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Comment by bingbong4748 | Hacker News Reader

My mom’s Gmail account got banned for no reason whatsoever last week. Since then they removed her recovery number and 2FA as they ‘looked suspicious’.

Access to nearly 20 years of emails, photos and docs gone in an instant.

It’s been particularly painful because she used Google to log in to everything too, including for health records that she needs.

There is no way of contacting anyone at Google about it and apparently nothing that can be done anyway. It’s absolutely devastating. They’re still charging her for Google One and she can’t even manage the subscription because she can’t log in.

I urge anyone reading this to do a Google Takeout request and make a local backup of all the data they hold.

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I hope this page can provide some guidance in the appeal process https://transparency.google/intl/en-GB_in/tools-programs/rep...

If not directly through what is offered there, under the DSA (eu citizens and residents) have further ways to appeal their decision, and also Google takeout should be a last option even for banned accounts.

If you have any luck post a followup on HN to guide other users having a similar issue.

I had a look at the link and became hopeful when I clicked on “Appeal a disabled account”, but then the page loaded and said this -

“”” Ask us to restore your account

If you own the account, you can request access to it again.

- Sign in to your Google Account on a browser, like Chrome. - Select Start Appeal. - Follow the instructions. “””

C’mon Google, if I could do step 1 then I wouldn’t be on this page.

I will absolutely post a guide if we can figure out a way out of this mess.

Appreciate you trying to help. I’ll do a bit more digging on that page and see if I can find anything.

You might want to try to follow on that, maybe they do have a separate if in their codebase if you're logging in for the appeal.

Otherwise the DSA approach, with whatever that may entail process wise.

Or you can not waste your time and hire an attorney to send them a polite letter saying "put the account back or get sued."

“… There is no way of contacting anyone at Google about it …”

Of course there is: you pay your lawyer to send correspondence by registered mail.

Then you have them send followup correspondence a week or so later.

You will absolutely get a response.

Everyone everywhere has the money and time to keep a lawyer on retainer. This is super equitable and a reasonable way to run society

Everyone Google cares about, anyway.

Nah, we all pay for a lawyer with our taxes: the attorney general.

What you do is send Google your own correspondence, certified mail, giving them a heads up that you've contacted the attorney general. That usually gets an even quicker response than from a personal lawyer :)

It also gives the attorney general office a heads up if they need to be scrutinizing a company like Google more carefully if they're getting a lot of complaints.

Situations like this are exactly what they're here for.

https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/

people "have" lawyers? how much would this cost on a yearly basis?

I have an auto "checkout" every month and I download my data. I don't know if it's readable, I haven't checked, but it feels comforting. My email is also just a private name@domain that forwards to my Gmail. If I ever need to switch, it would be a simple update with my registrar.

(I'm aware domains can be stolen too, but I expect to have some leverage as I'm paying for that in the UK.)

> I don't know if it's readable, I haven't checked, but it feels comforting.

I've been meaning to get back to tinkering with a Immich on a docker container, as a Google Photos competitor I can self-host.

My youtube student account was blocked this week. Google offers a student discount if you register with your school email, so I created a new youtube account for that.

Flagged as a potential bot, gotta tread really carefully or they'll nuke my "normal" google account too.

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