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Comment by morganvachon | Hacker News Reader

"In the first case, (and based on their own statements) those people were buying up phones by the hundreds, shipping them to a single physical address and then scalping over the internet.

It's basically fraud. So yes, they probably got picked up by an automated algorithm that looks for hijacking/CC fraud or bot-nets."

No, it's not "basically fraud". Yes, it violates Google's terms, and banning the customers from using Fi would have been a reasonable response, but Google's TOS is not enshrined in criminal law. Unless your position at Google is on the legal team, you might want to be careful about throwing around phrases like that with nothing to back it up. By admitting you work there, you are officially speaking for the company with such statements.

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Thanks for bringing that up.

I suspect you and I are talking about two different things however.

I'm using fraud as an ordinary layman would use it - that is - deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain.

In this case, I think most people would agree that spawning up multiple dummy accounts (e.g. john001@gmail.com, john002@gmail.com, john003@gmail.com) and then using them to get around ordering restrictions is definitely deceptive. (These account names are obviously illustrative).

And in terms of what's a "reasonable" response, that's above my paygrade. All I can comment on is the public statements that those people made around the time, and around their interactions with Google and their interpretation of them.

However, are you a legal practitioner? If so, then perhaps you are using the term in the other sense? Also, if you're willing to comment IAAL, that would be very interesting.

"I'm using fraud as an ordinary layman would use it"

Fair enough, my point was more that I was so surprised you were willing to stick your neck out by officially speaking for Google here, especially regarding legal matters.

No, I'm not a lawyer, but I do have nearly 20 years in law enforcement and LE-related work, enough to have a bit of an informed take on things like this.

I do feel that Google was wrong to permanently and irrevocably delete their entire Google account rather than simply banning their account from using Fi. It's Google's prerogative, but it told me everything I needed to know about them as a company. Suddenly I was acutely aware that if I were to violate, say, YouTube's TOS by uploading something that I thought was fair use when it wasn't, I could permanently lose my entire online life. That's quite simply unacceptable.

AFAIK, nothing was permanently or irrevocably deleted. From all the public statements at the time, all that happened were the accounts were suspended.They would then need to reach out via the recovery link to prove they were really a person (and not say, a bot). (I'm just going off public statements here).

In terms of handling and deleting user data, I do know we have some pretty clear guidelines around this - user data is sacrosanct. You can read up in the ToS, or if you need specific guidance around your personal circumstances, I would always encourage you to consult a legal professional.

> by officially speaking for Google here,

The very disclaimer he added saying he was a Googler also said he wasn't speaking for the company.

His comment was edited, it originally said (Disclaimer: I work for Google) and was changed after my comment was posted. I think that action speaks for itself.

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