I’ve idiotically done this for a bunch of major services, including freaking medium.com, among many others. Can’t believe I’ve been so careless. Now I worry and wonder how hard it will be get back to regular email & password.
Customers seem, if anything, more angry about that though...
I had myself an account banned and I can assure you it's really totally random.
Considering how vital ones email account is today, it's time for laws that prevent providers from pulling stunts like this on your mail account, no matter whether it's free tier or not.
So, under a GDPR reasoning https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ do you have a right to a copy of your emails even if they have blocked your account? Unless they have deleted all your data I think it would be a yes.
The question is if they have to give you your emails if they still have them. I think it would be decided they would have to. It might be worth getting ready to be blocked, get blocked, and then demand the data to set the precedent actually. But I am lazy; the virtue of a programmer, the vice of a concerned citizenry.
Anybody can buy a domain for the price of two coffees and have full control over their email addresses. There is no excuse for being locked in by google. Even if somebody wants to use google's UI, the emails can be forwarded to google, and at the same time backed up somewhere else in case google shuts down the account.
If you consider how vital one's email account is today, it's time to put down some money.
*edit: Buying a domain often comes with an email service. There is no need to run a mailserver.
Not everyone can run an their own email server.
Having a domain and email address is as easy as: Buy the domain, log into the domain account, create an email address, done.
At that moment, you have an email address with a web UI to which you can log in as easy as to any other email provider.
But I do also understand the demographics of this site and why some people here would find that unpalatable.
the only control you have if you go the "own mail server" route is the control on your tears when you see that your mails are rejected by every other mail server in existence because you made it in some random blacklist
And if you're using your own domain, you're always able to switch providers by updating your mx records.
But I wouldn't ask my family to do that either, that's just something for tech enthusiasts and people that make their actual living by being reachable through mail (contractors etc)
[edit:] On the other hand, if one wants to run his own mail server:
From the last hn discussions about blacklists, I got the impression that [running your own mail server] is not an issue as long as you correctly navigate the anti-spam mechanisms. It's not obvious, but also not a black art.
I would rather be bothered by server security. Since email is so vital, how do you secure your server against recent vulnerabilities if you are offline, e.g. if you are on a vacation.
Similar argument: "Why do we even have doctors? Anyone can buy a medical textbook."
>You can start by using the mail service of the domain provider.
>From the last hn discussions about blacklists, I got the impression that ~this~ [running your own mail server] is not an issue as long as
I absolutely expect my doctor to be able to register his own domain in the same vein that my doctor expects me to not lick Corona infested door handles right now.
Registering a domain is like taking medicine. We expect everybody to be able to do it.
It's the building of domain management infrastructure, the software that sells domains to the users, that is out of reach for the doctor.
Similarly, I expect a barista to register a domain. It's not magic. If he has made his own Amazon, Netflix and Spotify account then he can make one more.
"provider", "lock-in", "domain", "UI", "mail server", "email service"
They have no idea that what you mention is even possible, let alone how to do it.
And you know because you've probably invested tens to hundreds of hours into figuring out these things.
Non-technical people still understand accounts: bank accounts, email accounts, netflix accounts, etc.
Those among the technical illiterate, who absolutely have no idea, have gotten their mail account with the help of somebody. Chances are that they are not stupid and understand the concept of accounts by now. If not, they can get a domain account with equal help.
The key concept is ownership. Whoever rents a property understands that he can be evicted. And most people who have bought a house also know that at first the bank owns it and that they could be evicted if they don't come up with their down payments. In other words: almost everybody understands that he can lose something if he doesn't own it.
So it is not a great leap to understand ownership of email addresses. Calling it difficult just allows people to safe face when in fact they just couldn't be bothered.
And non technical lawmakers are able to write effective laws?
I set up email with fastmail but I don't use it much. I assume people will look on them as some sort of vanity address.
I probably should migrate my most important logins to my domain email, though.
No.
> or confusing
Occasionally, with customer service phone reps. It's a good filter to identify people who are too low IQ to trust in general, so it's a great signal
I've pondered buying a domain that's not my name just to make it look like it's a normal email service, so it wouldn't look pretentious. But now it seems to me that a better solution would be to migrate all to Fastmail or Mailbox.org and have an alias ready for that use.
These horror stories of banned Google accounts destroy trust. They have lost my company's cloud business for that reason and I'm sure we're not the only ones.
Also, Google's sprawling empire is already in the crosshairs of regulators. Destroying people's livelihoods by applying draconian bans across personal and professional domains doesn't help.
That's a violation of that "assume stupidity instead of malice for as long as possible" rule.
Congratulations on being a better Internet user that the rest of the world! You are clearly very proud.
For the vast majority of people, their SaaS email (in most cases probably a Gmail account) is in fact their primary identity on the Internet, and that's not going to change because they wouldn't even know where to start looking for other options.
Before you say "that's their own fault for not knowing better", I would ask you: did you get your own medical degree so that you can handle all your own medical problems? What about a car? Did you build your own car? Do you have a law degree? Do you grow all your own food? Are you a licensed electrician? How about a food safety engineer? An architect? No? So you rely on established and proven products, systems and service providers for these things? Of course you do, because that's how society works.
Technology folks often forget that we happen to have specialized in a field that is now dominant and pervasive in everyday life, so we "get it" more than most, but that's not the case, sometimes not even an option, for most people..
Businesses should absolutely have the right to not let you use their services for any arbitrary reason! It's a free market! Sucks to be you!
</ sarcasm> ［Offer valid until the same thing happens to me, then I can scream and cry about it］
Did you build your own car? Are you asking us to compare building a car to using a gmail account. The comparison is did you build your own google mail provider. Very few have.
But most of us went to different dealships test drove different cars, looked up tech details and reviews. Reviewed recalls and decided for ourselves.
What kind of special degree do you feel you need to pick a different email provider?
And most people don't uses a sass. I would expect a slightly more tech enabled person to be using a sass (not too many grandmothers or average internet need a sass). Can those people figure out how to signed up without google if they want to? I would hope so. If your sass doesn't offer any other way to sign up it won't be around for too long anyhow.
If you are going to put everything under your google services for your saas pay a few dollars and get a business account if it's important to your business.
In which case they are in luck. There are a multitude of email-providers worldwide, and email is 100% transferable.
Many people for instance use Office 365. A similar SaaS, not Google, allowing you to digitally separate who you are from what you do.
> did you get your own medical degree so that you can handle all your own medical problems?
No. Absolutely not.
Nor did I once sign up for a medical check, pledging that I would for the rest of my life use this one medical facility only.
Do you know anyone who has ever done so? Ofcourse not, because that makes no sense.
And it should similarly make no sense to make such a move in the digital world, maybe there even less.
If you separate email (identity) from what you do (like using Google services), the worst Google can do is ban your ability to do business with Google, not your ability to do business at all.
As a business, why would anyone be stupid enough to take the risk and let Google have that ability?
Edit: As for being the most HN comment ever, how goes conflating email for Gmail and seemingly being unaware of there being other email-providers than Google? I mean, really?
Really? You think the average person can navigate changing all the services they signed up for with a Google account they've lost access to, and update it to a new account at a new provider?
Having helped a few non-technical but still very smart people do this over the years, I can tell you that for most people this would be way more daunting and painful than you believe.
> If you separate email (identity) from what you do (like using Google services), the worst Google can do is ban your ability to do business with Google, not your ability to do business at all.
You say this so casually, and that's my whole point. Most people wouldn't understand this distinction or even know where to start to actually do this.
You rely on your technical knowledge without even realizing it, to even understand the need or option to do this. Again, most people do not have this level of technical acumen. These are unknown unknowns for them.
I chose cars, health care, food and housing in my examples because they are day-to-day things for everyone that we all take for granted and don't deeply understand, and rely on experts to handle for us, but can't really live without. That's the Internet for most people.
You missed the point by splitting hairs and nit-picking the comparisons.
> As for being the most HN comment ever, how goes conflating email for Gmail and seemingly being unaware of there being other email-providers than Google? I mean, really?
This is now the second-most HN comment ever. ;-)
Are you familiar with existing fair practices, consumer rights, and consumer protections acts?
As far as email, create a domain name and use your own email address.
Free will is great isn’t it? Everything doesn’t require the nanny state to step in and solve all of your problems.
Dependencies create defacto requirements with the alternative of severe disadvantageous if opting out.
Corporations answer to shareholders, creditors, business partners, and management long before they do individual users. Who, in the case of Google aren't even direct customers (advertisers are). Representative governments answer, however imperfectly, to the governed.
Email self-provisioning has significant hurdles for even technically-competent individuals let alone the general public.
Your suggested alternatives ignore the problem and create more.
So now we are going to go down the whole “Minority Report* rabbithole and make laws just in case? You don’t tie your login infrastructure with Google, you use Oauth 2 and plugin any third party you wish.
Representative governments answer, however imperfectly, to the governed.
How well is that working out in the US between gerrymandering, the electoral vote having an opposite outcome than the popular vote, and how it is almost impossible to get rid of an incumbent?
Email self-provisioning has significant hurdles for even technically-competent individuals let alone the general public.
I didn’t say set up your own email server. I said create your own domain. You can create your own domain with your own email address with a few clicks on Godaddy. If you don’t like GoDaddy, there a dozens on other places that will transfer your MX record to them and you keep your own email address.
Regulations serve to create a common and uniform floor of service levels.
The problem with a strictly voluntaryist, free-market, laissez-faire approach is that it tends strongly to a Gresham's law "bad terms drive out good" race-to-the-bottm dynamic, particularly unfortunate when there is but one monopoly provider on the market.
This occurs well before reaching the far end of the slippery slope on which you seem to be perched.
Several of my earlier comments have been badly misapprehended, I'll not belabour them though I'll note the fact.
If people read the conditions of the free google account they realize that the service can be terminated at any time for any reason without warning, and there's absolutely nothing there about any corrective mechanisms.
Contrast this with terms of [especially national] domain name ownership.
Anyway, given the number of people who will give their data to such a service under such conditions, you may well be right that some regulation would be useful, especially around getting your data out in some short time period after account termination. (But only to holders of the valid authentication credentials.) Forced email address portability would be also nice (provider would have to forward incomming emails for a reasonable fee or for free), for some limited time, maybe a year.
It's all well and good for you - someone who's aware of the risks and issues - to say "just don't use Google/Facebook", but laws would protect the average person who just wants the quickest/easiest way to get an email account or to sign in to websites.
Also even if consumers were all highly educated in the pitfalls of Google etc., major websites still force you to use Google technologies whether you like it or not. Google Recaptcha is everywhere; eBay forces you to use it to sign in to your account. Are people now supposed "just don't use eBay" now as well?
Yes, if you don’t like the tradeoffs that eBay gives you - don’t use EBay. You can use Amazon, Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc. to sell and buy stuff.
You've gone off the rails here, mate.
You can also get to another website just as easily.
(0) https://www.cnet.com/news/some-senators-in-congress-capitol-... (1) https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9869308/donald-trump-clos...
How about you?
1. The average tenure of Senator or Representative in the US is steadily increasing. (https://www.termlimits.com/new-research-congressional-tenure...) and because of how much money it takes to win an election, it’s really hard to get rid of a member of Congress.
2. Because of how both the Electoral College was designed and the design of the Senate with 2 senators per state regardless of population, if you live in a more populous state, you have less voting power.
3. The more tenured Senators have more power and they have the power to block legislation. The people of the state where the leaders live are the only ones that can oust the Senate leaders.
4. Most rules aren’t done by legislators they are done by committees led by Presidential appointees who are approved by the Senate - again appointments can be blocked by the leaders of the Senate. Many of their policies are approved and struck down by unelected judges.
5. Then there is always gerrymandering.
6. You really don’t believe politicians - many of whom basically did insider trading pre-Covid - are greedy rich people? The President himself is a billionaire.
Could you point out where I said that? Please don't put words into my mouth just to "win" a discussion. That's pretty cheap.
So the alternative between trusting greedy rich people who both don’t have the power of the state, and I can choose to use alternatives, is to trust greedy rich people with the power of the state - most of which I have no power to get rid of because a) they aren’t in my district, b) the alternatives don’t have the money to get elected, and c) get elected by the flyover states because they have two senators just like the more populous states
Say I accidentally trip off something in their opaque machine learning algorithm that determines my extension (or even a YouTube comment!) breaks their terms of service. They would have the right to completely block my account and remove the extension. Effectively, wiping out how I make a living with a single automated bit flip.
It hasn't happened to me, but the people that share horror stories of how it happened to them scares the $#!7 out of me.
As the Internet gets more privatized and less "open", I just wish there was something that required a fair "trial" of my account being suspended. The balance of power online is slowly shifting and I feel there needs to be something protecting the rights of individuals (the public) online.
I have a google account, but I only use it for signins to places I could easily create other means of signing in.
If its for a place I know I want to always have access to and never have to worry about re-creating then I use my personal email.
Google SSO is a convenience only. The world will go on without google and you can certainly use the internet without having a google accout
Especially when that service is free and effectively anonymous, it's just not possible to give each case a full and fair hearing. You know that you'll get false negatives and false positives. You can try to minimize them, but actual justice is expensive. Too expensive to pay for with ad sales, that's for sure.
You never know when they change policies and some automated bot kills your account for it, years from now.