When Google Owns You
Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message:
Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]
That’s it.
Nick sent a message or three to Google for support. He got back this:
Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at
this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very
seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information
about this account.
And that’s it.
Suddenly, Nick can’t access his Gmail account, can’t open Google Talk (our office IM app), can’t open Picasa where his family pictures are, can’t use his Google Docs, and oh by the way, he paid for additional storage. So, this is a paying customer with no access to the Google empire.
If he was doing something wrong/illegal/invalid, they might’ve said so (not thinking that he was). If he had been hacked, wouldn’t that be something vaguely apparent? I dunno, but it seems like that’d be the way.
So, what happens now? What does Nick do? He’s sent a bunch of emails. But now what? Locked out of ALL of Google’s apps, the apps that I praise daily, the apps where Julien Smith and I are writing a book. Should we be doing that? I didn’t see a problem until this. What if we’re the next Nick?
What’s your take? And what do you think of hands off customer service in this case?
**UPDATE: Nick got back in after quite a lot of work.
**UPDATE: Jay explains in the comments how this is supposed to work. Mind you, I’ve used Google for years as a non-paying customer, so Jay’s advice wouldn’t help. Right?
**UPDATE: Google Gets Back to Nick. We’ll be talking about some ideas based on this in the next newsletter.
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Comments
I had a similar albeit less serious problem with Google once. My gmail address was linked to the company’s adwords account, as well as to my personal blog’s adsense account. I accessed both accounts through different interfaces, used them for different things and never really saw the connection between the both of them (since the Analytics accounts for both were accessed differently - one through the Adwords account and the other one from the Analytics homepage).
Fast forward and I quit my job. A couple of months later, I get curious to see if anyone has clicked on the Google Ads in my blog. I try to sign in… nothing. Okay, I think, maybe I used another email address. I try all possible combinations… nothing. So I email Google support.
I described what had happened in great detail. They answered something along the lines of “ok, do the following… sign into your AdSense account and…”
I replied that the main problem was that I couldn’t sign into my AdSense account. They replied again telling me they would investigate the problem. After a couple of days with no reply, I emailed them again and told them what I suspected had happened. They then emailed me back telling me what I suspected had happened was what had happened. What a coincidence!
I asked them why they had deleted both accounts when Analytics was working just fine. They said it’s just how it goes.
So, I asked, what now? I hadn’t made millions of dollars with my AdSense account but I had made something like a dollar the last time I’d checked. Plus, the entire time my account had been ‘deleted’, their ads had still been up! I was giving them free advertising on my site!
They said I needed to follow some complicated steps to open another account with a different gmail email and then tell them which one was me and THEN they’d try to find my prior account and try to add everything up to the new one. I just ignored them. I was really angry at this point plus it all sounded a little bit too unsafe to me. So what? Someone can actually get the profits in my account passed over to them if they claim to be in the same situation?
So I took off the AdSense widget in my blog and just forgot about advertising with Google.
Oh! And the fun part was when the AdSense people couldn’t figure out what language to talk to me in. I originally emailed them in English, they sent their reply in Spanish (even though I sent the email to the general help support) so I replied in Spanish… only to get another reply in English and then Spanish again. I was seriously confused and very disappointed.
The next time my husband nags me that we should move our company email handling over to Gmail instead of using Outlook, I will point him to this post.
Oy, what a gaffe. Please keep us posted on what happens to Nick!
While I imagine that there can be legitimate reasons for people/companies to withhold information, isn’t there some way to maintain boundaries with more compassion. Isn’t this why customer service was invented?
When I had an issue with my Yahoo mail I googled how to contact them by phone. Is it at all possible for Nick to find someone at Google to talk to about this? Is this helpful:
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: +1 650-253-0000
Fax: +1 650-253-0001
I’m thinking that it’s getting time for me to learn how to download/backup my online mail accounts. And then do it.
Thanks for the cautionary tale, and best of luck to Nick.
That’s the problem with the cloud, you have to rely on a 3rd party (lots of 3rd parties, ISP, service providers, etc) a lot more than in traditional computing.
A perfect model would be one where several providers mirror your data. But with providers competing for users that won’t happen, unless they think out a different business model.
Still i would say your ISP is your most critical point due to its role in accessing the cloud.
Google needs to enable gears (and increase users awareness about it) to all of its properties that deal with user data.
If google blocked me i would still have access to the Docs and Spreadsheets i have synced. :s
You really need a way to have an offline backup for the rainy days, just in case.
It’s indeed a scary thought that this could happen to any single one of us.
The problem is that there are not too many options. Switching to Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. could result in a similar glitch. And even having a ‘personal’ e-mail service as in name@mydomain.com isn’t a bulletproof option. Who says your provider won’t go backrupt one day.
I’m afraid these stories will surface every once and a while, but there is very little we can do about it. Except being very sorry for Nick and wishing everything will normalise again as soon as possible.
Cheers,
Max
I tried the number Nancy gave me but the recording says google does not offer live customer support.
No explanation.
This hurts.
There are some similar problems listed on GetSatisfaction.com, and at least 1 google employee is monitoring questions there.
http://gsfn.us/t/jz0
http://gsfn.us/t/jz1
Sorry you are going through this, and I am not sure if you did this, but it may be a good idea for others to consider in case something like this happens to them. If you didn’t give Google enough info or a backup email address for your account, they really have no way of knowing that you are you. It’s frustrating, but if you didn’t provide any of that info directly to them, any one of us could tell them that it’s our account that is locked out. It’s not foolproof, but it may help in a situation like this…
Go to your account info page and set alternate email addresses.
https://www.google.com/accounts/EditUserInfo
Maybe then they would be able to at least talk to you about the case?
This is a perfect example of the need to own your own domain name and have your mail go to an address with your domain name, rather than to gmail.com, or any other service. By doing so, if something like this happens, then you can change the DNS to another service.
mp/m
[…] inability on Google’s part to communicate comes from a post early on Chris Brogan’s blog where he tells us about his colleague Nick Saber who got locked out of his […]
I finally got back in.
I got this link after several emails to different support areas.
https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?contact_type=ara&ctx=accounts
I had to fill out that security email about 15 times until I got every field perfect.
You need to write down all of your info so you can do this.
Yep, I got locked out of a temporary email address I had created. So it wasn’t a big deal. But it was the first I had heard of Google just killing accounts and not helping people recover their data. If this were my primary business address the effect would’ve been disastrous. They didn’t even respond to my requests for help.
Glad to see you made some headway Nick.
[…] in Daily life, Technology at 6:09 pm by LeisureGuy Take a look: Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out […]
This happened to me about ten years ago with hotmail. I was paying hot mail for additional storage and used it for storage of everything I would need while on the road. I though how awesome is it that I no longer have to worry about taking data with me when hotmail would store it for me and provide me with my data anywhere I could connect to the net. Why, would I need to back up my data, because I am sure hotmail has plenty of back ups. Then one sudden day my account was closed, I tried unsuccessfully for over a month to get back my data and find an explanation of why my account was blocked to no avail. It was very painful lesson, that I thought was in the past. This makes me question my dependence on gmail. I always though no google is different, I don’t need to worry, right? I really hope google sorts this out for you, or they may lose many customers.
A lot of companies are asking us to trust them with our data and there’s a frightening number of cases of them taking access to our data away without warning or recourse. Facebook seems to be the most notorious, which is too bad considering how simplistic it would be to share more data with my contacts there. I don’t trust that they won’t yank my account away from me at any moment, so I engage there less.
Earlier this week, Twitter yanked accounts away from a few people without warning, LinkedIn has had some problems this way and now Google. That’s a real shame, since I was intended to move my iCal info over to Google Calendar to have it accessible anywhere.
Where can I reliably publish my data so I can trust it will be there next time I need it?
I signed up for adwords back in the day, and told my roommate about it and that i was hoping it would bring in some extra money to help pay for my web hosting. One day I got an e-mail from google saying my adwords account had been disabled because of “fraudulent usage.” I found out that my roommate had been clicking on my ads once a day from his work. I wrote back to google with an explanation, saying that my roommate had just clicked my ads a couple times, and that he did so without my knowledge or consent, and that I was terribly sorry. I got a response that simply said that I had been “permanently banned from the google adwords service.”
This is awful. And yet - I’m surprised we haven’t seen it before.
It all seems so obvious after it happens…
We need Open Formats and easy, continuous export. Then the shiny things can be trusted a little more. Or rather, those who are running the shiny things.
Terrell
http://weblog.terrellrussell.com
Wait. Nick commented above that he did finally get back in. Shouldn’t you append an update to this post?
I’m using a 3rd party app. Gmail Backup to back up all my mail. Luckily I have a domain that I back up regularly with my mail forwarded to gmail. I guess the lesson is BE CAREFUL what you put where and have multiple backups of important docs/email/apps.
Traditionally, we work locally: on our laptops and desktops. Then we backup to an external drive or remotely.
Now, I’ve been uploading my data to Google’s, Adobe’s, etc. services and using my desktop/laptop as a backup of what I have online for reasons like this.
[…] inability on Google’s part to communicate comes from a post early on Chris Brogan’s blog where he tells us about his colleague Nick Saber who got locked out of his […]
This is what happens when a company gets too big. The personal relationships go out the window and it’s inevitable that a certain percentage of customers get screwed.
Since they also deal with fraud on a regular basis, they make you jump through nasty hoops or give you no recourse. I’ve refused to use external accounts or services because of those concerns.
Even more of a problem is that you’re leaving a public record that is searchable (apparanetly without even a warrant) by a law organization if they just assert that you’re a suspect.
Distributed backups do make sense, but that means (to me) that you do it yourself using appropriate techniques and media. (DVD’s by the way, aren’t all that long term.)
Regarding Googletalk, it uses the only IETF standardized protocol. If you google XMPP servers, you’ll find several that are free as in open software. At least one also provides a publish and subscribe service.
Once it’s set up, you’re employees can continue to use the clients they are using now. You’ll have to redo roster relationships, rooms, etc but that shouldn’t take too long. Conversation histories on an individual basis are typically stored by clients in a local database (Gajim uses sqlite3).
Room conversations will have to be captured manually and re-pasted to the local version of the room. If you bring someone in who’s familiar with one of the freeware servers, you can be up and running in a day or two.
You only have to make one or two ports available through the firewall to allow customers to connect. If you have a web site, it won’t take long to get customers to switch over to the same username at the company site.
If you have further questions, feel free to contact me.
Chris
[…] Google te tiene http://www.chrisbrogan.com/when-google-owns-you/ Esto es todo por hoy. Me voy aMarte. « előző | My Feeds — 2008. 08. 06. […]
While I can understand the frustration account lockout can cause, service providers have to protect themselves as well.
GMail provides pop/smtp access. The key here is: HAVE BACKUPS. Just because you are using a third party service doesn’t mean you shouldn’t back up.
Would you take all of your critical paperwork and leave it in a self storage locker? Maybe.. but if it burned down? You would of course have kept a copy at home, right?
If you are -paying- for Google Apps, print your support screen. Yes, on paper. Put it somewhere safe.
That’s how you can talk to a human being. You aren’t paying $50 an account per year for the sole reliance on email.
Google Apps support desk -will- pick up if you have your support information.
To be very clear on this topic Chris — the “paying customer” should have called the support number showing on this screen:
https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/YOURDOMAIN.TLD/DomainSettingsAccountInformation
Ideally, this is something that would be printed like his power bill, telephone bill, or any of a variety of utility bills.
There he would find these numbers:
* System critical issue support line (Local): 1-800-598-3901
* System critical issue support line (Global): 1-650-253-7875
To contact support, you will need the following:
* Customer PIN: XXXXXXXXXX
* Support PIN: XXXXXXXXXXX
Of course, the X’s would be his specific information.
[…] here’s a guy who makes heavy use of Google’s online services, such as Picasa and Google Docs and Gmail, […]
Oh, and as a best practice you’ll notice -this- printed below your PIN’s
“Only share the PIN numbers with other administrators. This information will allow someone to make changes to your domain settings and user accounts. For security reasons, we will update your PIN numbers periodically. Be sure to check the latest account information before contacting our support team.”
Granted, I wish this was more clearly defined by Google Apps — but printing this out is a good start.
Chris,
If you guys are writing a book using Google tools (deletes “you guys are nuts” rhetoric as too trollish) as an online “friend” I advise you to get your heads… no wait, here’s my free advice to anyone:
The cloud is wonderful, super. I use it all the time, Amazon S3, Gmail, Google Docs, etc. But NEVER use it as a primary and NEVER put stuff there that isn’t backed up elsewhere. Gmail? Greatest secondary email service in the world IMO.
Plus, what if someone breaks in somehow? GMail is a much bigger target than your private, correctly managed IMAP server. You could be using a private server for the rest too.
Hope this helps and sorry to hear about the trouble.
[…] with Google, and what can happen when you are so dependent upon a single vendor when stories like when Google owns you and web searches like Gmail account disabled appear online every few months. I have no idea if Mr. […]
Ah… the joys of life with mega-sized companies. I would never entrust my data to a free service, or even completely entrust it to a paid service. I have a gmail account, but hate the interface and rarely use it. I think if I was Nick, I’d follow up pretty quick with a letter from my lawyer. Then I’d call and make cryptic references to Lucy Parsons, then… oh, hello Homeland Security!
[…] Chris Brogan shares a story of his colleague at CrossTech Media Nick Saber losing access to his Google account completely. The […]
[…] This is just a quick post for small business owners thinking about making the jump to using Google Products as a primary tool. In addition to my articles, be sure to read this post today on Chris Brogan’s blog: When Google Owns You. […]
randulo, people have happily written their book in Google Docs, e.g. http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-01-23-n82.html
I’m glad that Nick got his account back. The system to recover your account asks you to try to remember information to prove that it’s you instead of a hacker, but I believe it still lets you recover your account much faster than the previous system that Google used.
@Matt - Thanks for commenting, and I’m glad it’s all resolved. Let me state that as I type this, I have 5 tabs open in my browser that belong to your company. I’m not crapping on the big G. But wow, did that scare some sense into me on the potential for what happens if I ever lose my account. 30+ hours would be horrible for me. I mean, I’ve got other ways to do any of the stuff I use Google applications to cover, but operationally… yikes.
The big thing I took away was that I wish it were easier to get to a human (or even a better automated process) that would help resolve things faster.
Thanks for commenting and for your perspective, Matt. The big G is lucky to have at least one voice out there talking to us. Now, one last question: what SHOULD happen when one loses one’s account?
[…] what if they crash? Or what if my account is disabled for no apparent reason, as Chris Brogan mentions happened to a guy called Nick Saber? Where would that leave me? Where would that leave you, if you - as I - have become very dependant […]
Blog readers are a small and vocal (sometimes hysterical) minority. Viewed through the distorting lens of RSS feeds problems take on an importance they don’t have. Any important endeavour entrusted to a computer should have a simple and timely plan to recover normal service - end of story.
Good to see it has been resolved but I think that this incident should make us all rethink our complete reliance on Google services for many of our professional or personal tasks. I think some level of diversification should be used to make it all more reasonable.
Glad to see Nick got this resolved quickly but it also scares the sh$% out of me when I see stuff like this happen. This is so “Microsoftish”.
Most of us use a variety of stuff online that keep us in touch with friends, clients, etc… giving total control to a third party over our stuff (i.e. Google) is a blessing and a curse at the same time. It’s free, it’s convenient but we give up control. not such a good thing. Free has a cost after all.
A few days ago one of my clients asked me why they should host their new blog on their own domain instead of Wordpress.com, this just answered their question.
[…] between Google and its users has been highlighted in a post by Chris Borgan, where he mentions Nick Saber’s inability to access his account and all he gets from Google is: Sorry, your account has been disabled. […]
Thank goodness your account wasn’t deleted. My free gmail account was accessed by a hacker and s/he deleted the account. It’s gone forever according to Gmail support folks. No possible password recovery and such. This happened last year. Beware!!
The lack of second sourcing and interop / portability in the cloud is of serious strategic concern, not only in terms of security but competitive pricing.
This is never going to be sorted with open standards and open data, as you need choice in providers of the same service and portability between them. Standard specification alone (as can be seen from the history of standards) won’t solve this issue.
What is needed are cloud ecosystems of multiple vendors based upon the same open sourced standards (i.e. operational open sourced reference models of the service to be provided). The open SDK of GAE and Eucalyptus are early examples of such approaches, which have the future potential to solve the issues of interop / portability.
This of course shouldn’t be a problem for those ubiquitous activities in IT that should move from a product world based upon product differentiation to a service world with competition based upon price and quality of service.
Unfortunately in this early stage many vendors will bring a product mentality to the service world. It is likely that we will need concerted community pressure from business consumers to push vendors in a service direction rather than a “our product as a service”.
Sorry to hear about your problems, but the cloud is gearing up for a black swan event one of these days to which the fallout will be catastrophic for those effected.
[…] in When Google Owns You, Chris Brogan posted about a colleague who came back from lunch on Monday to find he was locked out […]
Looking at the form that Google have put up, I must admit I can’t remember when I created my Google account - does that information need to be accurate, or could I submit the form with just “August 2008″ selected?
Is there a way that I can find out this information from my Google accounts page?
[…] What will you do if Google accidentally locks you out of your account? Can this really happen? It already has. […]
I wondered when I would hear my first horror story about a “Google World”. I am now reconsidering my own level of involvement in various Google apps. Trust is a good thing and Google has earned that with what I believe to be a strong offering. The thing that I see as their potential Achilles Heel is the “all or nothing” approach to turning services on and off at their discretion. If you are someone who is using the service legitimately and then you are simply denied you should have easier recourse. It appears that in any T & C’s Google shouldn’t use the term “act of God” but rather “act of Google”. Apparently there is little distinction between the two in Google’s eyes.
Part of the problem is that they hire genius’ from University that don’t have any real world experience or common sense.
They flew me out to California for an interview last year. The first interview I had was a video conference with the hiring manager from Northern Virginia, just 70 miles from my house! BRILLIANT!
I second Rich’s question up there. Is there any way to use your Google account to figure out what the start dates for all those services were?
I have full access to my account and I can’t answer most of those questions. Am I missing something?
[…] Chris Brogan tells this sad take of woe: Nick Saber Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message: […]
Am I right in recalling that Google have dropped their unnoficial company slogan “Don’t be Evil”?
… Talkjack ;-)
[…] Chris Brogan asks the tough questions about the internet Empire Google. What happens if you’re a user of Gmail and other Google services, and one day they disable your account? Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message: […]
Wow, what a flood–a really scary one at that!
I suppose my question would be, does anyone on here know of free or cheap programs that can automatically fetch my mail and other apps and back them up? And if that program doesn’t exist, why aren’t we developing it right now? Moreover, why isn’t Google developing it right now?
[…] you’re an avid Google user, you may wish to read this post sitting down. Chris Brogan documents the sorry tale of Nick Saber’s complete and utter denial by Google. After returning […]
This isn’t just a Google issue; for years (before I evidently knew better) I’d used a *paid* Hotmail account for everything: personal email, bank accounts, website admin contacts, my kids’ schools, and son. I *never* abused the account, yet one morning I was no longer able to log in. At all. I sent several emails via another account, and was finally told that my account had been permanently deleted “for violating the terms of use”. I pressed further via several phone calls, and was finally told by some smug mid-level support manager, again, that I’d violated some TOU. I pushed for more details, but was told that the exact nature of my “violation(s)” couldn’t be disclosed as that would “jeopardize security”. Many lessons learned, among them A) don’t use any of the big services for personal stuff–and that includes Google; B) PITA though it is, running parallel systems isn’t necessarily a bad thing; C) I despise officious, nameless little ba$tard$ who wield just a little too much power.
I thought Google was a good thing. I built up my reliance with them… expanded and built my business around them and their google pages, ad words, adsense, etc., until they shut me down.
No email notice… nothing. They simply stopped my pages.
The only ‘explaination’ was that I’d violated their ‘terms of service’ and that I should review same. My google pages were simple with no porn, no violence, no hate… nothing odd. I’ve written them over and over and I only get the boiler plate response to ‘review their terms’.
Thanks for the awakening Nick. I’ve opened an email account with a small provider and I’m about to establish my own domain name. I’m cancelling my Ad aware and Ad words accounts, too.
Hey Google… keep your lousy customer service. You’ve been no help to me and, quite frankly, you’ve hurt me.
Ford motors once ruled the automotive world. Today, they’re just another player struggling to survive.
G, your day will come… but for now, G is for goodbye.
Bill W. Williams
noveldiscoveries@ NOT GOOGLE. com
Google is on of the largest web companies, highest trafficed sites on the web, etc., and yet they have next to no customer support. Even their advertising applications, like Adsense and Adwords (which some companies spend millions of dollars a month on), only have live support for 12 hours a day, five days a week. I remember when the folks on the AdSense blog posted a note: “We’re going on a group vacation, so if you have any problems, we’ll be back in a few days.” I’m sure that was just fine for all the people who rely on Google to feed their families.
This has got to change if Google wants to be taken seriously by consumers. It’s why I don’t use any personal Google products (Gmail, Docs, etc.). It’s too risky.
“I suppose my question would be, does anyone on here know of free or cheap programs that can automatically fetch my mail and other apps and back them up?”
Google supports POP mail - you can use any mail program to download it, which many people do.
It’s weird to consider, though, that you may have only ever used webmail and think that’s the only way to get email. Even if you’re not one, there are probably a lot of people like that.
For Picasa…Photos can be retained locally instead of uploaded just to the internet and stored in one place. Same as any other photo service/program - you should keep backups!
[…] 6th, 2008 (8:00am) Mike Gunderloy No Comments Rattling around the blogs this morning is the cautionary tale of Nick Saber, who found himself locked out of all his Google accounts. We’ve written plenty about the […]
Thanks for exposing this risk. Now we can’t blame Google if we got messed up due to over dependence. May be we have to keep few complimentary email accounts such as own domain, Hotmail etc. I use outlook and back it up too.
I guess the tide is turning… Is Google now to be hated the way Microsoft has been in the popular culture.
I’d say the lesson here is you get what you pay for.
If you can’t afford to get a real email account, etc., then you probably don’t need it very badly.
[…] ρίγος ανησυχίας λοιπόν με διαπέρασε μόλις διάβασα την περιπέτεια του Nick Saber. Ο Nick ήταν στη δουλειά του, έκανε ένα […]
Many individuals earn their livings with Adsense. This normally involves many websites and pages. They work feverishly on their content to increase their traffic while trying not to violate the terms of “the agreement”. They see their revenue increasing. Then, one day, they get an email saying that their account has been disabled because it has been determined that their site poses a financial risk to Google’s advertisers and that any other information is confidential. They, once again pour over the “agreement”. Then they realize that this is a waste of time.
Great harm has been done to the publisher, but the publisher is not in a position to seek restitution. The lesson is that the number 1 is the worst number in business. The other lesson is that you were stupid to build your life around an agreement that says that your account may be canceled at any time. So, you learn your lesson and move on to more than one of the other search engines that will make you a good living. Part of your routine becomes checking out and incorporating other search engine ads in your valuable web space. You add multiple hosts until you can become your own host and duplicate websites under slightly different domain names.
What is needed is an international search engine publishers group with several million users.
I am sorry, but this is most definitely the age of idiot Twits, as in; Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Google apps, MobileMe cloud using morons. What do you actually THINK (if you venture to attempt such a novel activity) the REAL agenda is? Free this and free that, for NOTHING? Come on people, nothing is really for free. So you buy into the scam, drink the “open” and “free” hype, and think everything is good with the world. As your apps go up into the cloud, you STILL insist, ‘Everything is ok, no worries…’ As Lessig and others even warn you, no, it’s STILL ok… Yeah, right. And the Germans on the prison train cars thought they were going to be ok too… Wake up dumbos or they will own more than your email and pages. The game is almost over. Corporatism = Fascism. Divest now, while you still can. Then fight for your rights as if your life depends on it, because - guess what - it does.
While reading this, I decided to finally get around to installing Thunderbird, the Mozilla e-mail client. I am now downloading all My e-mails.
I make two backup copies of everything—except My e-mails. Recipe for disaster, now to be avoided.
I had an AngelFire e-mail account. When I logged in, it switched to Lycos e-mail, then said there was a problem with the account/accountname/password—it seemed to have no idea WHAT it meant so say!
I messages Lycos “support” three times: I gave them My information, My address, telephone number, and some other info as well. I never heard from them.
I never did sign up for Lycos e-mail. Lycos “support” did not know how to use a telephone—what good would they be for ANY problem?
I have noticed on Gmail, when I am having a password problem, it helpfully wants a new password AND swirly letters! At this point, as Metz said, [Metz on August 6, 2008 @ 1:48 am], I take a hike on it.
Actually, I back-button to a clean screen a few times, first. By this time, I NEED a hike!
MDG
this happened to me on dreamhost - they determined that because i had a few bounced-back messages from one of my newsletter emailings that it must be spam and they shut down my account completely. i have 9 domain names registered with them - i couldn’t even login to my control panel to update the domains’ DNS info so i could host the domains elsewhere. nor could i transfer the domain names to another registrar becaue i couldn’t change the administrative contact, which, by default is a dreamhost address. it took about 2 months with the help of GoDaddy to have everything finally transferred and up and running again. for a new company, this was absolutely devastating. I couldn’t find a way to contact dreamhost, even when i finally found a phone number, it was just a recording saying they don’t offer telephone support and that any voicemails left at this number will not be answered. i lost absolutely everything. getting it back two months later was ineffectual. i could have started over fresh and gotten the same results. dreamhost retains the right to shut down and lock you out of your account for anything they determine as misuse, which, after reading a lot of other posts, include interlinking several blogs of your own, sending out an email newsletter that gets bounced back messages, and many other trivial things. they can shut you out with no warning, no refund and no explanation. i have never been so horrified by a company on my life, which is too bad because their control panel is a dream compared to godaddy, pardon the pun.
So, this form that may be necessary to regain access to my Google account:
https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?contact_type=ara&ctx=accounts
…asks all kinds of information that I personally don’t remember (especially without searching any of my Google sites).
Nick wisely suggests:
“You need to write down all of your info so you can do this.”
Um, I agree with Rich and SuperBadGirl: does anyone know where to find all these answers for my own account, so as to prepare for such an awful occasion?
If so, can you please write it up and let us know?
I’ve always enjoyed reading emails using a client application. Email browsing just doesn’t cut it for me. What’s more — I always had that foresight that something horrible will happen when I leave email messages online (err, not downloaded to my client). One good practice I’ve mastered is email archiving, which we should all implement, either monthly or quarterly. A beast like Google has a lot of power, such big a company can create horrendous experiences for small people and organization.
We shan’t be victims …
[…] Monday, Nick Saber had the harrowing experience of being temporarily locked out of all his Google services. A […]
[…] that I don’t like Big Corporations controlling my information. Chris Brogan’s post, When Google Owns You, is about someone who’s Google account was shut down with no reasonable explanation. Surfing […]
Why is anybody surprised at this? Actually, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. What I don’t get is why anybody would abdicate control over their data and (in the case of Nick’s collegaue) certain enterprise apps to a third party. OK, I can understand the SaaS model, but if I’m paying for your services, then I should be able to administer what I’m paying for. On the flip side, if you are using any kind of managed services, you HAVE TO PLAN FOR A BACKUP. Yes, using online storage is nice, but it doesn’t mean you stop backing up your data.
I wrote a piece a few years ago [when Google apps were released] on eurweb.com about the promise and pitfalls of SaaS, and presented a failure scenario not that much different than what has happened. Don’t get me wrong, I think the SaaS model is very viable and holds lots of promise. I think as we go through these groing pains, people will realise that if they depend [solely] on someone else to look after their data, then when their access is gone they have only themselves to blame.
Glad to see you’ve been allowed back into your Google accounts, but this is a frightening thought. Especially since the security form for account recovery asks for some data that I normally would not keep or really remember.
Since I use several Google services all started at disparate times, I could not even begin to remember when I started using each one. I suppose getting close would be good enough since they say the “strength” of answers is important, perhaps not so much as accuracy, but even so, Google might need to work on a better way of verifying account ownership.
Google has owned you (pwned you) for a long time. Anyway the Feds now have a single place to go to do all sorts of interesting things. Waterboarding for email.
[…] his access back. But still, maybe you shouldn’t delete that old Hotmail account just yet. [Chris Brogan via Boing […]
I have the same question: I have no clue when I started any of the google services, is there any way to discover this?
To find out how long you’ve been using Gmail, do a search for the first message they sent you, entitled “Gmail is different”.
[…] his access back. But still, maybe you shouldn’t delete that old Hotmail account just yet. [Chris Brogan via Boing […]
This is really scary. I am a huge fan of gmail and would be very angry that after all this time, after convincing and tyring to convert people to get on gmail, the same could happend to me.
I just started to use google reader and I was thinking yesterday that how handy would it be to just have everything on the Internet at the same place (as in Google), my e-mails, my RSS feed, my notes, my storage, my pictures, ect.
I thought that would be a great idea, I woudln’t need to have anything physical with me anymore. I just moved so to me, physical objects are a pain. I told myself that the next time I move, I would only have a laptop, my media backpack (HD camcorder, camera, iPod, mics, ect), a sportsbag full of clothes and my wallet.
Perhaps my initial idea wasn’t bad to have as many things online as possible, just not at the same place?
[…] rely on Google for just about everything. I was horrified when i read this article on a tech news website i frequent. Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find […]
It’s strange have this conversation going on in the comments and on FriendFeed. :) I’ll echo what I said on FriendFeed for the folks who might not have seen it:
@Chris, there’s several ways to look at this. If you’re worried about losing data if an account is disabled, it’s easy to back-up almost any data associated with your Google Account (see my previous comment about how to do that). If you’re worried about not being able to use All Things G with the disabled account, you could always create a new account to access Google services. On the third hand, if you’re worried about the actual disable-ing and how to correct that, there are good ways.
For example, we provide a self-service tool to help get your account back: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=61805 and account recovery: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?ara=1 . I think Google provides better tools for online account recovery than most other sites. Some people do abuse Google accounts, so we have to be able to disable those accounts. We try hard, but no service will be 100% perfect.
In 2005, I spent a year building a lot of Blogs with Google’s Blogger describing products I liked and why. I was learning about internet marketing and seeing how I might benefit with Adwords on my blogs.
In Feburary 2006, all of my blogs were deleted. No note, no nothing. Apparently something I did they did not like. I asked repeatedly what happened, and asked for them to be restored. Their policy is not to tell what you did wrong. They just delete or remove your access.
To this day I have no idea why.
All I wrote about was how much I liked certain skin
and hair products (I’m into Aromatherapy) so I’m sure
they were not asked to delete them by the product companies I wrote about. Anyhow, I NEVER use Google mail or any other products, nor do I recommend them either. I shudder to think of all the people out there investing countless hours and intellectual property using their products when the risk that they could be gone in an instant is very real.
Luckily, I was smart enough to get my data back by
going to google cache right away, but I have never made my sites back again. I have purchased domain names and just republished the google cache documents there, but it is not the same and really unworkable.
If you host your own blog with blogger, I think you’re safe from Google being able to delete your blog but… still I will take no more chances with Google software or any other software that is not stored and in my control.
@Matt - it really is weird what FriendFeed has done to conversations. Sorry to make you work twice as hard. I have to read in twice as many places, fyi. : )
So, to the “just create a new account and keep going” mindset, great point. Absolutely. I’ll throw the next wrench.
What if my Gmail account is my social media dashboard: “Matt Cutts just sent you a Direct Message.” “Matt Cutts sent you a friend request on MonkeyFarmers.” etc. I’ve just lost the dashboard. Yes, I can go back in, but ow.
You’re right about the forms being better than not, except that I can’t answer the questions, I don’t think. I don’t know when I first used anything. I can tell you some of the other questions, but do I have to get it ALL right? Aieee.
Finally, wait until you see the reason it was disabled. Will finish that post in an hour, once I record a webinar (not related).
I don’t think you have to get all the questions right, Chris–just enough so that we know it’s you and not someone trying to do something malicious. I dropped Nick an email to see if he’s doing okay now and was hoping to hear whether he’d seen anything unusual (hacked accounts or hacked websites) recently.
LauraLee, when you say that you built “a lot” of Blogger blogs while you were learning SEO/internet marketing, how many blogs would you say you made?
@Matt
All told, several on different aromatherapy essential oils (their properties, how I have used them, etc. some girlie stuff (perricone, and other skin care I loved, hair products, phyto (including photos of my results), over 10 blogs were deleted by google overnight. Plus my personal hey this is going on kinda blog. grrrr! If you’re blogging, the only way that you can prevent them from deleting YOUR content is to self host your blog (which is easy to do now). I am shocked how many people use the blogger address for their business blog. Not only was all my traffic gone in a flash, but so was all my hard work and worse… I just lost my enthusiasm. I am not a spammer, I didn’t do anything wrong, no capturing users private info, etc. Just sharing my knowledge and a link (on two of the blogs where you could buy the items. The rest was informational. That’s why I can’t figure out what was wrong.
[…] blog post is one of the best reasons why my data isn’t in the cloud: Suddenly, Nick can’t access his […]
Remember to print and to have an electronic copy of your important information on at non-network location so you can call Google. If you have paid services with Google you get all of this information on the Term of Service and Agreement which has your PIN & other information and the customer service phone number.
I learned a long time ago copy (electronically), print and store safely that information since one these days you will need access to that information in a emergency.
Chris,
I’ve obviously confused some folks… in a nutshell, when you use Google Apps for your own domain you can start with the Partner edition (FREE!) them move to Premier ($50 a pop).
The key difference?
A Google Apps Partner edition administrator sees this:
—
To contact support, you will need the following:
* Customer PIN: XXXXXXXX
—
See anything missing? Yes, a phone number is missing.
However, links to both Google Apps support
http://www.google.com/support/a
as well as the administrator group
http://groups.google.com/group/apps-discuss
are provided as a DIY way to seek out support but I cannot speak to how well Google handles this side of the support house — but my guess is there is either script or process flow they have defined to account for “HELP HELP HELP” messages posted there.
It’s free for up to 100 users — and support gets you this far.
So….
By contrast, a paying Google Apps Premier account administrator sees:
—
* System critical issue support line (Local): 1-800-598-3901
* System critical issue support line (Global): 1-650-253-7875
To contact support, you will need the following:
* Customer PIN: XXXXXXXXXX
* Support PIN: XXXXXXXXXXX
—
So, in summary — I think if you are going to be a “paying customer” or even the FREE kind you should keep a recent copy of this URL in a /safe place/.
https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/YOURDOMAIN.TLD/DomainSettingsAccountInformation
In my experience with a host of cloud-esque service providers — Google Apps has still far exceeded my expectations for the price paid and the support and services delivered.
p.s. I’ve also subscribed to follow-ups since I only knew to come back here after tracking a spam blog that has copied your entire website that registered a hit with Google Alerts on my name.
Ah, the Interwebs.
[…] just going to make this quick - Chris Brogan reported(When Google Owns You) that google had shut down the who account of a Nick Saber, just an average guy, for no apparent […]
It’s scary when most of your online activities go through a single freebie account like Google’s.
I just went ahead and made sure I have alternate E-mail addresses set up for all the Google/Yahoo/Microsoft accounts.
Thanks for the article.
[…] is gaining control over our personal data. This would grow into a bigger issue for folks. Here is a recent incident that is […]
[…] When Google Owns You [chrisbrogan.com] - A cautionary tale about Google, power and losing your life in the cloud: “Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message: Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?] That’s it. ” (After much drama, Nick’s account was eventually restored after he managed to accurately complete this insane form.) […]
[…] looks like Google will get trigger happy and just shut down your entire account (Gmail, Picasa, Google Docs, etc) if there is an unauthorized […]
In a similar maneuver blogger **aka google** has blasted me (or a client of mine) and at least one other user out of access to the ‘permissions’ tab on the blogger administration panel. We reported the problem two months ago, and after a few “Thanks for the heads up, we’ll get back to you…” messages, nada.
I’ve seen this in several cases, like yours: is Google busy writing Internet Explorer interfaces for the company whose web domination they so publicly oppose, or have they simply lost their edge?
This sounds like a classic case of bad USER EXPERIENCE.
Google prides themselves on their USER EXPERIENCE capabilities, but apparently not much attention was given to their email feedback writing.
I hope Google sees this comment so that they will improve the UX in their email feedback.
What Google could have done was speculated the possible reasons for suspension, or indicate when they will get back with the customer with more details. Point is that Google left the customer hanging without any information about what happens next. That’s bad UX.
I’m sure Google will fix it, just let them know that it was a bad USER EXPERIENCE for you.
[…] cela fait réfléchir. Vous ne devriez peut-être pas encore supprimer votre vieux compte Hotmail. [Chris Brogan via Boing […]
This is why I don’t trust cloud computing. If you don’t want to pay for word processing software, try Java’s OpenOffice 2.4. I back up on a 1 TB WD external hard drive. This way I may be considered a Luddite but I don’t have these problems of lack of access to my documents. I do use Outlook 2007 for email just because it’s the best one I’ve seen for organizing emails easily, but of course it costs money. But if I lose my internet connection completely, I can still do a lot with my computer and the software I have.
[…] few people pointed me to Chris Brogan’s report about Nick Saber, a guy who got locked out of Google Apps. It’s a useful example in favour of […]
[…] Kopie zu behalten und b) mehrere Anbieter zu nutzen. Die Bedeutung totaler Abhängigkeit dürfte Nick Saber erlebt haben, als Google ihn aussperrte: keine Mails, Bilder, Speicherplatz, alles unerreichbar. […]
[…] When Google Owns You Google user Nick Saber suddenly found himself locked out of all his Google accounts — email, photos, storage. What rights does he have? […]
[…] When Google Owns You One man’s tale of not being able to access his Google account, where he keeps his e-mail, his documents, his photos, and does his instant messaging. It points out the issues with putting all your eggs in one basket, and more importantly, the flaws in relying completely on cloud computing. I may be something of a luddite, but having control of the vital tools and data for my research or business is always going to take precedence over being able to access them from the web. The same goes for online backups, as many have reported files disappearing from Apple’s MobileMe backup system. I don’t want to have to shut my business down, or repeat experiments if some company’s servers are down or they have a problem with one of their hard drives. […]
My fears of giving Google all my past email through Gmail…and why I ultimately decided to take the plunge:
http://www.michaelmadej.com/2008/04/why-googles-gmail-is-able-to-overcome.html
Folks, ever just consider server maintenance. Back end RAID storage with terrabytes per aggregate can and do go down and need file system checking and reconstruction … which can mean days of data outage.
Or consider the small non-profit school I help - the web-hosting ISP was down for half a week after the “single day on weekend” planned outage went long due to issue moving the data center servers.
About 5 years ago or so one of the two primary concentration points for internet traffic out of the SVL area went down. The company I work for had specifically paid for two accounts, two vendors, guaranteed routing paths for just such a “never happen” situation - did your COLO have the same? If not you may have been down for a day.
Myself _ also once accidentally violated my web host provider (even separate from my ISP thank god) agreement. Somehow. They immediately denied online chat and other usual arrangements to e-mail and calls at their whim and timimg and that took days. That took 3 days.
So even poor customer service aside - your data can become unavailable for hours to days.
A non-vendor specific replicated file system would go a long way to enabling folks to work around these issues.
So besides the form to fill out, what other steps can I take to get an account back? This happened to me today! I just use the regular free gmail, I do any spamming or blogging and when I filled out the form I just got the canned response.
[…] other story which falls under this privacy umbrella is one about Google closing the account of a user and not telling them why. What makes a free market work is the trust we place in those whom we chose to do business with. I […]
[…] your account. Think this isn’t possible? Well read the article about someone who recently had their account disabled by Google. Or read the article from PC World about how Gmail customers recently couldn’t access their […]
[…] užsienio tinklaraščių rašė apie vieno šios kompanijos vartotojo nesėkmę, kai jis nebegalėjo prisijungti prie savo el. […]
That’s terrible. The lack of answers is frustrating. I’m on my third week with feedburner, and it still says 0 visitors (all time) and my subscriber count is till reset to 0 almost always. I cannot get any answers or help. I can’t imagine how frustrated I would feel if it were access to my mail. I am sorry for you Nick. I will be thinking good thoughts.