81–90 of 152 posts
Years ago I lost an entire Yahoo! account with paid hosting for my side gig at the time along with years emails because I apparently broke their ToS by asking a question deemed inappropriate on Yahoo! Answers.
Was the number used to sign up for, and receive communications from credit card companies? Is the ban related to signing up for +100 cards? https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/my-credit-and-debit-card-colle...
That's a good hypothesis! But I have a strong preference for email over SMS for communication from companies, so I receive almost no texts from credit card companies. It's pretty much limited to an occasional authentication code for logging in (since TOTP-based two-factor is so unfortunately rare).
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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.)
These cases are super rare though, Google users getting rekt are much more frequent, that's for sure!
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…
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It’s actually not Google’s phone number, as evidenced by the fact that he could have gone to the FCC and gotten it back if Google refused to release it to him. Edited to add: Also, it’s not true that phone numbers are only so important because of identity verification. That is one reason, but solving that doesn’t let my children’s school call me if Google shuts my number down, just to give one example. Edited to add…
> 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…
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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.)
While rare, there have been cases of people losing their paid-for domains too - because a company wanted them and had a lawyer convince the registrar that it should really be theirs (obviously exaggerating), or because the registrar made an error and accidentally put it back on the market etc. These cases are super rare though, Google users getting rekt are much more frequent, that's for sure!
While people like to scream and lose their mind about who the president is and what they're blathering on about today it's this situation that I never see any politician talk about in a meaningful way and I never see get attention. This situation impacts the average person and has the potential to impact the average person more than who the president is at any given time. Because at least with governmental politics t…
I grew up before number portability. Let me tell you that phone number portability is among the greatest visible government mandated boons in my lifetime (though I suspect there many other less visible ones). The fact that the user in question in this post was able to reassign his phone number at all is basically a modern anti-corporate miracle.
I don't really mean to detract from your point. Certainly much more could and should be done. But we have to acknowledge that, miraculously, more than nothing has already been done.
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.
jmp.chat doesn't really fill me with confidence, but it might be an option in an emergency.
If they terminated my voice, I would be very much up a creek, and something I've considered as google tends to graveyard services enough and I can't imagine it is still high on anyone's give a shit list there.
I'd be curious if anyone else uses a like methodology with another service out there today. I've looked for alternatives over the years, and find really none for my needs for everything Google Voice provides and the android integration I use.
Slightly OT, but since it was mentioned in the article, only slightly: > A silver lining is that with the new line, I was able to get a new iPhone 15 for almost free after bill credits. No, you just got free financing on the phone. If you compare their contract plan rates to their prepaid plan rates, you're paying more over the course of your contract for the same plan.