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Comment by zero-sharp | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered about this. What happens if one of the big tech companies makes a mistake and closes your account? LinkedIn is pretty important nowadays when searching for work. Would you be able to make a new account? If not, that seems like a pretty big deal. Same concern with your email, or any of the other big services that we usually depend on. If I just suddenly lost my gmail, I would probably lose access to external accounts and other important data, which could be crippling.

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This happens regularly (perhaps not frequently) to people with their Gmail account. Google's AI says no, and there are very few people reporting successfully navigating the system to get their account back. This is one of the anti-google arguments, the other main one being they kill big projects all the time.

You are right though, it can be crippling, and this thinking part of your personal (and business) risk profile. Ideally your email is at least tied to a domain name you separately own. That way, if your Google/MSFT/Apple/whatever account gets blocked, you can switch over the email to another provider and still get access.

* edit to add: I don't know if this is more a Google thing than other companies, I was just heavily invested in the Google ecosystem and have researched these issues specifically with Google, leading to me ensuring I'm not as reliant on them as I used to be. I figure now I have about a full days worth of hassle if all my google stuff gets blocked, but otherwise I'm recoverable.

I lost access to a Google account almost a decade ago; trying to get it back was one massive Kafka trap. Every few years I go back and try navigating the Kafka trap again hoping against hope for better results. But I’m still locked out.

It’s particularly frustrating because IMAP is setup for it into another google account, so I can still send and receive email from the address but I’m fully locked out of the service.

Some precious files were in that account from childhood.

How did you lose the account? Was there a reason from Google?

I once had a functional bug where a MFA recovery email would receive the token, but the system would flag any further steps as ‘suspicious activity’. I also had an active gmail session via thunderbird, so I could easily have proven my claims legitimacy if required. Alas, there is no concept of support at google.

I feel no reason short of a mandate from a judge is so good to allow Google (edit: or any other tech company, really) to completely lock someone out of their personal data. Give them a takeout link and send them on their way, at least.

>I feel no reason short of a mandate from a judge is so good to allow Google (edit: or any other tech company, really) to completely lock someone out of their personal data.

Yes. It's a travesty. And those who work at those tech companies should be ashamed to be associated with such behavior.

That said, if your data isn't hosted (even if just as a backup) on your hardware, it isn't your data.

If someone else is hosting your data then it doesn't belong to you, unless you have a strong copyright claim, and the money to pay lawyers to litigate such a claim.

I lost access to a YouTube account, which had my gaming videos, when they went all in on Google Plus. Somehow they messed it up and I couldn't get through the recovery process. I remember I was forced to change my password and then I could no longer log in. After that I decided I would never make a new YouTube channel again.

Just create a Hacker News post and hope it goes viral and then some Google employees will unlock it for you ;)

The official Google support channel: Social outrage in online communities. If you cannot generate it, you are not worthy enough of eing treated fairly, worm!

1. Pay for one.google.com using a secondary account

2. Add your former account to your family

3. Accept the Google One invite through IMAP

4. Contact Google One support from your secondary account

Hope this helps

I had my YouTube account banned because I changed the channel name into something that trigged their AI. Maybe it was that I’ve never uploaded a video or written a comment? Who knows. Anyway I was fully expecting to have lost my account (and my playlists) forever based on the bad reputation Google has, but when I clicked the “do you disagree with this” appeal thing it took very little time to have my account restored.

This is very anecdotal, and Google’s automated process is probably as horrible as it’s generally made out to be. It was just so surprising to me that it wasn’t, that I thought I would share it.

YouTube refused to let me create an account (after some trial and error) with the word "angry" in the channel name.

I have "angry" in my channel name, anecdotally. So it could have been something else.

Depends, what date did you create that channel, they may have changed rules since.

Probably two years ago or so.

The problem is the rules aren't specified, if you fall afoul of a rule you do not get told which rule it is, and the rules are AI-based decisions that are hard to even understand. If the process was transparent, it would be a lot easier to deal with.

I understood that, and I was trying to help reverse-engineer what might have changed.

All I know is that when I took that word out it let me create the account. This was somewhere around the same time as your account creation. It might be more complicated than that, but I'm not about to try and reverse-engineer it.

Oh I believe you, was more commenting on the uncertainty of all of it.

Comment moderation is also a shitshow, my comments routinely get silently deleted (or worse: shadowbanned).

And the most ridiculous in this, is how they get deleted/banned a LOT more if you use YouTube's own syntax for time-links ! (Maybe the automatic moderation system thinks these are external links or something?!?)

> This happens regularly (perhaps not frequently) to people with their Gmail account.

this should be regulated. For example, electricity/utility companies cannot just abruptly close your account, without giving massive notice in advance, and justified reason (such as non-payment).

The internet has become utilities, and it's not just the pipe, but the monopoly applications on it such as email, etc. Being deplatformed unjustly has as bad an effect as being disconnected from the grid and utilities. This means the gov't needs to make sure this can only happen under regulated ways, and not at the whims of the company.

Well, thankfully, you cannot be deplatformed from e-mail, since it's a protocol, not platform.

Both Google Mail and Microsoft Outlook could keep your e-mails from being delivered to people who still have an e-mail with them (and vice-versa, but if it got that bad,would you still be willing to keep in touch with the people, and do business with the companies willing to put up with that ?

> This happens regularly (perhaps not frequently) to people with their Gmail account. Google's AI says no, and there are very few people reporting successfully navigating the system to get their account back.

Yep, happened to me too. I have a gmail account from back when gmail was still in private beta. I know the correct password. I have access to the recovery email. I can't log in.

NEVER depend on Google for anything critical. If you're unlucky you'll get completely screwed over, and you won't be able to do anything about it.

My linkedin account got taken over a couple months ago. The attacker changed the phone number and immediately added 2FA, but they didn’t control my email. During account recovery LinkedIn suspended the account and asks for ID verification, through a 3p vendor who do government id verification. That passed and LinkedIn said I could login and reset, but it still stayed suspended and asked for id again. My guess is they drowned in complexity in their own recovery flow and I hit an edge case or something.

You get excluded from society I think.

It's pretty bad. I filled out a job application the other day (for Bunq) and they said "gmail preferred". So much for using my own domain!

I applied for an accelerator and they refused to let you proceed without using a Google account.

I was banned from selling on Amazon 14 years ago because someone who had lived in my apartment before me was shady. I'm still banned and they give no recourse.

This happens all the time, usually the service provider blocks the account, denies any error and refuses to reopen it, citing its terms of use (which provide for unmotivated account closure).

The idea is that losing a user costs infinitely less than legal fees, so when in doubt they pull the plug. I had direct confirmation from a gafam employee

There are many stories of paediatricians, healthcare professionals or parents wrongfully accused of paedophilia. They never got their accounts back.

I advised an association to buy a domain name and a paid email service and not to rely on Gmail. They didn't listen to me, and two years later Google cut off the account for sending spam or some other similar reason. They lost all contact emails with their suppliers, their accounting, invoices, etc. ...

Don't expect anything from the customer service of a free service. You are the product, not the customer. They will throw you out like rotten fruit at the slightest problem.

> LinkedIn is pretty important nowadays when searching for work.

This is only true if people repeat it and believe it to be true.

Ok. So if you’re locked out of linkedin, now all you need to do is change the hundreds of thousands of other LinkedIn users to change their mindset instead of pleading with LinkedIn themselves to restore your access.

>This is only true if people repeat it and believe it to be true.

Which they do.

Particularly, employers.

Well, you can think about it like a filter for bad jobs : as a hacker, why would you want to work for an employer that uses a Microsoft platform ?

>bad jobs

>Microsoft platform

Are you 13, and living in the year 1999?

>as a hacker, why would you want to work for an employer that uses a Microsoft platform ?

Because I want to work in organizations like NASA.

Out in the real world, people care about what gets things done more than what the FOSS community thinks about that choice.

And recruiters will use whatever platform that will allow them to find the right people.

Your definition of "bad jobs" excludes any job that matters (or pays).

Yep, it would be a huge mess. This is what lead me to switch to Fastmail. If it's _essential_, it's probably worth paying for to ensure you have real support.

It just so happens that Fastmail is also puts out an excellent product.

Fastmail is excellent, but for business purpose… they lack Google Docs, Meet, Drive, Chrome (so you have to create a Google account anyway if you want to save your Chrome bookmarks) and being the major SSO provider on the market.

I use Fastmail and Firefox sync and it works fine... Mostly because email has nothing to do with bookmarks except for Google trying to force it to.

So? Use Google for those, it doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Separation of concerns is a positive, in my book - I don't want my personal email to be mixed up in my file storage and document creation. I guess I'm old school like that.

> What happens if one of the big tech companies makes a mistake and closes your account?

I think most people would be... just fine? Personally I'm from a culture that is very distrusting of those big platforms anyways, so people are even less likely to rely on them. If my mom lost access to her google account she would be fine, my dad wouldn't notice (he has been using his own e-mail domain forever), neither would my brother (since he makes a new google account with every phone anyways, having forgotten his previous password), and I wouldn't be bothered much either. I've also been doing fine professionally for 15 years and don't even have a LinkedIn account.

It's a similar picture for everyone around me. Some Facebook account or whatever may have seemed important when we were 16, but by and large people grow out of that vain phase, or even grow out of using the likes of Facebook at all. Nowadays whatever can deliver a message will do. There's a dozen ways to each anyone.

If losing access to any one account is a big deal for you, that's more than a major technological literacy failure - it's a basic life planning failure. Do not overly rely on a single thing controlled by people you cannot trust. Even my grandmother would know better.

>If losing access to any one account is a big deal for you, that's more than a major technological literacy failure - it's a basic life planning failure. Do not overly rely on a single thing controlled by people you cannot trust. Even my grandmother would know better.

uhhuh. While it's a good idea to have backup plans and to exercise independence, people usually aren't accustomed to losing substantial parts of their livelihood for no reason and having no recourse. There's no reason to form a backup plan for a scenario that shouldn't occur. We depend on services all the time whose providers we can't control. That's modern life. What would a backup plan look like here for the average person? Do you think your average tech savvy person has taken those steps?

The intention with this post isn't to defend unpreparedness. But there is a point to be made that cutting somebody off, through some technical loophole, shouldn't be a thing. And companies know that. Every so often they get called out in public by somebody with a lot of traction and they correct the problem. So it's only a problem if it gains enough visibility. That's the system.

Backup plan? You are missing the point. If you need a backup you already messed up. The only entities that should need backups of anything but treasured photos are businesses.

If you don't bank on the assumption that you will always have access to some random mail account and instead treat it like a discardable glove, you don't need a backup plan.

Lost access to your mail account and forgot your PW to to some random other account? Whatever. Make a new account, tell your friends. Happens all the time.

Post on the big tech company's official help channel - Hacker News?

I feel like posting on public forums only works if you have a big enough name. I want to be wrong about that.

HN will very happily brigade for little guys, too. Every few months there's a new "Stripe closed our account" thread that picks up a lot of steam.

Every once in a while it gets Stripe's attention and they fix it. Most of the time the torches burn for a few hours until someone researches the author and figures out they were building a gambling platform or something else explicitly against Stripe's ToS and the thread quietly dies out as people realize OP was just exploiting HN's visceral reactions.

That's not HN helping. That's because some Stripe employees actively browse HN, especially those threads pertaining to their company, looking to help.

Though some Googlers browse HN, I've never seen where they could actually help someone here - the company is too large and dispersed. Those Googlers are here for leasure, not business.

I agree it's not HN helping—I think those threads are one of the most toxic parts of this forum. As I said, most of the time HN gets out the pitchforks in support of someone who knows full well why they were banned.

Usually you're just straight-up screwed unless you know someone who works at the respective company (or know someone who knows someone).

Even worse, some Terms of Service forbid you from ever signing up again if you're banned, meaning you're perpetually at risk of another ban if you sign up to the service again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...

You're typically screwed and have no recourse.

> What happens if one of the big tech companies makes a mistake and closes your account? LinkedIn is pretty important nowadays when searching for work. Would you be able to make a new account? If not, that seems like a pretty big deal.

You are screwed, and it is a big deal.

However, until some ambulance chaser manages to corral the affected people into a class action lawsuit and win, there will be no change.

> Same concern with your email

This one is straightforward--have your own domain. Download everything such that you can change provider if they stomp you.

What if your domain registrar is the one to cut you off? What if AWS or some cloud provider kills your self-hosted VPS? What if your ISP or mobile phone provider does it?

So many fragile layers to our indispensable digital lives; we all walk on eggshells. I'm paranoid about backups and redundancy, but I'd be devastated by a single lockout.

> What if your domain registrar is the one to cut you off?

Then you're fucked. What do you want me to say?

That having been said, domain registrars seem to be FAR less likely to do an automated AI rugpull than hosted services from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.

If you use your country's ccTLD you also have recourses against your registrar (if you live in a nice enough country and assuming you just broke some ToS and not committed a crime).

Some Britains lost their .eu domain because they no longer fulfilled the requirements.

That’s… not completely unexpected, right?

Everyone has wants, nobody likes consequences.

> What if your domain registrar is the one to cut you off

Compared with your chances with getting back google account (unless you know someone inside and still not guarantee it will work) you have many actions that you can take. Talk to your registrar support and try to work things out and even ask for transfer. If they don't respond or don't help you then you can complain with ICAAN and even take them to court.

What's a VPS, and if it's self-hosted, where does the reliance on cloud providers comes in ??

ISPs (and maybe cellular providers ?) cannot cut you off without reason or advance notice, or they will the ones facing legal consequences...

We lost access to one of our phones numbers recently - moving it from Three (UK) to Smarty (a trading name of Three). No access for 3 weeks over which time I spent hours-and-hours contacting them.

So many things tied to our phone number, including banking authorisation (work, charities, and home), online account auth (2fa), contact from school, contact with family, ... it was an absolute nightmare. The single worst customer support experience of my life AFAIR.

In the UK there are two Ombudsman for such services but one says they won't help until 8 weeks after you report a problem to the company involved (and the other somehow says they won't help at all).

It's really given me resolve to, instead of simplifying and signing the family up to the same services, distributing suppliers to avoid us all being stuck without service at the same time.

> If I just suddenly lost my gmail, I would probably lose access to external accounts and other important data, which could be crippling.

Exactly, the downside is too high. Which is why I migrated to my own domain + Fastmail.

My Instagram account was banned. I was never an active user, and I'm not sure I actually had a single post, so I have no idea why they found it necessary to disable my account. I tried the ID verification process but got nowhere.

I had no problem creating a new account. All of the accounts are linked together with my Facebook account, so it's not like they weren't aware. I didn't care until Threads came along, and now my preferred handle is unavailable.

> LinkedIn is pretty important nowadays when searching for work.

It is kind of expected to have a profile you can link companies to, but I didn’t know people were actually active and engaging in discussions on the platform. I only sign in every few years to update something, but are you all actively exchanging with others on LinkedIn as a way to find jobs? I thought it was accepted since >10 years the whole platform is corporate noise.

It is corporate noise. But I think it's a great way to find, and talk to, people with similar professional backgrounds. Or to stay in touch with people that you've worked with.

My Amazon account was recently limited to digital goods. Supposedly it was caused by too many returns. I've checked and I have 2 orders returned during 15 years of purchases.

There was a way to raise concern, but the email was ignored.

>What happens if one of the big tech companies makes a mistake and closes your account?

If you have a friend who is an employee of the BigCo you can sometimes get results.

Otherwise your choices are: get frontpage of HN, or cope.

It's shockingly frustrating and disheartening.

I recently (like, yesterday) got permanently banned from Reddit for "report abuse", for some random semi-nonsense comment I reported a month ago on a meme subreddit. Regardless of how justified that is or isn't -- I only have one side of the story to share of course, and I think I just got caught in some labor-saving measures for their underpaid+overworked admin staff -- it's a great reminder of these corporations' power over us.

A lifetime ban from a forum is certainly not as practically bad as the nightmare scenario of losing GMail, but still not great. I used Reddit to discuss technology, philosophy, and politics, and was quite active over the last year especially, using the platform's various science subs to share+refine the ideas I'm developing for my upcoming book with experts. Obviously there's a professional element there, but it was also a big outlet for me, keeping me motivated to share my work when I was feeling like scrapping it all due to anxiety and/or pessimism. Getting 50 upvotes on your detailed critique of some tenured professor's work feels better than you might imagine! I even had 45 "followers", though I never quite learned what that feature was or why it existed -- still, it was a nice ego boost at time when I needed that desperately.

Now that I'm banned for life, I'm basically just planning on giving up that part of my personality for now. Perhaps publishing my book will earn me some friends/critics willing to discuss such things with me, or perhaps I can make some when I start a PhD someday, but until then, Reddit's the only show in town; I've realized that Reddit is to scientific discussion what LinkedIn is to professional networking.

Like LinkedIn there are alternatives, but also like LinkedIn, the alternatives lack network effects and features. Lemmy is absurdly small+monolithic by comparison (/r/philosophy alone is 395x bigger than the entire 'Lemmyverse' put together, and much more diverse), HackerNews is highly focused and intentionally underdeveloped ("You're posting too fast!" + no markdown or communities), Twitter is somehow a Nazi thing now, and LessWrong is... well, it's its own beast. I could try Bluesky or Threads, but A) I've been a forum diehard since finding giantitp.com in middle school, and B) that feels a little like asking to be hurt again, lol. Would love any recommendations from passerby, though!

...sorry, had to get that off my chest, I guess. 12+ years of comments disappearing due to a random incident was more of an emotional blow than I expected, to be perfectly honest. TL;DR: Never, ever report any comments on Reddit. Ever. It's an under-appreciated risk.

Should’ve quit cold turkey with the rest of us when they took 3rd party clients away.

If it helps, Reddit outside of the niche or rare well-moderated subs is detestable; a wasteland of bots and ads and partisan nonsense.

Even on the science subs, no one cares about your older comments or the age of your account, except to pull things out of it to try and doxx you or invalidate your opinions.

You can make another account on a VPN and still get the same upvotes, still reach the same eyeballs, get the same feedback and motivation boost. 'Followers' don't matter, real relationships do.

It might even be good to have a fresh account in some unexpected ways. Or not - because fuck that place. Like you said, you'll always be at the mercy of admins who have made it very clear how they feel about users.

Best of luck with the book.

Thanks for the kind words! Yeah I've sorta taken it for granted that I'm going to comply with their "no ban evasion" rule, but I guess I should give it some thought if I find the urge some day. Given that my old account was publicly linked to my real name (and I'd like to do the same for any new one), that could get a little tricky... But that's obviously a self-imposed hurdle.

> comply with their "no ban evasion" rule,

Fuck 'em.

What are they gonna do, site-wide ban you again? If so, VPN a third account with your real name. A fourth, a fifth. It costs them a lot to ban you for dumb reasons, and costs you nothing to make new accounts.

I'd suggest creating an email newsletter for people to join if they like your posts. It's the only way to have a reliable audience, because every large platform these days is suspect.

Can you not just create another account?

As discussed above, yes you can try to get around their IP blocks using a VPN — I’m guessing they have some basic ML models watching new account creation from banned IPs. It just seems… idk, pitiful? Embarrassing?

Also the subs I was creating are now locked forever behind a banned account, which is more funny than anything

Usenet still has really good newsgroups. My list:

alt.2600

alt.2600.hackers

alt.2600.hope

alt.2600.hope.announce

alt.anonymous

alt.ascii-art

alt.comics.classic

alt.comp.emulators.executor

alt.comp.linux

alt.comp.os.linux

alt.comp.os.windows-98se

alt.comp.sys.emulators

alt.computer.workshop

alt.consciousness

alt.culture.usenet

alt.cybergoth

alt.cyberpunk

alt.cyberpunk.movement

alt.cypherpunks

alt.fan.usenet

alt.folklore.computers

alt.linux

alt.math

alt.math.recreational

alt.math.undergrad

alt.os.linux

alt.os.linux.slackware

alt.privacy

alt.privacy.anon-server

alt.sci.amateur

alt.sci.physics.new-theories

alt.startrek

alt.sys.pdp10

alt.sys.pdp11

alt.tv.simpsons

alt.usenet

bionet.neuroscience

comp.ai

comp.ai.neural-nets

comp.ai.philosophy

comp.arch

comp.arch.embedded

comp.emulators.apple2

comp.emulators.cbm

comp.emulators.game-consoles

comp.emulators.misc

comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine

comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot

comp.infosystems.gemini

comp.infosystems.gopher

comp.is.linux.networking

comp.lang.awk

comp.lang.c

comp.lang.c++

comp.lang.c.moderated

comp.lang.lisp

comp.lang.misc

comp.lang.perl

comp.lang.perl.announce

comp.lang.perl.misc

comp.lang.perl.moderated

comp.lang.perl.modules

comp.lang.perl.tk

comp.lang.tcl

comp.mail.mutt

comp.misc

comp.mobile.android

comp.mobile.misc

comp.os.cpm

comp.os.linux.advocacy

comp.os.linux.misc

comp.os.msdos.misc

comp.os.msdos.programmer

comp.os.qnx

comp.programming

comp.risks

comp.robotics.misc

comp.sys.amiga.announce

comp.sys.amiga.games

comp.sys.amiga.hardware

comp.sys.amiga.misc

comp.sys.amiga.programmer

comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure

comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.misc

comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg

comp.unix.admin

comp.unix.misc

comp.unix.programmer

comp.unix.questions

comp.unix.shell

comp.windows.x

es.charla.actualidad

es.charla.politica.misc

es.comp.hackers

es.comp.os.linux.anuncios

es.comp.os.linux.instalacion

es.comp.os.linux.misc

es.comp.os.linux.programacion

es.comp.os.linux.redes

es.rec.ficcion.misc

es.rec.juegos.comp.aventuras

es.rec.juegos.rol

es.rec.tv.series

gnu.hurd.bug

hispagatos.chat

hispagatos.comunicados

hispagatos.talk

linux.debian.ports.hurd

misc.news.internet.discuss

news.admin.moderation

news.admin.net-abuse.usenet

news.admin.peering

news.announce.important

news.announce.newgroups

news.announce.newsgroups

news.groups

news.groups.proposals

news.software.misc

news.software.nntp

news.software.readers

perl.beginners

perl.dbi.dev

perl.modules

perl.perl5.changes

perl.perl5.porters

rec.ars.sf.tv

rec.ars.sf.written

rec.arts.comics.misc

rec.arts.comics.strips

rec.arts.int-fiction

rec.arts.movies.current-films

rec.arts.sf.fandom

rec.games.int-fiction

rec.games.mud.admin

rec.games.mud.announce

rec.games.mud.diku

rec.games.mud.lp

rec.games.mud.misc

rec.games.mud.tiny

rec.games.roguelike.nethack

rec.humor.d

rec.humor.funny

rec.humor.funny.d

rec.humor.funny.reruns

rocksolid.feeds

rocksolid.shared.i2p

sci.anthropology.paleo

sci.astro

sci.electronics.basic

sci.electronics.design

sci.electronics.misc

sci.electronics.repair

sci.environment

sci.logic

sci.math

sci.math.num-analysis

sci.math.research

sci.math.symbolic

sci.misc

sci.physics.relativity

sci.physics.research

sci.skeptic

talk.environment

talk.origins

https://www.eternal-september.org it's your friend.

> LinkedIn is pretty important nowadays when searching for work

I agree with your larger point esp. Gmail - would be quite crippling - but I haven't had LinkedIn for years now, and it hasn't negatively impacted my job or searches. If anything, it helped me be more proactive when I was looking instead of feeling like I was praying to the abyss.

There was a second in ~2020 where LinkedIn was starting to feel like finding work in the Myspace days - people were expressing themselves in more personal ways on their profiles (I guess because of the lockdown) and remote work was just kicking off. It had this glow that reminded me a lot of the early 2000s work scene online.

Soon enough, as LI caught onto the trend those quirky profiles and posts were replaced with branded influencers and "viral posts". The platform quickly became as influencer-focused as Instagram or Twitter, which feels inappropriate for a job site. But it's not a job site they say, it's a career platform... or professional network... or something (of which a huge aspect is uploading your resume and applying to jobs). Anyway, the way the LinkedIn influencer sphere covered layoffs was like an E! television show - they loved it.

Turns out LinkedIn is not an "essential social media" shall we say. It's not the career accessory that my GitHub and a Macbook are, it could have been, but they chose their path.

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