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Comment by PuffinBlue | Hacker News Reader

And what was this one-time childish mistake that lead to losing the account?

She saw a chain email (i.e. forward this to 10 people!) and decided it would be fun to make up her own. Apparently it was successful enough to get somebody's attention.

Edit: To be clear, I would never blame them for wanting to stop a cascading explosion of emails. But I also wouldn't say it's impossible for a child to get an account banned.

Makes for a good story at least. Can't blame a kid for being curious on how stuff works.

And why is that a problem ? Does it violate Google's policies in any way ?

It's a problem because Google banned the account. Doesn't matter if it's unclear about policy violation given they're the ones making the decision and providing limited opportunities for recourse.

Yeah I understood that part. I was only wondering if there is an explicit policy about sending chain emails.

Sorry, should've made it clear that I was making a separate point - that it doesn't matter either way when someone else can make a decision and limit follow up. It's long been a frustration for many with Google services.

From the TOS at the time:

"5.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity that interferes with or disrupts the Services (or the servers and networks which are connected to the Services)."

Looks pretty broad for me. I can't send email to friends inviting them to an even and asking them to invite their friends ?

You're asking rhetorical questions. Instead, just think it through and you'll get it. Chain letters can explode, if written in a certain way.

So Google actually reads the content of the email and can hold it against the person ?

What do you think?

I'm curious as well. There's little a child, let alone an adult, could that would result in a permaban.

See the story the other day, where someone discovered the hard way what happens if you registered your PayPal account before you turned 18.

The story, for anyone else wondering what was referred to: https://hackernoon.com/paypal-is-still-one-of-the-worst-onli...

Spammed AdSense with fraudulent clicks, and impersonated other apps in the Play Store.

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