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Comment by arayh | Hacker News Reader

This appears to be a common experience. Google has been terrible at communicating reasons for account suspension. Here's a more detailed account on a similar suspension: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/0...

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They also aren't granular. So you could lose access to all Google products for violating terms on one of them.

Of all the reasons to avoid Google, this seems to me like the biggest one that ironically is rarely addressed. If a malicious user flags your account as being in violation of Google's ToS, then all of your Google accounts are at risk of being terminated with no appeal process, no information, and no substantiated hope of recovery. And as far as I understand it, that includes the serious possibility of total data loss from all Google services.

Right. It's worse than it used to be too, because of the breadth of their services. Theoretically, one person on YouTube that flags you could cause you to have a useless (or almost useless...minus your data/config) phone, thermostat, Google Home device, etc. Or, you could lose access to, say, your Google Analytics or Adwords account.

or Gmail. From there, control on any online account you have.

Gmail used to be the argument to log in to their services. Now, if you use Gmail, it’s probably better to dodge the other services, by fear of losing Gmail.

To clarify, are you saying that a youtube flag risks the gmail account with the same username OR that a youtube flag risks all gmail accounts that I control?

Here's a guy, who admittedly was doing something really dumb, but managed to get his entire company's email accounts suspended:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8kvias/tifu_by_gettin...

So someone does something stupid using a work GSuite email account, gets not just the entire company email suspended, but also any staff member's personal gmail accounts that were linked for password recovery for their work email accounts.

A follow-up post (https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banne...) seems to indicate that the post you've linked to is most likely a fake TIFU story.

Yeah well, reddit, huh?

On the other hand, that fact that it's not a story that is obviously dismissed as fake says volumes about many many people's shared experience with Google...

"Well, sure, it's fake, but the fact that I believed it sure says something anyway..." is the worst argument.

It is. But if you replace "I" with "a lot of unbiased people" it picks up relevance. Google shutdown/support has been awful in many confirmed ways. And that's even if you're paying them...

It is, but it still has some meaning.

There are some people who if you hear stories of them doing bad things you'll immediately say "Nope. Clearly not true. That's just not how that person behaves." Google _used_ to be one of those. At least in my head (and from the front page of HN this week, it seems for a lot of other people as well).

I lost access to ALL my Google products for half a day for a youtube flag. I regained access to photos / drive / gmail in a matter of hours (that I spent in panic). But it took me over a year and a half to regain access to my youtube account.

AFAIK all accounts that are connected via backup email addresses or similar.

It's potentially worse than this. I've heard rumor that accounts that they suspect to be linked can get included in the dragnet. So even if you are super careful and use a separate google account for youtube with no reference to your personal email account, can get both accounts suspended for unwarrented "copyright violation".

I don't know how much of this is FUD spread by people who don't know any better. But given how much data google collects, I wouldn't bet against it being possible.

>I've heard rumor that accounts that they suspect to be linked can get included in the dragnet.

Some people violated Big G's TOS by buying pixels to resell. All their related accounts were closed.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/google-su...

They keep trying to get me to shop from Google Express, but the nagging uncertainty about what happens to my Gmail account if I have to do a credit card chargeback against a Google service has me avoiding it.

There you go - reason #1 for not using any other Google service ever: "I do not want my Gmail fukced"

And here this is the reason I don't use Gmail.

I've been using Gmail since high school, but I'm definitely thinking that it's time for me to abandon ship and actually get my own damn email.

Use your own email address with Gmail, make regular backups and switch the provider if Gmail locks you out.

I'd like to find a way to backup mails preferably via pop or imap - great if dedup and incremental backup are available. Backing up ~/Library/Mail/V5 doesn't really work as expected. Regular snapshot/dumps are also not very effective.

I've moved to Fastmail in 2015 and I had a long term Gmail account since high school, I've never missed Gmail one bit, I encourage you to do it.

I also moved to Fastmail years ago. I used to think it would be hell to migrate a service as essential as email, but it basically took a repointing of DNS and running Fastmail's importer. It took half an hour and I've been a super happy user ever since, and I couldn't believe how bloated Gmail felt after trying Fastmail.

I use Google for ~15 years now (own domain) and I appreciate the let me use what is today GSuite for free.

Moving to fastmail would be a possibility but they do not have a calendaring system.

They do have one, I can't comment on the quality of it since I never used it (I also never used Google Calendar) but it's there.

Huh? FastMail has had a fully-featured calendar for years.

The thing keeping me from switching away from Gmail is the lack of IMAP IDLE on iOS. I can’t believe Apple still refuses to implement it in 2018...

I see a FastMail app on the App Store but from the screenshots it looks pretty bad (is it just a web view?)

There are other general-purpose mail apps on the app store. I'm partial to outlook.

FastMail supports native iOS mail push notifications for mail.app. That caters my usecase.

Another good reason to drop iOS from your workflow.

I wonder if the new "auto login to Chrome" thing will ever one day lock people out of their web browser with no notice or recourse?

I think these days it's flat our irresponsible to use the free version of Gmail for anything important. Either use paid Google Apps or use Fastmail/similar.

Email is way too important in life to let it be controlled by a company that has proven they couldn't give a shit about their users.

You could leave it at "Google has been terrible at communicating"

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