My Google Workspace account suspension
zencapital.substack.com
zencapital.substack.com
I gotta say, though, that my experience with trying to get them to sort out any kind of issue with their services makes me reluctant to spend any money with them.
I bought a Pixel phone. As per the sales terms, the phone came with one year of Gemini AI Pro service. Except, the redemption process to get the year of service didn't work for me. I contacted Google, they never fixed it or offered any solution. I simply didn't get the year of service I was promised.
My friend, who bought a Pixel around the same time, also wasn't able to get the year of Gemini they were promised.
That same friend has a Google One subscription, billed through their phone carrier. Recently, Google (or the provider?) discontinued that specific Google One plan, as well as the option to bill via your carrier. This was all covered in an email sent to my friend. As consolation, the email explained, my friend was given the option to switch to a different plan, billed monthly by Google (instead of their phone carrier), with 6 months free. Except, the new plan, and the 6 months free, wasn't selectable as a plan type for their account. So my friend emails Google about it and, to my complete lack of surprise, Google was unwilling/unable to provide any resolution.
At this point, I legitimately don't understand why, unless I had no other option, I would pick Google for services. They clearly put no real effort into resolving any service issues for any customer that's not spending millions with them.
I think their motto of "don't be evil" was some pretty clever PR.
I started questioning it c. 2008 when they ghosted me on resolving an issue with my blogspot site that was a bug in the platform. All I could get was a condescending non-response from a "diamond" volunteer on a forum. They were apparently the gatekeepers to reaching actual support.
Back in the day they bought Feedburner, and merged it with their internal equivalent. In that process, my subscriber list was affected. They apologized and even sent out some swag. That was nice, for a small inconvenience at the time.
Today? humans don't even seem to be involved.
If they didn't have all their issues (discontinuing products, bad customer service) they'd probably be bigger than MS and Apple combined. But here we are.
Also for better or worse, I pay for bundled Google storage + Gemini and YouTube separately, it's still worth it, even without free months or whatever. And still better than being in MS or Apple's ecosystem.
Until you go of the rails of their processes and have your account closed with no recourse.
That doesn't make any sense. There are still plenty of people who are not doing weird things and getting screwed over.
Google fanboys have always fallen for their "don't be evil" nonsense, and it looks like they still are even after it was changed.
"Support" agents couldn't be bothered - this feels like AI trapping me in the tarpit maze to save a few USD on the disk storage and infefence cost, effectively scamming me.
People really fail to unionize when they can just piss in the wind.
Contract violation. The problem is it's simply too burdensome to go to small claims court.
When you pay for Google Workspace you are the client, not the customer and they do answer phone calls for support. The only two times my wife and I needed them for our SMEs, they picked up the phone and helped us resolve our issues. Super professional too. Haven't needed to give them a call in something like 8 years now.
Don't know about Pixel phone and Google One subscriptions but for SMEs Google Workspace is a godsend: it's incredibly cheap per employee and it's the way out of the Microsoft mediocrity. Everything only requires a browser, no matter the OS (wife works from Linux and now added a Mac Mini, for example): Windows can, at long last, get the middle finger in SMEs.
I'll forever be thankful to Google for allowing me to help many people get rid of Microsoft products, including Windows.
It's been a decade since Google broke their promise not to use information gleaned from your use of their services to sell ads.
> Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand — literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits “may be” combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.
I admit once it didn't work I didn't reach out to support but the entire experience was shit sandwich after shit sandwich.
I fixed this by deleting the subscription data for Google One (which also refunded me a prorated amount for my Google One plan), and then waiting a day.
Everyone who depends on the good graces of a cloud provider for something (not just Google, but Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, whatever) needs to at the very least, take a moment, and figure out what their plan is when they are suddenly banned and locked out permanently, without any way to contact the company.
Does life just go on, since you don't have anything important hosted there? (Best Case)
Do you lose some precious family photos and use it as a tough learning opportunity to stop doing what you're doing? (Next best)
Do you lose access to your E-mail and are suddenly not able to do 2FA, reset passwords, communicate with the company or the Internet in any way, and so on, and now have to panic?
Do you complain online, hoping that someone in the company sees your post and has the ability to restore your account, which you then continue to use because you learned nothing?
Having an online account suddenly suspended is a real, non-zero, but unlikely risk. You should at least have a disaster plan if you rely on these things for anything important. Or better yet, stop relying on them for important things like your identity or precious files!
This is one of the most common sentiments I hear expressed on HN, next only to "if you're not building your software business around Claude Code, you're gonna left behind".
We really need to just fix the laws.
This. There are something like 150 million Americans with a Google account, and these days it is more important than a phone number to have a working email.
Email is a utility. Email companies should be heavily regulated and controlled like phone or other utility companies.
The only people who seem to get un-suspended are the ones who can generate news media outrage or who can call their friend who is a director/exec at the company. (Obviously this intuition is flawed, but it’s hurting the reputations of these SaaS providers.)
It's not hurting them enough. Hence the regulation is needed.
Someone claiming to work for the US Digital Services replied to me here years ago that this was being worked on in relation to the easily compromised SSN but I'd say all bets are off on a consumer friendly government service like that now.
It can be surprisingly difficult with a lot of SaaS products (including Google).
"I'm sure it's very sad that you've lost all your [email|calendar|photos|whatever]... but, were you, a person who has chosen to rely on a service provided by a cloud provider with a track record which goes back well over 15 years of locking people out of their accounts with no recourse for the user, not aware that said provider has a track record of doing so, in some cases without even giving an explanation why?
Were you not aware that the service you were relying on them for was critically important to you? Or were you unaware that the provider of this service has the capability to completely disable the service you're relying on with the simple flip of a switch?
I'm fascinated by this decision you've made - could you please explain the thought process by which you chose to use this service which you have no control over for critical things?"
Most people expect better because in most other walks of life it is better with some kind of plausible appeal route, and the deficiencies we're discussing don't really get publicized. These service-outcomes are the outliers in need of repair, not the consumers.
> are those *really* the rhetorical questions you'd fling at your Aunt Tillie panicking on the phone, because she can't email anybody or renew her important drug
But I'm not actually really talking about regular people losing their personal email where they happen to keep a few sort-of important things that are relatively-easily replaced/transferred into a safer system. Those people I can sort-of understand, and don't really need to ask my questions - the answer is simple: "I never thought about it until now".
But aunt Tillie doesn't call herself an "entrepreneur" and doesn't rely on the existence of her gmail account for the survival of a business, and she especially doesn't have a blog where she whinges about the fact she did that.
I'm talking about people who should know better, who should be smart and considering things like "what are the existential threats to this business I'm trying to run?", who use gmail for vital business functions like payroll, and who tie their auth for everything else to their google (or whatever other shitty cloud service) accounts.
> the deficiencies we're discussing don't really get publicized
And another thing: my questions are not rhetorical. I am genuinely curious about the thought process that leads to these decisions. See, I didn't actually have to see this article even once - what I did was I gave it about 10 seconds thought, and came to the conclusion that relying on unaccountable third parties for mission-critical business infrastructure is an existential risk. This all seems very obvious and straightforward to me. Perhaps I'm some kind of super genius? I'm doubtful about that.
> These service-outcomes are the outliers in need of repair, not the consumers.
But if you're not giving any thought to who controls your vital data and you lose it as a result of that, that's at least 50% your fault.
As an ex-googler, the only reason I was comfortable keeping even my personal email there was because I could reach out internally if there was a problem. I left Google, and left gmail behind too.
Tailscale is the only serious company that I can ever recall offering /only/ third party login. It's bit bizarre on the face of it. Anyone know the reason?
What a shit tier authentication mechanism.
"Sign-in methods: Email, passkey, Google account, Apple account, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket".
So one of the comments on one hackernews post on front-page almost somehow always refer to something within a hackernews post on the same front-page. I have seen this witnessed too many times that it might be time to name this phenomenon.
This has the nefarious side effect of allowing Google or Facebook to track people across the Internet and apps. Webmasters like you are, often for no imperative reason, complicit of this by providing such login options.
App developers have repeatedly stated that offering those options increases user account creation. There is lower friction to using “login with <big tech>” than to create username/password creation flow. My guess is that most of the world hasn’t figured out a password manager workflow that works for them (or they aren’t willing to pay for it).
I don’t know what the exact revenue/growth difference is, but if my paycheque depended upon getting more users to sign up, I don’t think I could justify making it into a political stance when Google isn’t going to notice my tiny boycott.
Nothing has helped, the Google forums are tumbleweed and there's no one to reach out to for what could be an algorithm change or something gone wrong. I'm a paying Workspace customer and it's made me think I need a backup plan in case I'm ever suspended. Reports like this don't encourage.
The own-brand forum (Google, Microsoft, Apple) seem to be infested by netizens from lower-income countries trying to build online customer support portfolios by providing utterly useless answers.
That, or trying to game the system and getting shortlisted for a free trip to Google HQ for one of their contributor summits.
I’d be at a complete loss for any obscure Windows issue though.
“Exerting” would be more correct I guess but less fun.
But the EU’s approach is often backwards. When product managers have to ask the government if it’s ok to ship a feature, something is wrong. When the government responds that it can’t say in advance, you’ll just have to ship and see if you get fined, something is really seriously broken.
Same with social media features that are rolled out to millions of users.
But, if you'll re-read my comment, my complaint is that the EU will not pre-clear features. They will only punish after the fact if they decide it was a bad feature.
And that's even assuming you're correct that the bureaucrats themselves know what is a good idea. Which I'm skeptical of. I think they're more likely to be correct than, say, Facebook... but that's a pretty low bar.
Notice how phone carries manage to have a shop in every little strip mall, you're never more than a few miles from the nearest one. Google takes in far more revenue, can easily afford the same. Or they could even just partner with the phone carriers and have a staffed desk in every tmobile/at&t/verizon shop.
No company will give full account unlock control to field employees.
Even the bank teller behind the glass needs to phone their internal fraud dept to unlock accounts.
Except the bank teller has already authenticated you and internal fraud will pick up the phone...
That's not how it works at banks nor phone vendors.
(Although, even being able to open a ticket would be 100% better than the black hole of nothingness that is google support.)
When you go to a bank with access issues (something I've done somewhat regularly because I manage accounts for various family members who no longer can) you meet with someone who can authenticate you, and that employee has direct access to talk to their risk and fraud departments so they can sort out any issues while you're sitting there next to them.
There needs to be a law that any cloud service with a non-trivial userbase must have a similarly staffed support center reasonably accessible to all citizens.
Not with Google, I've had a ticket open for five months counting.
Not only did they answer immediately whenever I had even the smallest problem or question: I twice broke my Glass, and each time I'd call the support number to ask for a replacement.
Google's policy was that no matter how you broke it or how many times it happened, they'd replace it free. They'd immediately send a box to return the broken device (prepaid) and a couple days later a brand new Glass would arrive.
Like I said, once upon a time....
It's not the same league, not even the same sport.
PS: Not defending Google here, their support for some products is abysmal
However (and I loathe this logic) if you can get the marketplace to accept that minimal level, and the brand harm is inconsequential, why not pocket the savings
That's the thing though. Google have destroyed their brand through these kinds of actions, over many years.
I think organizations have a very hard time staying motivated once the product’s concern has moved away from any one team. While you test the product for them there’s likely people whose jobs depended on you and 7999 others doing so. But eventually a product will be considered shipped and all the various talent now pays attention to what’s next.
Yes, because they were using you to figure out where it needed improvements for every day wear and tear. It wasn't charitable, it was R&D expense.
With this comment in mind, I just now called that same number with an instant pickup telling me they no longer take support calls at that number.
I saw it mentioned in a comment elsewhere in this thread, but the level of service you get really seems dependant on which pocket of Google is responsible for the product you happen to be using. Unfortunately Workspace is a giant pocket with many billions of users with suboptimal and/or perpetually exhausted support.
It feels like the security team made this change to reduce account hijacking but it's at complete odds with the recovery flow and modern security practices. Better hope your phone number doesn't get hijacked or recycled because it's the key to your account now, security keys be damned.
I've tried everything to find someone inside Google to fix this, but so far no luck. At least with Meta you can find someone on a forum like Swapd who will take a small bribe to fix these issues.
That sounds like its own kind of problems. (!)
We have everything else but this alone is not enough.
The other option is to contact the phone company and explain, asking an open ended question if there is any way they could help you, with the permission of the current owner of the number, to get one more text message and move your Gmail to a new number. It doesn't sound in any way like you are trying to pull a scam, so they might help.
I also tried to get blackhat and tried to find anyone who can intercept the text, but I've not been able to, even on some rather shady forums...
I had this happen a couple years ago when I was migrating to a different domain. The only difference was all of the authentication that I supplied Google said was an adequate and I got into some sort of a login loop where Authenticator, SMS, DNS record nor pass key would provide enough authentication for me to get in.
I got the automated got bought to finally send me the mythical form, after completing that I was told that they were unable to authenticate me further. I ended up emailing their support multiple times and threatening lawsuits multiple times when I got a magic call from a human at Google. They also sent me the link that put me into a login loop however after chatting with them for nearly an hour I got a different magic login link form which appeared to work.
On the plus side, it does mean they have thousands of people who know how to fix problems.
If we're comparing cloud services, surely GCP has customer service? I can't imagine any big enterprise using it otherwise.
It would be cool if Google (and other media giants, especially IdP ones) had an office where you could bring your passport and verify it's you. I don't think there is.
The Americans have done something kind of interesting along those lines, as far as an in-person IDV option to establish e-government accounts [0]. You start account setup online, then take a barcode to a post office along with your identity documents.
I have to imagine it’s hard to make a commercial case for such a system, though… especially these days with so much momentum toward the approach I resent—that is, requiring ID checks just to be online in the first place.
[0] https://www.login.gov/help/verify-your-identity/verify-your-...
Honestly, if you are using Gmail as your primary email I could probably ruin your entire year. I could just try and hack you (not even successfully) and Google will just shut down your entire life rather than attempt to work out who's right.
Had this happen to me. Fortunately the 'attacker' wasn't actually trying to do this, so damage was limited, but it's chilling when you think about what some motivated script kiddy can do with your Google account just by requesting password resets.
I had a Nest subscription that became a total mess. If you've ever tried to use Nest before, or are coming from a legacy Nest account, and/or also have a Workspace account that somehow got wrapped up in the mess, you'll understand how much of a clusterf Nest is for the Google ecosystem. I had signed up for this subscription on a personal Google account, cancelled it, but was still being charged for it, and the credit card being used made me think it was getting charged on my Google Workspace account (which isn't officially supported, and would never let you sign up for it, but DID share an email address with my legacy Nest account I had migrated into the non-Workspace personal account I was using for Nest).
They had to escalate the problem a couple times, which took ~24 hours. Once that happened, their rep had it resolved in minutes, and refunded me two months on the subscription.
The biggest piece of advice I can give when dealing with Google is: Never be weird. You cannot ever put yourself in a situation where your account isn't like the other billion accounts they have. If you do, something will go wrong and its rolling the dice on whether you'll ever reach someone who can help you. If you've used Google enough, you know: Their multifactor settings are weird. You cannot set it up exactly how you want; it'll always trigger some auth method you didn't configure but they have "LATENT KNOWLEDGE" you should be able to authenticate with, like a phone number you configured six years ago, or gmail installed on a tablet that's 400 miles away, and you can't turn it off, even on Workspace.
My favorite bit of Googleism: Go to any site you sign in with Google SSO and watch the URLs in the eight redirects it has to do before it signs you in. You'll see a "youtube.com" in there. Even on a Workspace account. Youtube.com is a load-bearing website in their core auth flows.
Mess of a company. I hope they invest some effort in improving things, but I was saying the same thing in 2018. They probably won't.
I've put in a heroic effort to make sure they never get a phone number, specifically so they can't start handing my account over to the first clown who simswaps me, and have been successful. Unfortunately, this makes my account weird, which as you noted is fatal.
I assume that's just because they need to set a cookie on the YouTube domain in case you visit YouTube later on the workspace account, and not "load bearing"in the manner you insinuate
These players MUST be regulated or treated like utilities; hoping the EU will ratchet up the pressure even more.
If your business is dependent on services you need to take a modicum of effort to protect yourself - the posts author was literally walking around with his entire business at risk from him dropping his phone or having it pickpocketed.
At the end of the day, the protagonist in this story is mad because Google won’t allow him to social engineer access to his company. He deleted his sole token (Google makes it trivial to add many) in the most fraud signally way possible.
Are we reading the same blog post? He had his password, 2FA authenticator set up, and backup codes -- everything Google asks you to have to be on the "golden" auth path.
He only deleted his SMS authentication path (one thing I don't understand is how he was able to do this in the first place without being logged in), which is in any case the least secure method of 2FA. Also, It should be fairly obvious that SMS is not expected to work seamlessly while traveling, how is this not a scenario that's hit by millions of Google users worldwide?
The SMS only fallback is when other things have failed and they suspect that there’s been a takeover. Microsoft does something similar to tie it to some tangible thing. I’m not excusing Google. Their exception handling is poor at best. I’ve seen issues at customers where phones left in flight get flagged because of GPS disruptions due to Middle East conflicts, for example. (Phones flagged as having been in Syria or Russia can be kryptonite) One scenario was a VIP whose kid was in Europe with their other parent and the VIP’s tablet, signed into work email.
Other factors apply too - there may be multiple accounts tied to the number that are in different locales, for example. No idea what obnoxious rules Australia and UK add as well.
Point is, this type of shit happens and you should have a contingency.
Let's work through what the contingency could have been. Always make sure you buy international roaming everywhere you go? Always be able to switch your MX records (from a provider whose account isn't tied to a Google-controlled email)?
They seem to get increasingly less practical to be honest. People travel all over the world everyday, this shit shouldn't be hard for a company like Google that supposedly ingests mountains of data.
More to the point, I think email has become sort of a fundamental right given how much of your identity depends on it. Companies that control this sort of identity foundation need to be heavily regulated, and perhaps nationalized.
In this case, don’t run around with a business account with a single user with admin privileges. Segregate privilege. Don’t share a phone number with other accounts. Don’t use SSO as the key to your business.
If you run a business you need to manage risk. If a customs officer thought he looked funny and seized the phone, he’d be boned as well.
So for my own notes, removing a phone number from my Google account before travel will risk account suspension. Hope OP resolves it, but also need to make sure this never happens to me.
This is a massive bug here. I was also surprised recently that Google won't let you enroll multiple Authenticators. If we had functional security regulations I think there would be some pretty large fines for Google's error here.
edit: looks like there are affordable managed hosting providers for keycloak.
Not sure the state of keycloak now, but it was a lot of work to manage keycloak configs with the IaC pipeline. That could have gotten better now, but I think having access to the data is important because migration might not be trivial if for instance a provider starts acting up.
IMO, the worst part of this is Workspace support is immune to ANY explanation. I mean, credit card companies are well used to "is this your transaction?" emails.
We need the same for email.
Sure, it may not work with the ancillary services, but keeping your email address would solve a lot of issues.
But maybe you logged in to your domain registrar through google oauth. If your google account is locked you can't now get into your domain's settings to change your MX records.
The real problem isn't the email address itself, it's all the access that google owns on your behalf. Lose access to Google, lose access to everything.
In my experience Google Workspave support is very good. I’ve always been able to get a knowledgeable person on a call to debug issues without much difficulty.
But yea, if you’re locked out of your admin account, that’s another story. Very sjmilar to if you get locked out of your AWS root account. It’s a nightmare to recover.
It sounds like the mistake here is not appointing another Super Admin, and making sure they don't use their account for day to day needs. Or just having two Super Admin accounts controlled by the same person, heh.
I can't see how not using one's Super Admin account wouldn't prevent tripping some kind of fraud lockout that's impossible to recover from.
Randomly, I just remembered that I lost a GCP account because I tried logging in from Laos, and they asked me for the front and back photos of a payment card that I used ages ago that I didn't bother making scans of before it was lost. Urgh.
It doesn't address this thread's concern that a single Super Admin could be locked out with no recourse, since Google's customer support is horrendously bad.
I don’t love it either, but these are Google’s published best practices / recommendations
These are the limits of scale. Too big, too complex, and not enough skilled people to maintain and/or support it. And our hubris as humans prevents us from accepting it. Why? Why can't we accept smaller but more functional things/systems?
We don't have to live like this.
I just set up google workspace and I didn't have recovery phone or anything,just password and recovery email. I didn't login for 1 week (life stuff). When I came back it allowed me to login but didn't allow any admin stuff saying it didn't recognize me and that I must use a known browser.
Well, that was the only browser I logged in with.
The solution was a weird thing where I was able to add phone recovery and authenticator, but then had to wait 2 weeks (couldn't use it). After that I performed authentication as usual.
It's horrible.
But you dear HNer ain’t a normie!
You have the skills to migrate your stuff away. It is time to pull the trigger.
Google Drive & Workspace are their most poorly designed products with the shittiest support ecosystem. Google would rather bleed money than work on it.
That's one of reason I started DoShare Personal Cloud[₁]
> Update 1 - I know I can simply change the MX record to someone else but It has its own challenges.
I don't quite get that attitude. He's describing that he needs his business emails. Not just getting a mail server back online for that, even as interim solution, points to the opposite. In the time it takes for MX TTL to expire he could easily just throw up a postfix+dovecot on some VPS, with enough time to spare to add something like sogo if he feels fancy.
I probably wouldn't believe him either. Google should have an option to revert to the last trusted config after some verification method. Google support is bad, I'll give him that.
All this to avoid roaming charges? And then refusing to share a personal email in this scenario and missing meetings because of that.
I'd argue that changing the MX to fastmail or Microsoft would be much faster than a postfix+dovecot solution on a VPS but I think he's just refusing any solution based on his principals.
Forever.
Good luck to you
It would dramatically improve the service.
- Moved to no 2FA sub-organization
- Reset password
- Disabled security check for ten minutes
- Logged in as the user in a fresh browser profile
- Exported data with Takeout
- Deleted the account in the admin console
There is a Workspace Admin option to export users' data but it warns of an automatic 48 hour delay to let "other admins take action" if something is amiss. The client wanted the task done before getting hit with the full monthly license fees again so I had to go the manual route.
Granted, out of paranoia, I was using the client's office VPN as my traffic egress so maybe that helped.
Never put your phone in there in the first place. You can actually skip that step.
It's just too long to fit on a T-shirt but not to memorise.
>Update 2 - Sadly, its 2 PM in the UK and I will miss the meeting that I had scheduled via Google Meet because emails are not working
Srsly?
I legitimately thought that was impossible, so, uh, baby steps?
I thought with Workspace you'd actually be spared from this kind of BS
I guess not?
Why the fuck would Google care in which country I live? It's a personal decision, and no corporation should have any say in this. They certainly don't have to flag an account for that, especially not if the account has 2FA enabled. This is on Google, too.
Your comment is victim blaming.
30 day cool down period is a reasonable response, at scale.
Aren't cellular providers inherently tied to the country they're in?
How do you move to another country without changing cellular providers at the same time?
For cheaper rates than roaming, typically you install a secondary eSIM for the country you're traveling. 99% modern phones support dual SIM for this reason
Well, you have become the product here. That also happens by other "free" email providers too. I had this happen to me on inbox.lt; the guy demanded I use a smartphone to "prove" my identity. At that point I realised they want to connect this data to the account and sell it to others who are interested in that.
2. the response is glib and lacks any empathy
3. there's no suggestions of possible action or resolution path
4. it is all opinion and low value / low effort
So even if it's an "honest and accurate diagnosis" that you agree with, it's not helpful, valuable or even comforting. We can do better.
It's still repugnant to me, as compared to self-hosting, but I would never self-host for a greenfield SMB Customer today. The economics don't make sense and the talent pool of knowledgeable and reasonable sysadmins is dwindling by the day. (I wouldn't want to make a Customer so beholden to me if they were willing to pay for it.)
I miss being able to spin-up an on-prem email server on a box with reasonable hardware redundancy, some external USB disks to rotate for off-site backup, a UPS, a couple consumer-grade "business class" Internet connections, and a contracted "backup MX" to catch email in the event of an outage. It was a good enough for a lot of small SMBs who had a physical office, and was cheap.
The difference is that everyone's account kept working during that time so business kept on as usual, just the admins couldn't change anything.
The sad thing is I don't think anyone did anything unusual and it was some kind of bug of Microsoft's end.
Moving the MX for the domain and limping along from backups is my worst-case contingency but given that there's no place other than M365 to restore the backups to it isn't a very good strategy.