Now imaging your checking account also got disabled because some bot decided that you looked suspicious.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWaz7ofl5wQ&feature=youtu.be
As far as opening a google checking account goes I think I will be avoiding that one. Diversifying my critical online services might in some sense be a higher security risk, but safer from it all being wiped out in one go.
If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta.
100% agreed. It was cool at the time. Now Google has so fundamentally changed and I don’t trust them with my data anymore, but it is a Herculean task to move everything off Gmail. Literally hundreds of accounts are bound to my Gmail.
I used Dropbox and now MEGA to sync photos off my phone, but I copy all that stuff to my NAS and backups. I use Drive for some things, but I wouldn't be screwed if it went away. I disable almost all the major Google apps on my Android phone and hope to switch out to Lineage + miniG soon.
I use a self hosted TTRss currently (Google Reader was garbage and it dying was really good as I realized what good RSS readers were actually like).
I need to set a reminder to do more regular Facebook exports/backups. No one should be in the situation where a single provider killing your access means you loose a huge chunk of your content. Self hosting has its own problems and yes, a lot of people don't have the knowledge/means/time to do it, but man I'm glad I made it a priority.
My phone number is still on Goolge Hangouts. I need to find a better solution for that as well.
I use it myself :)
With what is going on with big internet players censoring and deplatforming people, why would one trust these people with your money.
I've been unable to access my google account for over two years. Their automated processes are never able to confirm my identity, and any humans I do manage to communicate with tell me to use the automated systems.
I don't even care about my dignity any more, I'll beg for it back in person.
and any judge can tear that to shreds if they are sympathetic to the implementation
Or just go with an email provider that isn't auditing your behaviour
No, outsourced call center with no escalation path doesn't qualify as support for anything but the most basic issues. Google 'support' means bitching on HN, getting upvoted, and having an engineer take notice and actually poke at it.
> the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user.
No, it signals that you are reliant on them. This means they can treat you as a second-class citizen from the free users! This recent issue happened to one of my clients (not anyone in this thread), https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en . Note, paid users can't request a free Google Voice account, have to pay for the same thing on Cloud Voice now.
We had similar issues in the past where we couldn't delegate users from a Google Business panel inside our G Suite domain, we had to maintain personal GMail accounts to add business managers.
I've been a reseller of this shit, deeply regret it. When it works for our clients, it works fine. When it doesn't, we're just as screwed with getting support as anyone else. I switched my primary accounts to Fastmail and O365, and haven't looked back.
I've been meaning to migrate to Exchange/o365, it's in my backlog of projects that I'm procrastinating.
They use free users as beta testers and to see if ideas stick. They can't deploy those to actual customers.
I manage my company's G Suite account, and their support hasn't impressed me. We were initially unable to set up DKIM. The page to generate the DNS record kept returning a strange error code. I talked to support they were friendly and apologetic, but the issue took months to fix. Every time I followed up I was told they hadn't even heard back from the engineers, which gave me the impression that the support department doesn't have much pull in the organization.
Paying for GSuite doesn't eliminate any of the problems (they'll still ban you, spy on you, have relatively poor support, etc.) and many of the alternative services are simply better anyway.
And Markiplier posted an UPDATE video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhb4CvOtEeo
(I'm a googler, opinions are my own).
YouTube's denials about why it happened are again dumb, and a chat ban in YouTube should in no way affect the rest of your Google account. Just acknowledging that it happened isn't a good explanation.
"Ya our rules are dumb and on manual review we were still stupid assholes"
It's also impossible to get ahold of anyone at YouTube and YouTube's "ya we manually reviewed it and fucked up" is just another admission that their pile of a system just doesn't work.
I'm moving away from Google and any other provider like them. These incidents only impress the need to do it faster. I can't risk having my business and life ruined because of a youtube algorithm with no one behind the wheel.
I recommend everyone else do the same. Just the idea that YouTube chat bans would connect to other portions of the account means google is not interested in you. Every interaction with them is a threat to your digital well being where your whole account can be banned. It's totally unacceptable given the position they're in.
And it can all be manually reviewer and you'll be told to go fuck yourself and if you aren't markeplier or whoever you have no recourse.
Fuck that shit.
It's strange to me when someone restates the misbehavior as though it's a justification. If someone is abusing commenting, block them from commenting, sure. Don't disable all their other products. If someone is abusing two products, disable their whole account, then? Sure, if you want. That reduces the false-positives by about a square factor (0.1% -> 0.0001%)
Google needs to do more than a Reddit comment. This is the second time you have done this, and you supposedly seriously damaged a few of the people involved (I'm guessing they are SOL in terms of that, and I don't want to be SOL). "Oops" only cuts it the first time.
If you don't think those features will be worth it because you don't think Google is good at customer service, then I guess that's for you to decide for yourself. I don't really see how it's relevant to my comment, though.
Some bot had flagged me as suspicious, and as a result
- I couldn't take any Lyft rides, and my company only subsidizes lyft.
- I couldn't rent a car on Getaround
- I couldn't rent a scooter on Skip, one of two providers in SF at the time
My mobility was severely hampered. I almost couldn't close on my house in time because my insurer of choice at the time also used Stripe.
To add insult to injury, Stripe's customer service absolutely refused to address the issue, flat out ignoring it. They claimed the issue was on the vendor side and to follow up with the vendor directly. It was only when I left a poor review on Google did they follow up with me within 2 hours, lifting the ban. For someone unfamiliar with the idea of a "payment processor", this may have never been resolved since the company "Stripe" is never visible during the transaction.
That's already how fraud protection works in the majority of banks.
A bank might suspend your checking account if it detects suspicious financial transactions on the account. The goal here is (ostensibly) to protect the account owner.
Google, as per the precedents it has repeatedly set, could suspend your checking account for participating in a stream on YouTube and following the streamer's instructions to spam chat with emotes in order to vote on his path through the game, as happened to Markiplier and his followers. That's far beyond what anyone should consider reasonable risk for being able to access their bank account.
Yes, but what bank has the surface area of google? If I do something in a an area that has _literally nothing_ to do with banking ( say google stadia ) that a bot thinks is fishy - will I have all of my funds locked up over that mistake?
The surface area for misclassification is much larger in Google’s case as they close down the entire account without any mechanism for appeal.
That's not the entire story. Not only do banks have tons of regulations that they have to follow, a concept of "algorithm determined that we shutdown the account and we can't explain to you why" does not exist there.
I think we have ample evidence that people want pseudonymity. People like to segment parts of their lives without their prospective employer being able to look up what you said and possibly take things out of context. So as much as people outside complained, trust me there was a ton of internal dissent about this too. This was back before leaking for a political agenda became widespread in the Trump era.
Anyway, agree or disagree with the Real Names policy it presented a far larger problem. If some automated system decided your name was "fake" your entire account including Youtube, Gmail and so on got locked.
Whoever signed off on this was utterly insane and should've been fired. While we're at it, fire anybody who suggested it as being a good idea.
I remember looking for a photo storage solution for my sister at the time. Google Plus had unlimited storage but you had to "upgrade" your account to a Google Plus account. I, as a Google engineer, could not in good conscience recommend this approach because I had no idea what might trigger a global lock on her account.
Google Photos came from the wreckage of this shit show and is actually a good product. This happens when you start addressing user needs and concerns rather than trying to push your own agenda. What agenda? Google wanted a single account for everything where everyone was logged into search as this would allow search to be personalized (better). Or at least that was the theory. Larry talked a lot about the desire to get people signed in to Google search.
I'm utterly dependent on my Gmail address to the point where I probably won't use any future Google service just to diminish my risk of some new product triggering a global lockout, which as an ex-employee I now have limited ability to rectify.
Google should NEVER have taken the route of a global lock out. Trust is broken. So my chances of using this banking service is literally zero.
To me, this is stunning. IMO, Facebook beat MySpace because of their real name policy. However IMO this was because it enabled discoverability which got the network past a critical point. If I'm on a social network, I want to instantly know who friends and acquaintances are.
Saying "real names are good because I don't want to talk to someone with a silly screen name" is a complete misunderstanding of the product. It's not about the personal preferences of power users, it's about casual users being able to use the network reasonably efficiently.
Sure you can ask users to link accounts or whatever, that's part of the puzzle, but getting the network going is literally the problem you're trying to solve. Understanding how real names fit into the puzzle is pretty important.
I'm not stunned that you disagree with real names. I'm stunned that (apparently) no-one tried to convince you why it was a good idea beyond the preference of some hypothetical power-user.
As for global lock-outs ... yeah. Google isn't the only game in town, when it comes to email and data hosting. They're the only game in town when it comes to drunken comments on silly political videos (or my cat sitting on my keyboard as a livestream runs, or some accidental cut and paste error or whatever else will upset them). If I have to pick one, I'll keep watching Youtube and I'll take my serious business elsewhere, I hope Youtube is making a ton of money for them.
> Larry talked a lot about the desire to get people signed in to Google search.
I don't do that and still use the search engine from time to time. It is really annoying, since you have no control about settings, that could very well be controlled by a cookie.
Google just plainly started putting business interest above user interest. I even doubt the intention of wanting to provide a better service. Or at least not for the "customers" that visit the page to search.
The intention was pretty transparent from the start. And there is a reason this intent is probably only communicated internally.
I think the problem with Google is mainly the leadership, which changed profoundly with the success of Google in my opinion. Almost as if they don't even know why they were successful in the first place.
I've never thought of it that way. That's hilarious.
Reading this whole thread has made me realise I really need to at least back up my ~15 years of gmail emails somewhere else. I don't care much about the rest but that would be a killer.
Your own explanation of events reads like you tried to ignore a tax liability until you gave them no choice but to seize it. If you believed it was erroneous you should have worked with the State of Indiana to resolve the error (or create a payment plan saving $150 in fees).
Seizures are expensive for the state too. If you're working with them on the tax liability (inc. disputing it) they likely aren't going to go the seizure route as a first port of call.
I understand that a court of law is different, but that does not mean that the court has acted ethically or logically-- they have only acted officially.
If your money was stored non-digitally, it would be a bit more difficult to confiscate, such as if it were in a safe that I privately maintained offsite somewhere.
It's because I'm trying to understand the logic of those who feel like just because an action has been performed by a certain government, it therefore must be logical and ethical 100000% of the time.
I could point to examples of times where private organizations defied specific government orders because they felt the order was unjust, but I have a feeling this wouldn't be a sufficient argument for you.
Wow.
>It's because I'm trying to understand the logic of those who feel like just because an action has been performed by a certain government, it therefore must be logical and ethical 100000% of the time.
I literally never said that. Not once in any of these comments. Are you even replying to the right person?
>I could point to examples of times where private organizations defied specific government orders because they felt the order was unjust, but I have a feeling this wouldn't be a sufficient argument for you.
So, in your mind, Chase should perform their own investigation of this man's taxes before complying with the court order? This is really what you think?
Hey! That guy is in your restaurant. Hold him down before we get there. If you don't comply then you are in contempt.
honestly, have you thought through anything that you're saying? How do you imagine any of this could possibly work in the way you imagine? You literally expect every subject of a warrant to conduct their own internal investigation as to the validity of said warrant, even though they have absolutely no right to not comply.
it's so unreasonable that it's comical; I don't even know why I continue to respond. You live in a fantasy land.
Chase charged me $150 to rubber-stamp an illegal seizure of my account. They were entrusted with the funds and they seized them on behalf of a third party which had no legitimate claim to them.
Sounds like Chase stole my money—and charged me to do it.
Thanks for the warning and I will never do any business in state of Indiana.
They said above the state had a warrant. So they did what you wanted them to do, went to court, got a warrant and forced the bank via legal edict to hand over the money.
https://www.in.gov/judiciary/admin/2651.htm
It has problems:
https://cbs4indy.com/2019/08/15/state-automatically-issues-t...
https://www.theindychannel.com/news/call-6-investigators/cal...
You can also find tons of evidence of major tax warrant scams hitting Indiana. I wouldn't be surprised if Chase got a letter from the scammer, with a deposit account number, and a link to an official public tax warrant URL.
"Zero-burden-of-proof state government edict" describes the property tax bills every single homeowner gets in the mail and is expected to pay. Pay your taxes.
In this instance I had no tax liability whatsoever. Zero. No business operations whatsoever in or touching or with their state. Indiana invented numbers out of thin air. Most of a year later I got the money back from Indiana as they agreed on this point (after they skimmed about $1k for “collections fees” incurred as a result of their illegal seizure).
Chase was happy to oblige them with a rubber stamp.
Not even sure how to call google. Google Maps has issues with father in laws address. They also have some made up city name near where Ive lived on and off for 30 years, not a single person calls it that. Amazon hides their number or changes the location on their website frequently.
Someone was violating youtubes rules about posting repetitive comments. You can't post the same thing over and over on youtube without running into problems.
They ban entire accounts that are not paying. We've had reasonable (not great by any means) service with some of their paying products.
And paypal locked an account of mine for something like 10 years (based on nothing). Wasn't worth the fight, but was randomly contacted to claim my money oddly.
Your point on Paypal is valid, and people dealing with Google checking are making a risk calculation like people dealing with Paypal do (but of course, one would hope that over time, the offerings improve; Google entering this market new should be offering something better than Paypal).
Agreed though - if you are not paying and are the product in their system - then you are definitely at risk.
I have purchased a domain and used it to underpin a fastmail account; personally, I don't share in your line of reasoning and don't want to continue to trust Google.
1) The statement that google deleted someones accounts because they used emoji's in a comment or comments is 100% a lie. Let's be crystal clear about this.
2) If you aren't paying you are not the customer - you are the product. Is this not obvious to folks?
If you pee in google's pool they are going to kick you out. You don't make them much money (they make money on volume) and if you annoy lots of their other users and violate their written policies they have an economic incentive to eject you from their ecosystem. Every MINUTE they spend dealing with you is profit lost - so they are probably NOT going spend a lot of time dealing with you.
If you want control - buy your own domain and point it to where you want to. Or pay someone for email. Or do both, I think those are all great ideas.
But the lies about an emoji in a comment being the reason someone's account is banned are very annoying.