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Updating our inactive account policies

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Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#91

Post by Wowfunhappy »

> if an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised. This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven't had two factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user. Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step-verification set up.

Ah yes, because as we all know, the best way to prevent a robbery is to preemptively burn down the whole building. Good luck stealing from me once all my belongings have been turned to ash!

---

To be a bit more charitable, it may true that in some cases, getting hacked is worse than just having your account deleted. I'd posit this is the case for a small minority of users, especially when the overall chance of being hacked is still far from 100%.

By the way, what about accounts that do have two-factor authentication enabled? Are those exempted?

If Google wants to delete inactive accounts, that's their prerogative, but don't hide behind some security argument.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#92

Post by rippercushions »

doodlebugging wrote: post #81
crazygringo wrote: post #72

I'm seeing a lot of criticism here in the comments, but what's the alternative for free accounts? If you're not using it, how long is Google (a for-profit company) supposed to hold onto your data for free? 100 years? 50 years? 15 years? 2 years seems pretty reasonable to me for something provided by a for-profit corporation. And as other reporting has noted, they're not deleting YouTube videos (makes sense, since whi…

>I see no reason why we should expect a company to keep providing storage for dormant accounts beyond 2 years though. Remember when Google said they would hold on to everything that their users did on their site forever? People were concerned about the privacy implications, etc. and how a part of their lives that maybe they didn't want anyone to know about would be out there, probably for sale, forever. Well as far a…

> Remember when Google said they would hold on to everything that their users did on their site forever?

Err, no, as a matter of fact I don't. Would you have a cite for this?

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#93

Post by ryandrake »

JohnFen wrote: post #85

> Starting later this year, if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least 2 years, we may delete the account and its contents This is great news! I have a couple of Google accounts that I couldn't delete because I lost the login credentials. I appreciate that Google will go ahead and do that for me.

Honestly, I wish more online services would do this.

My password manager has accumulated hundreds of accounts, many for services I haven't used for years. Probably half of them are "one off" accounts that I had to create because the stupid web site makes you create an account to do some basic thing (that shouldn't require an account). So here all these accounts are, sitting out there probably with my real name and maybe a few other bits of PII in them, just waiting to get p0wned. At one point I started going through them one by one logging in to look for a "Delete Account" button but surprisingly most of them offer no way to do so, or hide it well.

Even HN doesn't let you delete your account. I understand they will if you E-mail them, but even then, I don't think they will delete your content.

The web needs to be more ephemeral. It by default retains too much "forever and just because".

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#94

Post by crazygringo »

rurp wrote: post #27
sphars wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this article[0], it says that YouTube accounts with videos won't be deleted: > At the moment, Google is not planning to delete accounts with YouTube videos. (That would be tricky as some old abandoned clips might have historical relevance.) [0]: https://9to5google.com/2023/05/16/google-account-delete/

For now. It feels like a small leap to go from deleting a person's photos, documents, and emails to deleting their videos.

No it doesn't because public videos are designed for public usage. They have comments, are part of recommendations, playlists, and so forth.

Deleting private content and deleting public content are two entirely different things. There's zero reason why the former would imply the latter, and many reasons why it wouldn't.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#95

Post by panic »

crazygringo wrote: post #72

I'm seeing a lot of criticism here in the comments, but what's the alternative for free accounts? If you're not using it, how long is Google (a for-profit company) supposed to hold onto your data for free? 100 years? 50 years? 15 years? 2 years seems pretty reasonable to me for something provided by a for-profit corporation. And as other reporting has noted, they're not deleting YouTube videos (makes sense, since whi…

The issue is with the expectation they’ve set. “Store your important data with us, and we'll keep it safe” was the message many people got, even if they never actually promised to do that.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#96

Post by kerkeslager »

skissane wrote: post #89
kerkeslager wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make it sound like the only possible motivation a person might have to start such a business would be to exploit the incarcerated. Initial motivations are irrelevant. At some point, the motivations of a business reduce to "make money", and anyone or anything that gets in the way of that doesn't matter, including your ethics and initial motivations. There are lots of innocuous reasons why that happens. For examp…

What about the corporate structure of the Guardian newspaper in the UK - a for-profit business 100% owned by a not-for-profit? The not-for-profit isn’t allowed to pay dividends, so 100% of the profits are either reinvested in the business, invested in the not-for-profit’s endowment, or donated to charity I mentioned more details about it in another comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35967694 This has some…

I'm struggling to see what problem you think this solves, or why this is a response to what I posted.

Ask yourself: are you trying to imagine a way of helping inmates retain access to their Google services, or are you trying to shoehorn a business into the much more obvious solutions to that problem?

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#97

Post by SoftTalker »

renewiltord wrote: post #90
SoftTalker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an argument that this should be done with domain names as well. Right now, anyone can buy an expired domain, set up a wildcard email address, and read any email that's still being sent to addresses in that domain. Conversely, if you take the advice of some to set up a personal domain for your email, you are basically committing to a lifetime obligation. If you later change your mind and let that domain expire…

Interesting. Is there a 302 equivalent for mail so I can start people getting off a particular address?

No standard way to inform the sender of a new address, AFAIK.

You can set up a forward to your new email, and keep the old address active and forwarding messages until you're satisfied you've updated (or canceled) all the uses of your old address.

Then maybe start bouncing messages for a period of time before you finally shut down your domain.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#98

Post by gessha »

skissane wrote: post #34
bombcar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just poor health, there's an entire subclass of Americans who don't have internet access for 2 years+ - most anyone in the prison system. Now as a secret unmentionable for any 2+ year sentence: lose access to all your google shit .

They can give their password to a trusted friend/family member, and have them log in once every few months to keep the account active. Yes, it’s a pain, what if they forget, etc, but it means a 2+ year sentence does not necessarily entail losing one’s account. Could someone start a subscription paid service for the incarcerated - “we keep your accounts alive while you are inside”? More broadly, could provide other “m…

How about we stop monetizing people’s misery and start treating them like humans? People get drunk on money and start trying to monetize every single interaction in life.

People make mistakes, go down the wrong path and go to jail if their wrongs are bad enough. That doesn’t mean they should have even more of a mine stripped road back to society.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#99

Post by MrDresden »

doodlebugging wrote: post #81
crazygringo wrote: post #72

I'm seeing a lot of criticism here in the comments, but what's the alternative for free accounts? If you're not using it, how long is Google (a for-profit company) supposed to hold onto your data for free? 100 years? 50 years? 15 years? 2 years seems pretty reasonable to me for something provided by a for-profit corporation. And as other reporting has noted, they're not deleting YouTube videos (makes sense, since whi…

>I see no reason why we should expect a company to keep providing storage for dormant accounts beyond 2 years though. Remember when Google said they would hold on to everything that their users did on their site forever? People were concerned about the privacy implications, etc. and how a part of their lives that maybe they didn't want anyone to know about would be out there, probably for sale, forever. Well as far a…

What kind of weird entitlement is this?

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#100

Post by jfoutz »

rippercushions wrote: post #92
doodlebugging wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I see no reason why we should expect a company to keep providing storage for dormant accounts beyond 2 years though. Remember when Google said they would hold on to everything that their users did on their site forever? People were concerned about the privacy implications, etc. and how a part of their lives that maybe they didn't want anyone to know about would be out there, probably for sale, forever. Well as far a…

> Remember when Google said they would hold on to everything that their users did on their site forever? Err, no, as a matter of fact I don't. Would you have a cite for this?

it's probably a wishful interpretation from the initial coverage, https://slashdot.org/story/04/04/01/0038200/googles-gmail-to... "hey want to offer their searching capabilities so that users can search through their entire set of e-mail, I guess forever. "

https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/04/google-gets-message... "Storage: Google believes people should be able to hold onto their mail forever. That’s why Gmail comes with 1,000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of free storage – more than 100 times what most other free webmail services offer."

(at the time, I thought it meant forever, silly me)

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