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Google+ Account Suspended? You Won't Find Out Why
jfruh writes "Dan Tynan is a tech writer and blogger who discovered, while trying to post links to his writing on his Google+ profile, that his account had been suspended. This despite the fact that he used his real name and didn't violate the terms of service in any other way. Upon appeal his account was reinstated, just as mysteriously as it was shut down, but along the way he discovered a rash of people with suspended Google+ accounts who can't figure out what they did to anger the Google gods."
Honest question. How many of those banned users are fabricated by the facebook anti google pr machine?
One of the persons suspended by Google has an "unusual name". She didn't say what.... maybe Blossom or Flower or something. In any case she pointed-out the name on G+ is the same as the name on her credit card (which she registered to make paymentws), but that's not good enough for the Microsoft... Apple... ooops, I mean Google fuckup corporation. It deserves to be boycotted.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Yahoo did this to me. The only Yahoo service I was actively doing anything with at the time was Yahoo Answers, so I assume it came from there. But no explanation, and in my case they didn't respond to a few attempts to ask why or reconsider. I couldn't login to my Yahoo mail or anything else controlled by Yahoo. But it was only Yahoo (nothing important), so I just gave up.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Same happens at MS.. upload a file that violates their code of conduct policy to MS sky drive, and your windows 7 phone account will be permanently blocked without telling what file caused it or getting any good response.
Note that that includes files that are not yet shared of, and includes partial nudity
Even Google has bugs!
Indeed.
BTW, I want to put in a plug for using Google's "Send Feedback" link. Not only is a pretty cool piece of work technically (it basically has to implement a full HTML rendering engine in Javascript in order to dynamically construct the image of the page you're seeing, with your problem areas highlighted), it actually does get a lot of internal attention. Feedback gets classified and similar comments tracked over time, with lots of pretty graphs and charts, and teams scrub their feedback regularly. Things that are bothering lots of people get bug reports generated and added to the internal bug reporting system, and they get prioritized and fixed.
The one failing of the Google feedback system, IMO, is that it lacks feedback. By that I mean that there's no response back to the submitter letting them know what's being done or when the problem is fixed. I think I'm going to submit feedback on feedback, pointing out that feedback needs feedback.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I just don't post anything on my google+ account ever. If my google account was suspended i'd lose email, docs, drive, calendar etc.
Its too dangerous to use. Why risk it. F**k google+
Ahh, that would probably explain it. I've been Zorin since 1995 at least.
More likely it's just that no one has reported your account. There are probably some automated filters that look for really obvious fake names, but Zorin is a real name, though typically a surname. "Zorin Lynx" is obviously a pseudonym, but one that isn't likely to be flagged by an automated check. I suspect that if someone reported your account you'd have to send Google some documentation proving it's a well-established and well-known alias (and you might be unsuccessful).
Personally, I can see both sides of this debate. It appears that real name policies actually do improve the S/N ratio significantly, which makes for a better user experience. On the other hand, pseudonymity is important to some people. It will be interesting to see if the real names push on YouTube is successful at cleaning up a large portion of the crapflood which is the typical YouTube comment stream.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Well, there's always Diaspora... though it's really polished for what it has, it's lacking in a lot of ways, and missing something (everyone else you know).
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Consider how many people are served by Google's services. Gmail alone has approximately 425 million users, the vast majority of whom pay no money for the service. Despite what they may think, they are not "customers," they are a "resource." Google's customers are the advertisers who want access to Google's resource. Therefore it is reasonable to expect that Google has staff devoted to answer the questions of its customers, but not the people who make up its resource. It could not afford to pay a support staff to be available to speak/write to each of those people on-demand, so it doesn't. Similar large, non-paid services are the same.
In fact, years ago when I was paying Yahoo for Web hosting and mysteriously lost access to my account, a Yahoo CSR told me I wasn't paying enough money for the privilege of talking to someone and hung up on me after I listened to hold music for three hours. I got an email form letter three days later telling me there was nothing they could do. And that was for a paid service. I was a little fish in a big pond. With non-paid services, you're not even a little fish. You're a speck of bacteria living on the algae in the pond. That's not to say that these services are bad, but you have to understand what they are, who you are to them and gauge the risks before you invest too much in them.
Progressive did the same thing to me. They had told NYS DMV that my car insurance was cancelled-even though I had pre-payed for 6 months.
I found out the hard way. When I was rear-ended (no fault of my own) the cops impounded my car and arrested me. I was charged with 5 misdemenars that night - had to go to court, car impounded and pay a ton of DMV fees. Was able to plea-bargain down to a traffic violation - but a lot of hassle. I had no idea they did that.
This would have been an amusing time to file a $100 claim against them in small claims court. There's nothing quite like forcing them to employ their $400/hr legal retainer in order to get some attention.
"advocates, or expresses pornography, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity, hatred, bigotry, racism, or gratuitous violence."
That can describe 50% of the movies available on google play, and 100% of their rap music.
So does that mean google itself is violating its own policies.
Yep.
Douchbag Hypocrites.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.