Google Plus Deleting Accounts En Masse: No Clear Answers | Hacker News Reader

Google Plus Deleting Accounts En Masse: No Clear Answers

zdnet.com

174 pointsdotBen111 comments

I use Google for everything from Google Apps to Google Voice. Given this recent behaviour of Google, I'm doing something wrong.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to do the following:

1) Transition my gmail account over to a domain I own. I'll email everyone I know, and change all my known addresses. Thankfully, Google lets me connect via IMAP to retrieve all of this.

2) Move my Google Voice number to my VOIP carrier. The directions are here: http://kevinpaffrath.com/2011/06/22/port-number-google-voice...

Life is too short to worry about when Google will delete your account for silly reasons.

> Life is too short to worry about when Google will delete your account for silly reasons.

which is exactly what you're doing...

He won't be after he migrates his stuff. That strikes me as entirely reasonable precautionary action.

Is there a good alternative to Google Voice? I want an online voicemail service and call forwarding for when I travel.

voxox.com - free

youmail.com - free?

phonebooth.com - $20/month

ringcentral.com - $20/month

line2.com - $10-15/month

3jam.com - $5/month

I self-host openvbx which is a pretty nice application running on the twillio.com service.

OpenVBX looks quite good.

I use Youmail for voicemail and have been really happy with it. I pay the $20/year or whatever it is for a paid account.

Also, the paid transcription they have is much much MUCH better than what is offered by Google Voice... (disclaimer: I actually use PhoneTag still, not YouMail, but both PhoneTag and YouMail have assured me that YouMail's new transcription feature uses PhoneTag's backend, due to their partnership to provide this service).

I've been happy with Youmail's free and paid services. I paid when I needed voicemail transcriptions. Right now I'm using the free voicemail service.

Every time I see these posts with alarmists giving bullet-lists of things they are "going to do", it sounds a lot to me like they are trying to threaten Google.

Just so you're not surprised and disappointed later, I'll let you in on a secret- they don't care. Even besides the part where they are Google, I have witnessed a long history of complaints to different companies, and the more false bravado and chest- and/or drum-beating you display, the less they care about you.

I get your point, but I don't think that is what he is doing. Sending an angry email to Google listing all these points would be an example of chest thumping, and your right, Google doesn't care. I interpreted his comments more as "I need to look out for my own best interests."

If someone has the technical know how and monetary resources to have more control over their email and phone service, then why not do it. For some people it's great to just use what Google provides. It's relatively simple and is free, but you are at the mercy of whatever new policies they might put in place. Also, it is purportedly very difficult to get any kind of customer service from Google, so if your account is deleted, you might be out of luck. Google doesn't care, but for an individual it could be a huge deal to all of the sudden be cut off from multiple means of communication. If this guy doesn't want to take that risk, what's the problem with that?

You sir, aren't thinking things through. If you want to risk losing critically important emails because google decided it didn't like your google+ picture, you be my guest.

I for one am deleting my g+ account until they fix all this garbage. If they don't, then I won't use it, simple as that. I'm using it for fun, I don't really need it (everyone's on facebook).

BTW, let me know if you ever run any companies, I want to know who to short and what software not to use.

And you sir, are shockingly bitter. That's an uncalled for level of hate.

Really, you're shocked at a hostile reaction when you accuse someone of "false bravado and chest- and/or drum-beating" in a post dripping with condescension? If you're going to dish it out...

I consider one an accusation and one more of an attack, but you are correct, I was being condescending (I grow oh-so-tired of those posts) If they really are equal I suppose I shall rest.

I don't think silverstorms aim was to offend, rather he was trying to explain an interesting phenomenon and perhaps accidentally offended. jdunlop's statement, on the other hand seemed designed to offend.

Grow up or GTFO, HN is a place for adults. If someone is impolite, your response shouldn't be a trollish immature response.

If your life is so grossly devastated by a google action then you're an idiot. All my data on google is backed up multiple times, because I'm a responsible adult and want to ensure the safety of my data. I don't trust google simply because it's google. They're a mega corp that's going to ditch you, screw you and abuse you for a penny if they can.

As I said, it's time for people to grow up or get out.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation."

Just so you know, when you say "tell me if you ever start a company, so I can know to short it", you're inadvertently paying someone a gigantic compliment. It takes some of the fire out of flamey comment when its premise is that your adversary is going to take a company public.

If someone owes the bank $1,000, it is that person's problem. If 1,000 people owe the bank $1,000,000 each, it is the bank's problem.

In much the same way, if one user gets upset and stops using Google or Facebook, it is the user's loss, but if millions of users do it, the company is in trouble.

That doesn’t seem to be true. Even Apple, for example, will often change their behavior, especially after much vitriol is directed at them. I don’t know whether it’s the vitriol or the nice constructive feedback (there is certainly always going to be some of that mixed in) that causes them to change but I see no indication whatsoever that vitriolic and loud criticism would make them shy away from changing things.

I think it would be an exceedingly bad policy for companies to ignore that kind of feedback. It’s valuable and it should inform decisions. That doesn’t mean that every vitriolic comment deserves a response, but flat out ignoring it – on principle and not because what is said is a wrong argument[1] – would be stupid.

On an emotional level I can understand not wanting to react to that kind of criticism. I probably wouldn’t want to if it were directed at me as an individual. But as a company? I think I would have to[2].

[1] And if there is no argument and only insults the company should do their best to find out what the underlying reasons are.

[2] I’m obviously talking about feedback on an aggregate level. The company should try and identify common patterns in the feedback they receive.

I dont think he's telling Google what he's going to do, i thnk he's telling us, encouraging others to do the same. And you know what? I think I'll be doing the same.

> Just so you're not surprised and disappointed later, I'll let you in on a secret- they don't care.

EXACTLY! They don't care. That's why you have to care. Otherwise, who's looking out for you?

Okay, they don't care - sounds like even more of a reason to take he above course of action, no? I don't get the impression it was supposed to be intimidating for Google.

I don't think this is recent at all: this has been going forever. It just happened most recently to someone with a love of spamming the Internet (which is why his gmail was disabled, apparently), and we all heard about this. Combined with ladyada and Skud, it seems like this is happening a lot. But it's three cases out of millions of users.

Define forever, becuase in my books Google+ is only a month old... and I use have used other Google services for a long time with fake names for online gaming... as do many others I've gmaed with (giving out personal information isn't desirable at all when gaming online). The first I heard of accounts banned was people trying to activate Google+ for gaming accounts.

"But it's three cases out of millions of users"

Are you saying that only three accounts have been suspended? I'm assuming not, but that's what your words mean. Hard to take the point seriously after that.

Considering there are hundreds of millions of Gmail accounts, that statement may be pretty accurate.

If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. In this case, a product Google no longer wants to sell.

I've lost count of how many times I've seen statements about users being products on here. Can we please stop reciting platitudes?

Obviously Google would care if they annoyed enough users to lose ad revenue, or tarnish their reputation. The real argument is about whether the fraction they are annoying is small or otherwise irrelevant.

1) Transition my gmail account over to a domain I own. I'll email everyone I know, and change all my known addresses. Thankfully, Google lets me connect via IMAP to retrieve all of this.

How do you plan doing that as I'd like to do the same.

can't speak for tshtf, but yesterday I just put my gmail details in Mail an it spent most of the night donwloading my entire gmail history. I'm a bit more comfortable knowing I now have a local copy

Good post would have been: "What I have done: ..."

Of course, why be vulnerable? Back up your stuff, and be self reliant and as independent as possible. Sound principles regardless of whomever else is doing anything.

I don't think accounts are deleted, if you read the article it only talks about suspension (of the Google+ profile).

that's because Google doesn't delete things...they just issue a permanent non-revocable suspension.

The whole real name thing was the deal killer for me. The last thing I need is more crap that will be stored forever, probably sold, analyzed, run through a bunch of machine learning algorithms and used to give me a multitude of bayesian probabilities forever and ever with my real name attached. The whole thing is just creepy. Google + isn't a financial institution or a military contractor. Why do they need to identify everybody so precisely?

I think the main purpose would be for Google to target ads very specifically like facebook does now.

to prevent spam bots.

I don't see how that prevents spam bots better than a "don't be a spam bot" policy. Plenty of spam bots with real sounding names follow me twitter.

Technically, they ask that your display name is what your "friends, family, and coworkers" call you. To an extent I find it odd that somebody thinks that all three of those groups would necessarily call you the same thing.

My google+ profile name is a nickname that my close friends and family would recognize but that none of my coworkers would. (Same with facebook, incidentally)

I agree with you though. Nobody on the Internet but my bank really needs my real name.

Do you use a credit card for anything?

I don't find Google+ any significant improvement over Twitter or Facebook. That is, in the larger sense it's a mildly amusing diversion and not at all something I'd miss if it disappeared.

Losing access to my GMail account, on the other hand, would be painful. The thing that's worrisome about this is that you really have no recourse if Google's automated systems mess up. For example, I've completely lost access to a Google Apps account I set up for another domain I own, and many other people have complained of similar problems on their support forum to no avail.

It's a good idea to own the domain that you run your email on. Whether you run your own server, use Google's services, or whatever other service you want doesn't matter anymore -- if something goes wrong, you can transition the implementation without losing your identity.

How long are people going to tolerate the tyranny of large companies controlling social interaction? Google+ has all kinds of terms of service that I find infringing of free speech. Facebook has their own terms.

I think we need to stop being sharecroppers and serfs and develop social network solutions that are distributed and open, or at least encourage the projects that are working on it already.

The amount of press Google has been getting seemed like a consumerist distraction from fundamental problems, until the past few days. Now we see they are just the new monarchy, same as the old monarchy. Heads are rolling and maybe people will question these systemic issues.

Everytime I see someone referencing "free speech" in a way that makes it painfully obvious they skipped over the words "CONGRESS shall make no laws restricting..." I want to bang my head against a wall.

Google is a company, a company that's providing you a service free of charge. They are 100% within their right to tell you how not to use their product.

Freedom of speech is a basic human right, not a privilege granted by governments. When companies stifle speech, it's immoral even if it is legal. However, I think I made it clear that I am talking about not allowing companies to control speech by adopting a social network system that is decentralized.

If you're in my house and say things that I don't like, it's not immoral for me to kick you out. You can go say what you like outside. It's similar to companies allowing you to post your opinion on their service. If they don't like what you're saying, they have every right to make you leave.

Thank you for the analogy. I think I overstated my case in a way that sounds too general. I disagree with Google's terms of service. They impose restrictions that could limit productive discussion. They have control over identity I think is unreasonable. The concepts of social networks, online discussion, and identity seem like too big of a deal to let particular companies control them.

To me, free speech is not just a law, but also an ideal that society should aspire to. When the government was the only entity that could realistically restrict your speech, the old laws were enough. But today there exist new powerful entities that can restrict everyone's speech, harming society about as much as a bona fide government restriction would, and they don't even have to consult the representatives of the public beforehand.

An analogy: if the government were the only employer in the country, then it would make sense to make anti-discrimination laws that only forbid discrimination by the government. Then times would change, private companies would begin to employ people, and something like your argument would be used to defend allowing private companies to discriminate.

If tomorrow Google, Facebook and Twitter announce that they're going to jointly ban any speech criticizing penguins, that will sound like an attack on free speech to me. Even worse if they install automatic filters in their chat clients, to block you if you badmouth penguins while talking to your friend privately. Even worse if cellphone companies join suit and begin filtering text messages. Even though all of these are private companies that are 100% within their rights.

Rigorous enforcement of property rights to the exclusion of all else just isn't enough to make society pleasant to live in. They need to be balanced out with right-of-way laws, fair-use laws, antitrust laws, all sorts of regulations to ensure that the big guy doesn't use his power to make the little guy worse off.

Nothing about Google is free.

It's a trade between your time + data + your eye balls ... and their datamining and ads.

Where do you think the billions of dollars of profit come from?

You're the product (in the form of ad clicks) that google sells to it's customers (the AdWords account holders).

You know there is more to free speech than some words in the American constitution, right? A company can absolutely curtail someone's freedom of speech, it just isn't against the law for them to do so (usually).

So save your indignation for when someone suggests otherwise.

There is more to the concept of free speech than one country's law.

Americans that thing that "free speech" is conceptually the same as the first amendment make me want to bang my head against a wall.

I use gmail, but I use it as me@mydomain.com. If they ever suspend/destroy me, at most I'll lose a few emails before I point my domain elsewhere. I already maintain an account at fastmail.fm for the few times that gmails smtp has gone down; they are responsive and I've had email conversations with them a few times.

I also use thunderbird and have it automatically save the All Mail folder.

Given the years of monolithic indifference shown by Google, I don't know why anyone with the awareness and ability to use their own domain for email doesn't do so. It would be terrible to have your identity yanked from you; I think that's worse than losing copies of emails that you'll probably never look at anyway.

Google's lack of real customer service is why I decided to move all of my google app domains over to fastmail.fm -- I'd much rather pay for a service and have a person I can talk to when there is a problem.

I guess I'm lucky that I decided to setup my G+ profile with my real name instead of using the actual gmail name I picked.

Google has great customer service.

Your misunderstanding lays with the fact you are assuming you are the customer, when in fact you (as the user) are the product (your data) being sold (via ad sense automation).

So put simply "if they are not receiving money off you are not the customer".

Your relationship is a raw resource exchange of your data with the payment of free services from them. In a sense they are farming you.

I've paid for google apps for domains in the past and the service has been barely better than when I was using the free version, so while you point is valid, the statement that google customer service is lacking for many paying customers is also true.

Fair enough, I've seen some really good service from the ad sense guys, maybe its jsut the team I dealt with I don't know.

I've never payed for Google Apps so didn't comment on it, and also didn't want to muddy my point as there is a definite grey area with a lot of Google uses in terms of thigns like blogger which make users also customers.

I suspect the reason Google wants your real name is to match it with credit headers. And before anyone calls me a tin-foiler please read the following and understand that I work in the industry. I'm not making a judgment call one way or the other as to whether this is "right" or not.

For those that don't know a credit header is information in a credit report that gives identifying information about a person. Credit headers contain:

Name, AKA's, Maiden Name, Date of Birth, Social Security Number and Issuing State, Relatives, along with Current and Previous Addresses which can go back 25+ years.

Credit headers have been ruled as to NOT be part of a credit report:

http://epic.org/privacy/fcra/

<blockquote>A credit header is identifying information from a credit report. It includes name, mother's maiden name, date of birth, sex, address, prior addresses, telephone number, and the Social Security Number.

Credit headers came into use after the FTC changed its definition of a credit report in the course of settling a case against TRW (now Experian). The FTC allowed the CRAs to treat headers as "above the line" information and to sell it with no legal protections for the individual. The reasoning was that this information did not relate to credit, and thus should not be considered part of the credit report.

Credit headers are used for location of individuals and for target marketing. They are sold in bulk by the CRAs and can be purchased online.</blockquote>

Google can simply take your IP address, trace it back and then run your name against the header database to locate individuals in your area with that name. The more unique your name the easier you are to identify. If you have a common name it would be further cross-referenced with other information like relative names or maiden names. Once identified they have your complete life history.

There are more countries in the world.

And? Why would that stop them from getting this information and matching it? Are you saying because this information isn't available all over the world they wouldn't collect it it in the U.S.? The U.S. is the biggest consumer market in the world.

What do you think they could achieve (monetarily) having a personal history attached to a social account? I can tell you the first thing I'd do is determine your influence. I could take your addresses/family addresses and reasonably determine what kind of spending power you have based upon cross referencing your address with tax information. On top of that I don't have to necessarily know about you in another country. I can simply define the influence of an individual here and you may end up in their circle of influence. Imagine a person that's been voted as highly influential in said system and they communicate with you on a regular basis. From that I could infer that you are also potentially influential.

Other countries have similar systems. The information may not be as freely available but it's there. It just needs to be harvested.

For example, one of the biggest sources of relative information is obituaries. Something that is freely printed all over the place.

This reminds me of when Google gained registrar status in 2005:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-strategy/2005/02/02/google-ga...

The more information they have access to, well ...

Amazing. Google finally starts to make big advances in the coveted social arena only to shoot themselves in the foot.

> It is not a simple matter of using a “real name” - as much of a problematic grey area as that is. Another person cited in my Google+ article has now had their account deleted for the simple reason that they were using Gmail and Google+ with multiple account sign-in:

Does this mean I can actually get banned for using more than one GMail account? What the fuck?

No. It's a 2nd hand unconfirmed hypothesis, that is how panic spreads.

No, it doesn't.

> Does this mean I can actually get banned for using more than one GMail account?

If this were the case they wouldn't have [recently ?] allowed people to stay signed into several accounts at once.

While I don't believe the google account deletion hysterics I did setup dove cot imap to trial hosting my own email. On friday I got an unshakable feeling of keeping all my eggs in one basket. squirrel mail is no gmail replacement but it's good enough so far, and I read mostly via imap

I managed my own email sever for a long time but eventually grew tired of fighting spam. Unfortunately spam is so rampant now that you're going to have to devote a lot of personal attention to do 1/10th as good a job as GMail to fight it.

apt-get install postgrey

That's really all I do...

Admittedly it's been a few years since I did this. Maybe it's gotten easier.

What about other mail servers rejecting mail originating from your server? I had a lot of trouble with that too.

make sure you have a valid MX record and make sure the ip you get is not in a blocked segment in the major spam lists. You might need to do some work.

You can use Gmail with your own domain. That way, it's easy to switch if this ever happens (just a matter of updating some DNS records).

Squirrel mail is neither the easiest to setup, nor the most feature rich. Just saying, it doesn't have to be all or nothing.

its still not gmail, but i use http://roundcube.net/

I really like Google but they lack of human interaction when there is a problem is troubling.

Deep rooted in the way they do hiring interviews in the first place maybe? Look like they target heavy cold problem solving people, can it get them conflict-solving people?

Well it was fun while it lasted. If they delete my account, I'm not going to lose much sleep over it since 95% of the people I interact with are on Twitter or Facebook. None of them have Google+ accounts yet.

Easy come, easy go.

The bottom line is that you need to own and control your identity online. You can't leave it in the hands of others if you gain significant value from your identity. Most people don't gain much value from their identity, but those that do need to own and control it.

I agree and I don't limit it to online, but real life as well. The idea that a person's identity is something to be granted, approved of, regulated or controlled by corporations and governments is outrageous, offensive, and to be resisted with all necessary force. My identity is my own.

NSA told Google they want real names only.

Proofs?

As someone else remarked, if you think that your online identity has some value then you really need to own it yourself. Giving the keys to your identity to Google or anyone else potentially gives them a lot of leverage over you.

If you're using Google accounts for any business related activities then you're risking the chance that some bot implementing a set of dodgy heuristics and with no real accountability can shut down your operations at any time (see http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_...)

So if I use 'Mithrandir' as my name, I could get banned?

Yes. One-word names seem to be one of the targets for suspended. Plenty of the pseudonyms that have gotten banned have well-known existences at other sites. After appealing you might be able to get it reinstated but there have been a lot of complaints about the process as well.

Interesting. I got banned when using a pseudonym that I usually use in video games. It was 2 words (first name last name) so it shouldn't have come up as some 1 word spam/business account (which seems to be what they are targeting for the bans). The account was also active, with me interacting with lots of real-life friends.

Oh well, never really planned on using Google+ in the first place.

Does anyone miss the pre-facebook days of online social networking where people mostly used aliases other than their real names?

Back then, we actually networked and found like-minded people or new friends through the tool. Now, we wait until we meet someone in real life, then find and friend them on the tool.

Why does the headline say "no clear answers"? It seems obvious they are suspending accounts that have a fake name (including quoted nicknames). Whether you agree with this policy is another matter, of course.

Well, we need not look any further than Hacker News to see how using pseudonyms only hurts interactions behind a veil of anonymity.

These scary posts got me yearning to commit Google+ suicide to minimize risk. I don't want to play high stakes with my Gmail account because I don't seem "real" enough to an algorithm. What's next shutting you down because your friends don't seem real enough?

Google's problem with customers is they come down on you pretty hard and give you little recourse. It's Kafka-esque unless you're a big ad account holder or minor celebrity.

Next up Google+ vs the Scoble brigade.

Why not use a name which sounds like a real name but isn't yours? I'm doing so very successfully ;) ...

that's a mistake.

eventually you'll have to login into your Gmail or Analytics where you gave your real name. Google will then cross reference your IP and notice that the information they have on file is fake. So they'll suspend all of your accounts.

I haven't had that trouble so far. But, also, I have a dynamic IP, and I think I'm behind a couple layers of NAT.

interesting to see such a big company fail early, fail fast... advice startups are often given (and should take)... they're not perfect, but at least now they're in the game.

When I played American Army a while back I was placed in jail for a cool down period when I hit one of my own team mates. Seems like Google ought to do the same thing, sweep the accounts looking for red flags and place into limbo. Write a program (I think Google knows how to do this) to globally communicate the best bet for correcting the red flags and reinstating when acceptable. It's good customer service, and could be a good startup idea. You solve the issue and in turn get loyal customers. Now all I need is two good programmers.

Is there much evidence that this isn't largely a rampaging set of over-enthusiastic rule-enforcing bots, or an exploit being spread, or something non-malicious? It seems like people are leaping to conclusions, assuming Google has just now assigned some incredible amount of (stupid) employees to go around and wield the ban-hammer.

Why the wait? Why so many at once? It feels more to me like an error than something intentional.

shame..no better than facebook..

As a change of pace from the usual pattern of comments on a 'someone got their account suspended' post I would like to offer a practical solution:

Why not provide an optional pseudonym filed? that way you have the real name to enable searching for people within the service and users can use their desired display name.

In fact, there is a nickname field in the Google Profile page. However, it seems that this field, even if public, is not displayed anywhere or used when searching for people.

So let me get this straight Google: I can have a Google+ account for my business, but I can't have one for my pseudonym?

I guess my paranoia pays out for once ;) I joined G+ with a throwaway google account.

I believe I have woken up in an alternate universe today.

Since when are random Google engineers so absurdly popular that a G+ account suspension is even noticed, let alone reacted to with a flood of tweets, emails, etc?

Being a Google engineer appears to confer a seat at the popular kids' table, now.

Skud was actually Internet-famous before being a Google engineer - she was pretty well-known in the Perl and open-source communities before joining Google as part of the Metaweb acquisition:

http://www.oscon.com/oscon2009/public/schedule/detail/10173

http://search.cpan.org/~skud/

She wasn't actually at Google all that long - hell, I'm more senior than she was, but I doubt anyone would notice if my G+ account disappeared, because I don't really put myself out there on the Internet (besides HN).

Skud was actually Internet-famous before being a Google engineer

Hell, Skud was Internet-famous before Google existed

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