How Google Killing Accounts Can Leave Androids Orphaned

jfruhlinger writes "As we've heard in cases of pseudonym-users in Google+, or in the case of Dylan Marcheschi that went viral last week, Google can kill your account at any time — and since Google is keen on tying your account to its entire range of services, that means you could lose data stored everywhere from Gmail to Picasa. Blogger Dan Tynan examined one particular aspect of this problem — namely, the plight of someone who's been Google-executed and who uses an Android phone."

Comments

Google is being dumb here

[cronot]

I don't like that my G+ profile shouts my real name everywhere too. So I was looking around in my profile, and guess what: There's a "Nickname" field in there - but the profile form explicitly says that it won't be shown in the profile. Why the hell are they doing that? Why have this field if it's not going to be used?

The dumb part is that Google could be fixing this problem in a much less disrupting way: Make the "Nickname" field actually useful, make it the default field shown for the public, or have the user setup if he wants the Nickname to be shown or his real name. Hell, if Google is so bent into real names, at least make the Nickname the field to be shown to the public, and the real name only to your friends / circles. What a waste.

Re:Kinda walked into that one

[Hijacked Public]

But it isn't really 'your' account. You merely signed up for a service created, implemented, and hosted by Google. You paid Google nothing for it and although I haven't read the Picasa TOS I suspect it contains some amount of favoritism toward Google, since Google wrote it.

All of this internet service type stuff is very new, but even non-technical people need to be reminded that any digital sandcastles they might build on someone else's beach are subject to being washed away at any time without notice and regardless of the difficulty it might cause. All a person need do is sit down and read one single TOS in its entirety to understand that.

Re:Not again ??!!

[TheRaven64]

The message that's going out: Don't get a G+ account, or your email is at risk.

Which is a silly message. The message should be: if you are going to use a third party to provide your email, and you actually care about being to use, then make sure that you have a contract with them that requires them to keep providing the service. If you use a free service that's subject to termination without notice at the whim of the provider, then don't be surprised if it's terminated without notice at the whim of the provider.