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 misrepresenting ourselves or a product with no details on what we did wrong. We went through the T&C's in some detail and we think we did everything they asked, and we have no idea what we didn't do well enough. We also checked in with every single client and we had near perfect scores on trust pilot, I can't recall a single incident with a client.
We've been contacting Google almost daily but almost never been able to find a human to talk to. Through unofficial channels we've found a few people in Goolge but whenever they gave us any advice on what to do it's always "off the record" or "you didn't hear it from me". Something is very rotten.
There are always replies on here about not betting your entire business on Google. Google shopping gives 2 orders of mag better conversion than any other channel we tried. For search-to-buy there really just aren't any alternatives and if Google decides to lock you out your business is basically dead. Lucky for us it was a side hustle. Here in Africa e-bay and Amazon aren't options.
More scary, since then we've found TONS of businesses in our country who have suffered the same fate in the last month, and many are well-established, popular businesses now facing existential threat.
It's incredibly scary that Google's moderation bots can be a single point of failure for a business employing 20+ people.
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 figure basic user trust because that won't get anyone promoted nor grow some Director-level person's headcount.
Large promo-manufacturing teams that casually handle all your data. Pray to God that some L4 didn't get promoted doing some impactful work because they sure ain't gonna do maintenance work protecting your shit. Their motivations are not users, product nor team: manipulate some metrics to get promoted and move out. Horrible.
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 at least my gmail address reactivated even with data lost for me to be able to access other services that I used the email to access. I think it was Google's fault. The company lost data, but didn't want to admit it and blamed me for breaking some policy without any further details to explain absence of access to my data.
Since then I use my own domain for email, could easily switch email provider while keeping the address in case there is a problem, and I'd still control access via the email to other services. Also I never rely on Google as to files, photos, or videos. I mean yeah I use Google, YouTube etc., but everything is first of all backed up on MS OneDrive. Even on my Android phone there is automatic upload of all new photos to OneDrive. Google Photos is more like for easy viewing, sharing and presentation. Not backup. Not to mention that MS Office + OneDrive storage subscription provides much more value that Google G Suite.
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.
Many commentators mention e-mail here: I'm a conservative oldtimer with my own domain (since the Ninetees) and associated e-mail, of course.
The problem is that it happens to me more and more often that especially with my business contacts in larger companies my e-mail is filtered out / ends up in their junk folders / disappears for other, unspecified reasons. Simple public black lists do not show anything. I am more the developer and not the infrastructure type, but the company policies seem to contain more and more features of downgrading private domains. And in my opinion this is supported by some kind of dirty game of global IT players at technical and other levels.
I have been managing my own mail server for 6 years now, and enabling and configuring all the mail security features (DKIM, SPF, etc), and keeping up with them, is indeed the most difficult part. I regularly check my mail server against tools like this: https://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx. If you just do one thing wrong, you will end up on some black list from which it is very difficult to get off. So far, I did not have any major problems, but after the initial default installation of Postfix in 2014, all my test mails to Google Mail went straight to Junk.
My server is at Hetzner, and there are some blacklists which block Hetzner IPs by default. You have to contact them, explain that your server is not a spam server, and hope to get whitelisted. In my case, it worked. T-Online in Germany also blocked my IP as well, but they were amazingly quick to whitelist it after I send them an email. They apologized and explained that they also block mail from Hetzner IPs by default.
The bias against major player-hosted email was probably rooted in spam prevention, but there's little doubt in my mind that they (the few big players) recognize the value of attempting to force users to use their service, and then to trap them.
This is something that should be regulated — E-mail being the equivalent of a public utility, large providers should not be able to just refuse it or hide it in junk folders.
Yes, I know spam is a problem, but it's a solvable problem, especially with a small percentage of those providers' revenue.
Use your smtp server for inbound only. I much prefer to let people with deeper pockets to maintain the outbound mess. Your domain provider probably provides just such an email server for its customers.
Tip: Get your own domain from a non-google registrar, then connect to Gmail if you prefer. If you ever are locked out, you can just move the address to another email-provider.
Another trick is to use always have forwarding enabled in Gmail, to Outlook.com or another provider. All email will be forwarded despite your account being locked, so you will not miss out on important info.
And use Google Takeout for backing up your data, at least once a year.
I've used a custom domain + gmail for the last decade. Earier this year I got sufficiently spooked and decided to switch email.
The migration to fastmail.fm , including a decade of old mail messages, was flawless (if slow, but it's a lot of data!). I highly recommend this route.
The funny (er, scary) thing is I was actually thinking of switching to Google registrar for my domain after namecheap messed up their CNAME records and dropped a few days of emails (I already use GSuite). Google reliability, the promise of fair pricing and a free WHOIS protection was very attractive to me.
After this, fuck that.
Google has so many services that you could lead a reasonably diverse online life without going to another provider, without the accountability that typically comes with that sort of power. They really need to be checked.
Would forwarding continue to work if your account is disabled or terminated? That doesn't seem likely?
I wish there was a way to pay for Google (such as Google One) and it meant Google wouldn't ban your Gmail account. Period. However from reading HN anecdotes, it seems like they don't care about you (even if you're a paying customer). I realize this could feel like extortion, but it would be well worth the peace of mind.
I do this but there are pros and cons to every solution. I once forgot to renew a domain and let it expire completely. It wasn't one that I used very often but a few accounts used it and someone else registered the domain. Now they could very easily gain access to my accounts if they wanted to before I get around to fixing it.
Another problem is that for many years, a user will have been signing up to accounts with their gmail email address. If this address is locked, password resets become impossible. I'm hoping that address reuse never becomes a thing.
Just wondering if there are any trade-offs to consider if I were to use Google Workspace (G Suite) instead of a provider like ProtonMail.
Using a custom domain with Google's paid service seems like the least drastic change and you get to keep using all their services. Maybe the support won't be as good, but the products and integrations are probably better than any other provider.
And as long as you do regular backups of your Google data, I think this seems like a good solution.
I have always used a custom domain for this exact reason. I ran my own mailserver for over a decade but that got increasingly harder with DKIM, SPF, etc and the big boys (MS, Google) blocking more and more aggressively. I moved everything over to Soverin.net last year and I'm very happy wwi them.
Being locked out from google account is one of my biggest fears in practical computer usage. Over the years I can't even tell how much I'm sunk into using tiny pieces of google's services, even though for most crucial things I tend to omit google and look for alternatives that are easier to handle in problematic situation.
Just to add to the giant pile of anecdotal stories here, Google has been on Gmail labeling all links to the 350,000 Neocities sites as "potentially malware" for a while now, despite the fact that we don't allow uploads of executable files so that's basically impossible. We've only had one valid malware report in our 7 years of operation (zip embedded in a gif file, which I now know how to detect so it's fixed).
There's nobody at Google to contact, so I have no idea how to fix it. I used to have a friend at google I could ask for special help from (this made me feel awful), but they no longer work there, so I guess I'm just screwed until they actually get some sort of official support channel, or somebody at the company that sees this message (hi!) fixes it somehow (thanks!).
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 Thunderbird, configured a IMAP account and... done. Almost 20 years of e-mais are now backed up at home and on a Nextcloud instance I keep on a Linode VPS.
Web is not the only way to read e-mails, friends. Use a proper client and back it up.
Moved to Fastmail years ago, because my spider sensors were telling me for years that I need to fear companies where I can’t reach a human to resolve conflicts / problems. - They have an excellent Email service, calendar and contacts management. Most important: At fastmail I get a very quick response from a human who will always help me very quickly. Also I use my own domain name so that I can move my Emails to a new service provider whenever I want.
And while I was at it, I replaced Chrome with Firefox on my Mac and never looked back.
Finally I moved all my photos to iCloud, replaced my Android phone with an iPhone, got a paid account at Dropbox, started doing backups like there won‘t be cloud services tomorrow (Carbon Copy Cloner ftw!)
I have a google account, only for using Youtube (paid). And I like their search results. Even that is too much google for my taste.
Edit: Ahh, Gsuite. I migrated to office365 (microsoft). But I use it mostly offline (Word, Excel). Actually for legacy stuff. Because I started writing my documents with Emacs + Org and export to whatever format my recipient needs, doc, html, markdown (using pandoc extensively).
It makes me think that it wouldn't be unreasonable to have regulation around blocking access to email. Google provides a number of services and seemingly, if you break the T&Cs on one of them, your entire account is disabled and you no longer have access to other Google services (including email).
I can't imagine not having access to my email - at this point I'm kind of locked in. Google keeps a lot of my passwords and I register all of my important accounts to my main gmail account. If Google were to close my account suddenly, it would certainly disrupt my life quite a bit.
Email grew into an essential part of modern life. Taking away access willy-nilly would distress most people. I understand that this is a free service and we're the product, but I believe companies should only offer email accounts knowing that access can be denied only in exceptional circumstances (e.g. abusing the email service directly).
All of the advice after fact would not help a person who actually lost his account. Nor if you are among 99.9 % of population who don’t know how to setup your own mailserver etc. Lots of advice here seems like victim blaming. If you have lost your google account then somehow it’s your fault. For me it seems a nightmare if it does happen to me as well. Can we discuss solutions that can help general public in these situations.
The absence of reason makes me wonder a lot of possibilities. Maybe google bans people who use ad-blockers, maybe they didn't explicitly set that way but some of their algorithms must have figured out these users should go. I know, it is extremely unlikely but we're free to come up with reasons if google doesn't give one. Don't sit there thinking it won't happen to you(I was like that up until recently), get a domain name and transfer all important accounts to it. And do a Google takeout.
I imagine a "social dilemma" scene with the little guys inside the computers:
> His actions over the past 15 years lead to a 76.9% chance that he will break our ToS. Furthermore,he has clicked only on 0.000001% of the ads. Terminating him now will increase the average profit per user by 0.00000000000000000291%.
My twitter account was banned in March without warning (the reason they provided was "due to multiple or severe violations of our platform manipulation rules). Frankly, I'm way too boring on the site for me to be guilty of this so I appealed 5 times over ~4 months.
I must have gotten through to a person eventually because I was unsuspended with the message:
> We’re writing to let you know that we've unsuspended your account. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and hope to see you back on Twitter soon.
> A little background: we have systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk, and yours was flagged as spam by mistake. Please note that it may take an hour or so for your follower and following numbers to return to normal.
This article finally prompted me to do what I should've done a long time ago, which is to create a Fastmail account and begin importing my Gmail into it. I've seen this story far too many times, and no longer will I say "yeah but it'll never happen to me".
Setting up the import was insanely easy, and my Fastmail account is now configured to enable me to send using my Gmail address from directly within Fastmail. Plus after the import is finished, it will still periodically bring over any new emails received to the Gmail account.
That is why I want something like Time Capsule for our Smartphone ( iOS or Android ).
>Roughley lost data including emails, photos, documents and diagrams that he had developed for his work. "My account and all its data is gone," he said.
Imagine all your photos were in Google Photos and you cant get it any more because you have somehow violated their policy? All the beautiful memories of your boy or daughter when they were young or as a baby.
Imagine the song you make, the video you took.
The Cloud, should be used as an OffSite backup. I should always have the option to have my Data, stored in a box in my house, in my own property. Those who want the convenience of cloud ( iCloud, Google's X ) can do so. But there should always be an option to have your backup not in the cloud. ( And no, iTunes Backup is not that option, it is ridiculously complicated for any average user )
I did the same, but I never got to like Fastmail so I switched back to Gmail after a year. This time I'm on my own domain though so they can close my account all they want, I'd just setup email with another domain on the same address . Would lose my emails in the process, but that's secondary concern.
I've used a secondary Protonmail account lately and it seems decent. I haven't used it enough to make a fair comparison but if you only gave me 5 seconds to choose I'd instantly choose Protonmail over Fastmail. Same pricing (with custom domain) IIRC.
Edit: Then again as a paying customer I might not be as easily locked out compared to a regular Gmail account? No idea.
I migrated to Fastmail a few weeks ago. I'm really happy with it and I wish I had done it years ago. Many features. The web interface and apps feel a lot faster than Gmail.
Pro-tip: use a custom domain so that you can easily switch e-mail providers in the future without vendor lock-in. It's also very easy to add aliases in Fastmail.
> Plus after the import is finished, it will still periodically bring over any new emails received to the Gmail account.
Another option is to let Gmail forward your email to the new address.
Suggestion/what I have been practising for the past 20 years:
Get your own domain "lastname.com" or "somethig.com", get it from someone who will give you 1GB catch-all mailbox.
My setup is:
Windows, MS Outlook. The emails go to the 1GB mailbox, I can access them over my phone. Once I fire up Outlook, they are siphoned down and live on my Outlook forever. My emails are around 5-6GB of .pst file(s). I backup my whole disk in two manners: selected files and folders of my C and D drives on Carbonite, and one massive (80GB) Acronis .tib file (clone of my C: - SDD) again on Carbonite. My Carbonite "footprint" is well over 1.5TB.
So my backup is 3-2-1.
3 places: local disk, external drive, Carbonite (not affiliated)(I just love their unlimited storage and ability to encrypt pre-transmit)
2 different physical locations: home/on the move & Carbonite cloud
1 online: Carbonite (nice and encrypted).
I keep some gmail accounts handy, a couple of hotmail accounts, but EVERYTHING forwards to my mail mailbox. These accounts are used for things I don't want to have a real name-surname (like a silly game or other 'stuffs'). I won't cry if I lose them.
I have been operating like this for 20 years. I do have the cost of the domain name and mailbox service, but the cost is nothing to the pain one gets of losing access to ALL the stuff from the "free service".
I do NOT use any of the Google/MS-Hotmail ecosystem, no "online drives". This setup works for me. Perhaps it may work for you/your lifestyle, perhaps not. Just putting it out there to show that one can have a perfect IT lifestyle without using any of the "free" stuff.
Edit: I am not affiliated to any of the companies mentioned above (MS, Carbonite, Google). I just made the decision 20 years ago to stay away from them (incl. Dropbox, Microsoft free or paid storage), and keep everything offline/on me, and of course accepting the risks that come with it (house burning down, burning a CD/DVD as backup method back-in-the-day), etc.
I recently wrote a step by step article about this, for people who might not know how, such as family members, et al. I chose ProtonMail (despite also being a FastMail customer) because I’m a bit concerned about the new Australian encryption key escrow mandate (which I assume affects FastMail) and I like ProtonMail’s “don’t store plaintext” approach, even if it does need special client software.
I'm like you - it's been on my todo list for about 8 years... the thing that keeps my exit velocity insanely high is:
1. Entire family on @gmail
2. All Android phones setup to send photos to a shared family@google account so no one needs to 'send me those pictures from Anon's birthday' - it's all getting sent into the same account.
I'm not sure how to seamlessly pull off #2 without trying to lift and move the entire family over to iPhone's or something like that.
But even then you have to trust FastMail not to lock you out. Sure it's a paid service so less likely and I'm sure their customer service is better. But it doesn't fix the root issue of being dependent on one party.
A good start would be to require by law from Google and similar other companies to actually give a reason for an account suspension, having to potentially put a real human on the line ought to bring them pause and ensure there are less frivolous suspensions.
That said, the real answer is, of course, to migrate to a domain name you do own and a provider that's not known for suspending accounts willy-nilly, I'd stop just short of being your own provider, given how difficult it may be to get things right.
Lots and lots of shame needed to fix this situation. Bother your Google employee friends, send this to them, upvote it and keep discussing.
YouTube doesn’t really listen to the content creators or fans but they will make policy changes within a week of a hyper critical article in traditional media.
BI isn’t big enough probably, need this to get picked up by a bigger paper for a major Gmail policy fix.
This is the post I needed to start cutting out Google as much as possible. Not because I want to go 100% Google free but having too many Google services means that you are more likely to inadvertently violate one of their terms.
1. Remove Google Analytics and Adsense. Especially Adsense seems high risk.
2. Remove free apps from Play Store
3. Stop uploading public videos on YouTube
4. Stop sharing files through Google Drive
5. Use only my own domain for emails that are forwarded to Gmail.
6 Stop storing passwords in Chrome.
Only reason I want to keep Google is for Gmail, calendar, Nest Thermostats, Nest Doorbell.
Photos are already backed up in Apple Photos in addition to Google Photos.
There has to be regulation with regards to account closure in this day and age.
I'm sure large companies don't want to screw their users over and have to shut down accounts to follow some other regulation but at their scale Google does not care enough about any individual account.
That's why there has to be some set of laws ensuring people can always take their data out with them. IANAL but exporting and importing all your data to/from Google must be just a button click away even after account closure unless there's a court order.
Self-hosted email seems to elicit conflicting reports of experiences - I think the takeaway I've seen cited most often is that it is incredibly difficult to get your emails delivered to users because you will be randomly blocked one day.
I feel like there ought to be some kind of "let's encrypt for email" type solution to create trust but I'm not sure how it could be done.
[+] [-] _imba_|5 years ago|reply
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 misrepresenting ourselves or a product with no details on what we did wrong. We went through the T&C's in some detail and we think we did everything they asked, and we have no idea what we didn't do well enough. We also checked in with every single client and we had near perfect scores on trust pilot, I can't recall a single incident with a client.
We've been contacting Google almost daily but almost never been able to find a human to talk to. Through unofficial channels we've found a few people in Goolge but whenever they gave us any advice on what to do it's always "off the record" or "you didn't hear it from me". Something is very rotten.
There are always replies on here about not betting your entire business on Google. Google shopping gives 2 orders of mag better conversion than any other channel we tried. For search-to-buy there really just aren't any alternatives and if Google decides to lock you out your business is basically dead. Lucky for us it was a side hustle. Here in Africa e-bay and Amazon aren't options.
More scary, since then we've found TONS of businesses in our country who have suffered the same fate in the last month, and many are well-established, popular businesses now facing existential threat.
It's incredibly scary that Google's moderation bots can be a single point of failure for a business employing 20+ people.
[+] [-] _jjca|5 years ago|reply
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 figure basic user trust because that won't get anyone promoted nor grow some Director-level person's headcount.
Large promo-manufacturing teams that casually handle all your data. Pray to God that some L4 didn't get promoted doing some impactful work because they sure ain't gonna do maintenance work protecting your shit. Their motivations are not users, product nor team: manipulate some metrics to get promoted and move out. Horrible.
[+] [-] Mikho|5 years ago|reply
Since then I use my own domain for email, could easily switch email provider while keeping the address in case there is a problem, and I'd still control access via the email to other services. Also I never rely on Google as to files, photos, or videos. I mean yeah I use Google, YouTube etc., but everything is first of all backed up on MS OneDrive. Even on my Android phone there is automatic upload of all new photos to OneDrive. Google Photos is more like for easy viewing, sharing and presentation. Not backup. Not to mention that MS Office + OneDrive storage subscription provides much more value that Google G Suite.
[+] [-] stareatgoats|5 years ago|reply
Shutting them out completely: just no.
[+] [-] mbeex|5 years ago|reply
The problem is that it happens to me more and more often that especially with my business contacts in larger companies my e-mail is filtered out / ends up in their junk folders / disappears for other, unspecified reasons. Simple public black lists do not show anything. I am more the developer and not the infrastructure type, but the company policies seem to contain more and more features of downgrading private domains. And in my opinion this is supported by some kind of dirty game of global IT players at technical and other levels.
[+] [-] lqet|5 years ago|reply
My server is at Hetzner, and there are some blacklists which block Hetzner IPs by default. You have to contact them, explain that your server is not a spam server, and hope to get whitelisted. In my case, it worked. T-Online in Germany also blocked my IP as well, but they were amazingly quick to whitelist it after I send them an email. They apologized and explained that they also block mail from Hetzner IPs by default.
[+] [-] blunte|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwr|5 years ago|reply
Yes, I know spam is a problem, but it's a solvable problem, especially with a small percentage of those providers' revenue.
[+] [-] TheChaplain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] classics2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheChaplain|5 years ago|reply
Another trick is to use always have forwarding enabled in Gmail, to Outlook.com or another provider. All email will be forwarded despite your account being locked, so you will not miss out on important info.
And use Google Takeout for backing up your data, at least once a year.
[+] [-] afandian|5 years ago|reply
The migration to fastmail.fm , including a decade of old mail messages, was flawless (if slow, but it's a lot of data!). I highly recommend this route.
[+] [-] gcc42|5 years ago|reply
The funny (er, scary) thing is I was actually thinking of switching to Google registrar for my domain after namecheap messed up their CNAME records and dropped a few days of emails (I already use GSuite). Google reliability, the promise of fair pricing and a free WHOIS protection was very attractive to me.
After this, fuck that.
Google has so many services that you could lead a reasonably diverse online life without going to another provider, without the accountability that typically comes with that sort of power. They really need to be checked.
[+] [-] rexf|5 years ago|reply
I wish there was a way to pay for Google (such as Google One) and it meant Google wouldn't ban your Gmail account. Period. However from reading HN anecdotes, it seems like they don't care about you (even if you're a paying customer). I realize this could feel like extortion, but it would be well worth the peace of mind.
[+] [-] kylehotchkiss|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uberswe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vr46|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Laurentvw|5 years ago|reply
Using a custom domain with Google's paid service seems like the least drastic change and you get to keep using all their services. Maybe the support won't be as good, but the products and integrations are probably better than any other provider.
And as long as you do regular backups of your Google data, I think this seems like a good solution.
[+] [-] Sander_Marechal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] DataCrayon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] szszrk|5 years ago|reply
Mail is one of the things I'm most worried about.
[+] [-] kyledrake|5 years ago|reply
There's nobody at Google to contact, so I have no idea how to fix it. I used to have a friend at google I could ask for special help from (this made me feel awful), but they no longer work there, so I guess I'm just screwed until they actually get some sort of official support channel, or somebody at the company that sees this message (hi!) fixes it somehow (thanks!).
[+] [-] Anarch157a|5 years ago|reply
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 Thunderbird, configured a IMAP account and... done. Almost 20 years of e-mais are now backed up at home and on a Nextcloud instance I keep on a Linode VPS.
Web is not the only way to read e-mails, friends. Use a proper client and back it up.
[+] [-] submeta|5 years ago|reply
And while I was at it, I replaced Chrome with Firefox on my Mac and never looked back.
Finally I moved all my photos to iCloud, replaced my Android phone with an iPhone, got a paid account at Dropbox, started doing backups like there won‘t be cloud services tomorrow (Carbon Copy Cloner ftw!)
I have a google account, only for using Youtube (paid). And I like their search results. Even that is too much google for my taste.
Edit: Ahh, Gsuite. I migrated to office365 (microsoft). But I use it mostly offline (Word, Excel). Actually for legacy stuff. Because I started writing my documents with Emacs + Org and export to whatever format my recipient needs, doc, html, markdown (using pandoc extensively).
[+] [-] mmkos|5 years ago|reply
I can't imagine not having access to my email - at this point I'm kind of locked in. Google keeps a lot of my passwords and I register all of my important accounts to my main gmail account. If Google were to close my account suddenly, it would certainly disrupt my life quite a bit.
Email grew into an essential part of modern life. Taking away access willy-nilly would distress most people. I understand that this is a free service and we're the product, but I believe companies should only offer email accounts knowing that access can be denied only in exceptional circumstances (e.g. abusing the email service directly).
[+] [-] acd10j|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rainingcatndogs|5 years ago|reply
The absence of reason makes me wonder a lot of possibilities. Maybe google bans people who use ad-blockers, maybe they didn't explicitly set that way but some of their algorithms must have figured out these users should go. I know, it is extremely unlikely but we're free to come up with reasons if google doesn't give one. Don't sit there thinking it won't happen to you(I was like that up until recently), get a domain name and transfer all important accounts to it. And do a Google takeout.
[+] [-] iRomain|5 years ago|reply
> His actions over the past 15 years lead to a 76.9% chance that he will break our ToS. Furthermore,he has clicked only on 0.000001% of the ads. Terminating him now will increase the average profit per user by 0.00000000000000000291%.
[+] [-] mikemac|5 years ago|reply
I must have gotten through to a person eventually because I was unsuspended with the message:
> We’re writing to let you know that we've unsuspended your account. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and hope to see you back on Twitter soon.
> A little background: we have systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk, and yours was flagged as spam by mistake. Please note that it may take an hour or so for your follower and following numbers to return to normal.
[+] [-] grandpoobah|5 years ago|reply
Setting up the import was insanely easy, and my Fastmail account is now configured to enable me to send using my Gmail address from directly within Fastmail. Plus after the import is finished, it will still periodically bring over any new emails received to the Gmail account.
Fuck you Google.
[+] [-] ksec|5 years ago|reply
>Roughley lost data including emails, photos, documents and diagrams that he had developed for his work. "My account and all its data is gone," he said.
Imagine all your photos were in Google Photos and you cant get it any more because you have somehow violated their policy? All the beautiful memories of your boy or daughter when they were young or as a baby.
Imagine the song you make, the video you took.
The Cloud, should be used as an OffSite backup. I should always have the option to have my Data, stored in a box in my house, in my own property. Those who want the convenience of cloud ( iCloud, Google's X ) can do so. But there should always be an option to have your backup not in the cloud. ( And no, iTunes Backup is not that option, it is ridiculously complicated for any average user )
[+] [-] spurgu|5 years ago|reply
I've used a secondary Protonmail account lately and it seems decent. I haven't used it enough to make a fair comparison but if you only gave me 5 seconds to choose I'd instantly choose Protonmail over Fastmail. Same pricing (with custom domain) IIRC.
Edit: Then again as a paying customer I might not be as easily locked out compared to a regular Gmail account? No idea.
[+] [-] jandem|5 years ago|reply
Pro-tip: use a custom domain so that you can easily switch e-mail providers in the future without vendor lock-in. It's also very easy to add aliases in Fastmail.
> Plus after the import is finished, it will still periodically bring over any new emails received to the Gmail account.
Another option is to let Gmail forward your email to the new address.
[+] [-] HenryBemis|5 years ago|reply
Get your own domain "lastname.com" or "somethig.com", get it from someone who will give you 1GB catch-all mailbox.
My setup is:
Windows, MS Outlook. The emails go to the 1GB mailbox, I can access them over my phone. Once I fire up Outlook, they are siphoned down and live on my Outlook forever. My emails are around 5-6GB of .pst file(s). I backup my whole disk in two manners: selected files and folders of my C and D drives on Carbonite, and one massive (80GB) Acronis .tib file (clone of my C: - SDD) again on Carbonite. My Carbonite "footprint" is well over 1.5TB.
So my backup is 3-2-1.
3 places: local disk, external drive, Carbonite (not affiliated)(I just love their unlimited storage and ability to encrypt pre-transmit)
2 different physical locations: home/on the move & Carbonite cloud
1 online: Carbonite (nice and encrypted).
I keep some gmail accounts handy, a couple of hotmail accounts, but EVERYTHING forwards to my mail mailbox. These accounts are used for things I don't want to have a real name-surname (like a silly game or other 'stuffs'). I won't cry if I lose them.
I have been operating like this for 20 years. I do have the cost of the domain name and mailbox service, but the cost is nothing to the pain one gets of losing access to ALL the stuff from the "free service".
I do NOT use any of the Google/MS-Hotmail ecosystem, no "online drives". This setup works for me. Perhaps it may work for you/your lifestyle, perhaps not. Just putting it out there to show that one can have a perfect IT lifestyle without using any of the "free" stuff.
Edit: I am not affiliated to any of the companies mentioned above (MS, Carbonite, Google). I just made the decision 20 years ago to stay away from them (incl. Dropbox, Microsoft free or paid storage), and keep everything offline/on me, and of course accepting the risks that come with it (house burning down, burning a CD/DVD as backup method back-in-the-day), etc.
[+] [-] sneak|5 years ago|reply
https://sneak.berlin/20201029/stop-emailing-like-a-rube/
[+] [-] timvisee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkalla|5 years ago|reply
1. Entire family on @gmail 2. All Android phones setup to send photos to a shared family@google account so no one needs to 'send me those pictures from Anon's birthday' - it's all getting sent into the same account.
I'm not sure how to seamlessly pull off #2 without trying to lift and move the entire family over to iPhone's or something like that.
[+] [-] GekkePrutser|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Daniel_sk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ypcx|5 years ago|reply
I don't see this on their website, will this keep working if Google bans your account?
[+] [-] noneeeed|5 years ago|reply
I also need to detach any accounts from using Google for signin.
The next priority will be having a replica of my photo collection somewhere.
[+] [-] pgt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kemonocode|5 years ago|reply
That said, the real answer is, of course, to migrate to a domain name you do own and a provider that's not known for suspending accounts willy-nilly, I'd stop just short of being your own provider, given how difficult it may be to get things right.
[+] [-] tehwebguy|5 years ago|reply
YouTube doesn’t really listen to the content creators or fans but they will make policy changes within a week of a hyper critical article in traditional media.
BI isn’t big enough probably, need this to get picked up by a bigger paper for a major Gmail policy fix.
[+] [-] PopGreene|5 years ago|reply
Incidentally, you can download your google data:
https://takeout.google.com/
Set a reminder and do it on a regular basis. It will give you some protection from the Google Yank. (Until they yank this.)
BTW, does anyone know if this can be automated?
[+] [-] lol636363|5 years ago|reply
1. Remove Google Analytics and Adsense. Especially Adsense seems high risk.
2. Remove free apps from Play Store
3. Stop uploading public videos on YouTube
4. Stop sharing files through Google Drive
5. Use only my own domain for emails that are forwarded to Gmail.
6 Stop storing passwords in Chrome.
Only reason I want to keep Google is for Gmail, calendar, Nest Thermostats, Nest Doorbell.
Photos are already backed up in Apple Photos in addition to Google Photos.
[+] [-] gerash|5 years ago|reply
I'm sure large companies don't want to screw their users over and have to shut down accounts to follow some other regulation but at their scale Google does not care enough about any individual account.
That's why there has to be some set of laws ensuring people can always take their data out with them. IANAL but exporting and importing all your data to/from Google must be just a button click away even after account closure unless there's a court order.
[+] [-] fareesh|5 years ago|reply
I feel like there ought to be some kind of "let's encrypt for email" type solution to create trust but I'm not sure how it could be done.