lived era of attempting to hold corporations accountable is likely done though now that Republicans are in complete control.

I'm well aware of it, but if it can be undone entirely on the first day of the next admin, then it's not progress, it's band-aids and we've had too damn many band-aids from the Democrats for decades. Are band-aids good? Sure. Are they a replacement for a cast and splint? No.

You can get a cast off tomorrow and I can break your arm again same day so I'm not sure what your analogy is trying to say about longevity.
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