News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by Bakary on Sunday October 23, 2022 @08:29AM (#33306425)
What made me switch from Gmail is stories of people losing their entire account overnight with no possible appeal process due to an algorithm deciding there was suspicious activity.
Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by ajross on Sunday October 23, 2022 @08:43AM (#33306506)
> What made me switch from Gmail is stories

Yeah, pretty much. Anecdata is the bane of everything big. In a country of 330M people, you'll have a horrific murder every week. You have a billion email users, someone's going to have trouble.

You do realize that, realistically, it's probably more likely that Fastmail will fail, or you'll accidentally lose control of your own domain (or have it stolen) than that Google or Microsoft or Yahoo will "lose your account overnight". There are "stories" about startups failing and domain troubles too.

Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by Bakary on Sunday October 23, 2022 @09:29AM (#33306840)
It's not the only reason, though. Just the thing that solidified the decision to leave. I just came to realize that I was depending on a shady entity for everything. The service I ended up paying for (which is similar to fastmail) can end up failing of course, but it'll take a while and I can always switch to something else once they go into administration. In comparison, I have no idea when or where Google might switch me off, especially since I do a lot of Android and Aurora store tinkering over various devices.

Even if Gmail was 100% reliable it would still make sense to not give them everything about my life. Besides, I also get much needed extra email features out of the change.

Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by thfuran on Sunday October 23, 2022 @11:00AM (#33307497)
That there are occasional errors in flagging accounts is one thing. That there's absolutely no recourse is another. Why would I want to do business with a company that works like that?
Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by geraldyo on Sunday October 23, 2022 @08:44AM (#33306515)
Do you happen to have any actual cases you can point me to? I see this all the time in HN but it's never beyond "a buddy of mine said that he didn't do anything wrong and somehow they got locked out forever with no recourse".

Or it's someone saying that happened to themselves, and then they say they never did anything bad with their gmail. Which may or may not be true?

Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by jerieljan on Sunday October 23, 2022 @09:06AM (#33306683)
One good case I can think of is Crinacle. Very popular for his audio measurements site and does YouTube.

His Google account got flagged for something suspicious, Google had it shut down and without good explanations. He can't even get help through YouTube support and while the old channel remains, the Google account behind it appears disabled today. The only choice he had was to file a request that lead to nowhere and he basically had to start with a new account and channel.

He explained his experience about it in this video here: https://youtu.be/Jn1b3DztWnc?t=83

Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by sumedh on Sunday October 23, 2022 @10:01AM (#33307081)
> His Google account got flagged for something suspicious,

Was that because of his gmail or Youtube?

Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by Karunamon on Sunday October 23, 2022 @11:11AM (#33307595)
That is just it, they never tell you
Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by pixl97 on Sunday October 23, 2022 @01:52PM (#33308793)
Does it matter?

Get banned from one google service for whatever reason (and you may never know why), banned from them all.

Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by rsync on Sunday October 23, 2022 @02:42PM (#33309133)
"The only choice he had was to file a request that lead to nowhere and he basically had to start with a new account and channel."

Incorrect.

Yes, that was, indeed, the only choice he had that was free, and from his living room, but he did have other choices.

Specifically: serving google with proper legal papers from his own lawyers that require responses. That costs google money. The money just keeps adding up and eventually a real person who has decision authority will look closely at the issue and fix the issue.

Assuming, of course, that the banning was improper - which I think we are all stipulating here ...

Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by yoru-sulfur on Sunday October 23, 2022 @09:44AM (#33306959)
This was the incident that made me switch off of Gmail: https://www.thegamer.com/markiplier-fans-google-account-ban-...

> Unfortunately, and for reasons that are still unclear, this triggered YouTube's auto-detect system for spam. Hundreds of accounts in Mark's 'community' have been banned. ... Being banned from your YouTube account is one thing; ... However, these fans' Google accounts were banned, meaning they lost access to their emails, ...

The accounts may have eventually been reinstated, but to me it showed a willingness to ban an entire google account from a minor infraction in some individual service, which I was just not comfortable taking the risk on.

Not exactly the same as what you're responding to, but very similar.

Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by jjcon on Sunday October 23, 2022 @12:16PM (#33308046)
I got locked out of my Gmail for a few years because I moved internationally and Google decided it just didn't like my new ip. I had access to the recovery email and would even get, "someone attempted to sign in emails." But Google just wouldn't let me in at all. I contacted support and they were no help at all. I tried to vpn back to normal locations but at that point I was flagged or something. I would try every few months after I gave up. About 3 years later it just magically let me in and I got all my stuff back. Still have no actual idea why it happened.
Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by YeBanKo on Sunday October 23, 2022 @04:36PM (#33310039)
This happened to me, except I never got my account back.
Re:Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours (... by THENATHE on Monday October 24, 2022 @04:10AM (#33314083)
I used cloudflare to host a custom domain, and then use their ROBUST email routing service to, plus a send as record to essentially make my personal Gmail use an email address hosted with cloudflare. Then, I set proton mail as a recovery and use it for NOTHING but that. As close as you can get to total security with gmail as far as I am aware. If google ever shuts down my account, I just move to protonmail or MS365 and have all my stuff already linked to my domain.