[joegaebel]

A similar thing has happened to me. I've had a Google account since I was 16 - and my Google Drive and Photos have almost two decades worth of photos and important personal documents.

My account was disabled due to a false-positive detection like this, and all appeal avenues that Google provided were all rejected. I also had friends at Google make appeals for me, and these too were rejected.

Despite being in IT, I never thought to make hard-drive backups, so lesson learned.

For those reading in Australia, or the EU, there seems to be some hope. In Australia, the Privacy Act 1988 states that you own your data, and you have the right to request this data from companies. See https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/your-per...

GDPR applies to residents of the EU, and seems to apply retrospectively. So if you are or become an EU resident, you can make a GDPR data access request.

For Australia, you can submit a data access request under the Privacy Act 1988 yourself and at no cost. I'll keep you posted if it works.