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Comment by eh78ssxv2f | Hacker News Reader

Wait, are we sure that this really happened? Seems very unlikely, and even the OP did not present any evidence. I would be really surprised if Google would be scanning emails, and using that to ban the gsuite account of the entire company.

A red flag for me is the claim that Google also blocked accounts that were set for recovery which seems almost close to impossible (or insane).

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This is not the first case like this:

https://plus.google.com/+RichWarren/posts/QkKTxAbKGdq

Personal gmail (which is used in your example) != gsuite (which is used in company settings)

I think the post that you linked to describes a much simpler case: One Google account violated the policies and could land Google in bad water (privacy laws around children as well as COPPA), so they blocked access to that specific account. It can be argued that it is reasonable. It can also be argued that Google should put more engineering effort in collecting less information especially when account holder is minor.

However, blocking access of other co-workers as well as blocking access to personal accounts (which are simply set as recovery accounts, and could as well be accounts of spouses/partners) because of some other account holder's mistake is completely different. So, I would argue that the incident described in Reddit is indeed the first case.

Google is not scanning emails, he used his work google account to "abuse" the refund policy.

Of course Google scans emails for illegal content. See for example https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/04/google-ch...

Afaik they can scan gmail users, but are not doing this for gsuite users.

I wouldn’t make that assumption. Any content aware service will flag that content.

Google's ToS state otherwise.

> Our automated systems analyse your content (including emails) to provide you with personally relevant product features, such as customised search results, tailored advertising and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received and when it is stored.

https://policies.google.com/terms

That's the consumer Gmail tos. The gsuite tos is different.

All Gmail content is scanned. If you get spam filtered, it means your email is scanned. They certainly aren't going to opt their paying customers out of looking for child porn either. And I'm pretty sure their Smart Compose/Smart Reply features are also trained on everyone's mail, G Suite included.

The only thing Gmail has ever said they won't scan G Suite customers' email for is ads, and they don't do that with consumer email anymore either.

"A red flag for me is the claim that Google also blocked accounts that were set for recovery which seems almost close to impossible (or insane)."

Why should that be impossible? They are clearly linked (you have to own to other account, to accept it beeing used as the recovery account of the first one).

And the intention of google is probably to fight scammers etc. - and I can imagine it disrupts them a bit, if all associated accounts get banned. So I can imagine that it is a real case ... of collateral damage

Edit: stating of how I see the situation from the perspective of google, does not mean I approve it, and neither collateral damage in general

Because the implication when you set up a recovery account is that it will only be used for recovering your account. It never says anything like "do you want to link these accounts". It is totally implied that you could use a friend's account for example and banning them for something you did is insane.

Yeah, it is a insane practice. I never declined that. But it is apparently also quite insane to rely so much on one company and especially when that company avoids human support.

> especially when that company avoids human support.

If I understand correctly, that's not true for paid gsuite customers.

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