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Comment by ShivShankaran | Hacker News Reader

It is well known that if Google bans your account it will ban any "related" account and that includes your immediate family including your spouse, parents, children and your official job/startup.

I never understood this bizarre behaviour from Google. My colleagues got a taste of it when they shared their laptop and one of them had a banned account.

It was a defence project and the work computers were not allowed to have internet. One common computer away from work area and in a different lan was a designated internet computer. Unfortunately one dev with a banned account set a chain reaction of getting everyone else banned.

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> It is well known that if Google bans your account it will ban any "related" account and that includes your immediate family including your spouse, parents, children and your official job/startup.

I find this behavior terrifying. Destroying people's accounts just for having the same blood as someone deemed ban-able.

Guilt by association taken to the extreme

This sounds like a potent weapon. Figure out a way to share computer with your enemies / competitors and then get them banned by association.

Did their accounts end up permanently banned or could they recover them? Seems like something that could actually be abused if not. A weaponized banned Google account on a laptop. A laptop with cooties. The seven generations punishment.

I'm no longer doing android development, thankfully (never again!) -- I don't relish the thought of having to ask house guests if they or anyone they know have ever been banned from Google. I don't understand how Google can staff up their Play store with engineers given this keeps happening.

And we thought checking on COVID status was a problem, imagine if we now have to ask if someone has received a Google VAX

Maybe this is the key to actually getting Google to fix this. Weaponize Google bans to the point it's unsustainable for their business.

It is unfortunate that this will eventually happen

They are weaponised already unfortunately. There are HN stories of competitors reporting devs/apps and them getting irrevocably banned without a platform to complain on/to. I used to like/defend Google, but they keep disappointing.

I even have Google-anxiety and am considering moving everything away before it becomes too late

> Did their accounts end up permanently banned or could they recover them?

How could they recover them? The only support Google offers for situations like this is write a sob story on social media, and hope it gets enough traction that a Google employee intervenes.

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