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Google+ Account Suspensions Over ToS Drawing Fire
ideonexus writes "Reports of Google+ deleting user accounts are all over, including Limor Fried — AKA Lady Ada / Adafruit Industries (recently featured in Wired Magazine) and former Google employee Kirrily 'Skud' Robert for violating Google's identity ToS. Other users are finding themselves locked out of their accounts without an explanation of how they violated the ToS. The worst part for these individuals is that a lock-out of Google+ includes being locked out of all Google services, including email, calendar, and documents."
would get his account suspended, too...
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
There have been some claims that this is an example Google being evil but this seems more like incompetence and hamfistedness than evil. This would be silly and minor if not for the reports that some of these people can't access their other Google products they use. Many people use gmail for their primary email. If any of these people use it for business they could be actively losing money from this. But this does lead to two basic lessons which are apparently not repeated enough: First, when you use a free service you get what you paid for. Second, backing things up is always a good idea.
You know for all of Facebook's privacy infringement, there is one ace in the sleeve Google+ has over their users that Facebook does not: Gmail.
Lets not forget that Facebook has been deactivating user accounts on the suspicion that they're using an alias for many years, they have a small dictionary of banned names to do this automatically. Have a unique first name like "Husky Smithson"? Too bad.
Only difference is Facebook accounts are not also used for email and other essential services.
Kobnyc in TFA comments:
"The article refers to deletions "en masse" and "striking number" and "dam had burst" etc but nowhere provides any hard or soft numbers to go with these clearly inflammatory adjectives."
I, too, want some numbers.
its a good way to lose business. google should congratulate the morons running these policies. they killed google+ before it started for me.
and on another note, this situation basically drew my attention to the fact that relying on google is not a good thing.
Read radical news here
It doesn't handle it. A friend of mine's name is Flash Jones.
That's her name, her birth name, the name she prefers, and it's been her name for thirty seven years.
She's lost her Google account, her Facebook account, and had requests to use a 'real' name by multiple employers and banks through her life - some of whom attempt to force the use of her more regular middle name in place of her first.
Google however, is in the business of knowing about us, and the information you have on what we prefer to be known as, the identities *WE* wish to use, is important. Why bother collecting this shit if you'd prefer us to use identities we don't identify with? Sounds self defeating, no?
Makes me reconsider if I wish to use it. If Google shut down my G+ account, or Facebook shut down my account or the like I'd lose no sleep over it. I really am not in to social networking and I think it is mostly a silly way for people to waste time at work (I've got better ways to waste time at work, like Slashdot :). However I would be rather angry if my G-mail account was shut down. I have a lot of important things directed to it and it would be rather inconvenient if shut down.
I signed up because friends invited me. I'll have to think if I want to stay signed up as G+ is just something silly to keep my friends happy, G-mail is something I use a lot and I don't want one to risk the other.
I read the article and the biggest and most fearful thing that many people who were affected by this was that all of their Google services, including Gmail were affected and disabled.
I only use Gmail for e-mail functionality because it is free and convenient and it is my primary e-mail address that has stayed universal through ISP changes and moves. I was quite well aware of Google's privacy policy and advertisement angle along with the fact that all of them will be available forever to Google, before I signed up to Gmail and have been weary every since. The offer of convenient, free, reliable, spam-free, managed by someone else, and universally accepted Gmail account had a lot of benefits since I didn't have to buy my own domain, maintain my own e-mail server, and deal with spam filtering
I still haven't been burned by Gmail but I'm now wondering that since Google has become such a large entity it is surely going to suffer the fate of a behemoth afflicted by blind bureaucracy and the e-mails that they have forever will somehow get out to agencies, companies, or people who I don't want them to see.
I'm going to seriously look into the technical and logical feasibility of install a mail server on my Linux box in my house which is going to require that I manage my own services and spam filtering along with dealing with the hoops of trying to run a mail server behind an ISP with my own domain name.
This is not what Google is doing. They allow multiple people with the same name, it's just underage or fraudulent info gets you banned.
I removed all of my "correct, yet questionable" data, eg: Location: Earth, Sol System, Milky Way Galaxy (A suburb of the Virgo Galactic Cluster) -- just in case. Actually, I removed ALL of the optional data about me, except for my name. Way to fail at your core competency Google (that is, getting me to allow them to aggregate my data).
With all the fucking automated badassery that is google, why do they not simply send you a notice or email:
IMHO, this would be much better than what they are currently doing...
Dealing with invididual eggs is just too cumbersome. So instead, I carry all in one large basket. What could possibly go wrong?
The mass of all the eggs in the world in one basket causes the eggs at the bottom to break, the ones above fall into place and crack too; The eggs quickly begin accelerating towards the bottom of the basket where the speed of their collisions allows the density to surpass the gravity well tipping point, and a new black-hole is born, it quickly gobbles up a chunk of the Earth before vanishing in a burst of Gama rays that extinguishes all life on the planet.
You should here my explanation of why you shouldn't leave the water on while you brush your teeth...
Actually, Google is attempting to woo celebrities to their platform, such as Lady Gaga.
The irony is that Lady Gaga isn't her actual name.
That would be fine except that some have apparently either broken a rule without knowing it and can't find out what it was, they have no way to get re-instated even where it is reasonably clear that the violation was unintentional and won't be repeated, and they lose other services they have been using without incident for some time as well.
There is also room for interpretation as to what exactly is a pseudonym. In many cases of a famous nickname, using one's actual legal name would be an obfuscation of identity. Many have used a nickname for so long that it's the one they have internally connected to self and the legal name seems like someone else.
I won't be getting a Google+ account. I don't care whether this is doing evil or sheer incompetence (I'm betting on the latter), but to lose access to all Google-related services especially Gmail, is complete and utter BS. The fact that a company the size of Google can get by without any sort of customer service is beyond me.
You get up tomorrow and log into GMail. You can't get in. Your account is locked. Your mail, calendar, documents — all gone. What do you do now?
Remember that Google has no customer service, even for paying customers. If your account is locked for any reason, spurious or not, you're utterly fucked.
I keep a regular backup of my GMail. The official interface is IMAP, but GMail's IMAP implementation is really flaky (e.g. Thunderbird or mail.app won't suck everything down). The way to do this that actually works is with OfflineIMAP. It's command-line and geeky, but by crikey it works.
Using it on Ubuntu or Debian is absurdly simple:
This will create a folder with all your mail in it, in mbox format (readable plain text). You will have duplicate messages in different folders. I'm just doing this to get an archive, so zipped the result.
GMail's IMAP interface is subtly broken, to the point where it can crash offlineimap. Just start it running again, repeat as often as necessary. (If you like, get a more current version.)
GMail is still the best email interface I've ever used, and I wish Thunderbird would just get the hint and clone it to the last detail. But this way I also have all my stuff myself, just because I can.
I haven't tried this on a Mac or Windows. Could someone do this and write up instructions?
For other Google services, you can get your data from Google Takeout. While your account's not locked.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
A friend of mine had some twat post a blog on Google's Blogger, using their name and photo, impersonating them, claiming that they are the "number one pedophile rights activist" and other such things in that vein. He has been hounded by social services and questioned about it by his son's school (a picture of his son also features on the blog). If you Google his name, that blog is the first result.
This friend has now spent over a year trying to get Google to remove this blog. Despite being a clear victim of vindictive impersonation, and despite him REPEATEDLY faxing in copies of his driver's license and such as per Google's impersonation policy, it's still up there. And as previously noted, it has affected his wife and kid before, to the point of nearly getting his son taken away. And Google won't do anything.
Funny how when they're trying to launch a whole new social network, they suddenly spring into action.
I write bullshit
I was wondering about that. But for those of us who use Android phones, such a lockout could be a real show-stopper if one were reliant on a single gmail account for syncing emails, contacts and calendar. Since Google is a private company, and you don't pay for their services, you could be well and truly fucked if Google (for whatever reason) decides you are persona non grata. You would have absolutely no redress whatsoever, at least within any useful timescale.
Makes me sort of glad that I have insulated myself (somewhat) by using K9 mail as an interface to my (non-G)mail accounts and keep everything else backed up elsewhere.
Actually, it's worse... your paid apps are bound to your gmail identity as well.
If they locked an Android owner out of not only his contact list and gmail, but effectively revoked the purchase of every paid Market app without refunding the purchase price, I can see a lawsuit regardless of what their TOS might say. Just ask Capital One how well "universal default" stood up to judicial scrutiny once challenged (that was their practice of instantly jacking up all of your interest rates to the maximum if you had a late payment reported to a credit bureau by ANYONE... even if it was an error, due to somebody else's screw-up, or something like a medical bill that was tied up with a health insurance claim. With Android, at least, Google definitely crossed the line from "free" to "paid service", and there's a limit to how trigger-happy you can be with TOS violations before it becomes fraud.
So basically, they shut down my account, but are unable to provide any details why. In speaking with lawyers, it is simply not cost effective to try to sue them. I would spend far more in lawyer fees than I could ever hope to earn back. Verizon and Amazon both specifically requested my application for their stores, and it is still happily listed and selling in them.
I guess my point was simply that "important enough" is a bar so high, virtually no one is likely to meet it. In my own case, my application was making just shy of $50k/yr when it was shut down without expressed reason, notice, or appeals process. Even in that situation, the lawyers said it wasn't worth it. Given the lost income, I was probably at the top 5% of people for a potential claim for damages, so what chance does the super majority of people really have if Google gives them the middle finger?
I'm really not anti-Google, and I hope I don't read like I am. In general, I do really like their services, technologies, etc. My sole complaint is simply that if you have a problem with them, they flip the bird and disappear. You have no ability to even try to reason with them. They are like the "Judge Dredd" of internet services. Once they decided on something (completely without any input from you), it's done and you're f---ed. They don't even bother to pretend otherwise, the "We are unable to provide further details regarding this issue" pretty much proves that.