Are you trusting Google with all of your online life?

This is one month old. Some of the details in that article aren't correct to begin with. For example, that guy's youtube channel remained accessible at all times (which is not compatible with statements such as "had all their accounts closed"). And the situation seems to have been resolved. I don't know any details, other than what the press has been reporting.

Old joke from a divorce attorney: There are always three sides to a story: his, hers, and the truth.
 
ralphbsz said:
This is one month old. Some of the details in that article aren't correct to begin with. For example, that guy's youtube channel remained accessible at all times (which is not compatible with statements such as "had all their accounts closed").
Click to expand...
TFA explicitly mentions that the channel is up
Re-Logic's YouTube channel, which is still up here, (with a disabled profile picture) appears to be nothing but trailers of the company's games.
Click to expand...
Problem was, they couldn't add any new content because their Google account was disabled. TFA does not contain the word "closed" in it at all.
ralphbsz said:
And the situation seems to have been resolved. I don't know any details, other than what the press has been reporting.
Click to expand...
Do you have a source for this? I could find no information on what has happened since February 10th,
 
I think that was just an example of what might happen, so no point getting too bogged down in the specifics of that case?

The point still stands - our choices are getting more limited.

Between Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple etc. etc. we're all doomed anyway.

Putting my tinfoil hat back on and scuttling back under the bed.
 
Jose said:
Do you have a source for this? I could find no information on what has happened since February 10th,
Click to expand...
First hit when you web search for "terraria account google" is this:
www.ign.com

Terraria Now Coming to Stadia After Co-Creator Has Google Accounts Restored [Updated] - IGN

Update: Terraria will be coming to Stadia after all, after the game's co-creator had access to their Google accounts restored.
www.ign.com www.ign.com
It has links at the top to official communication from Terraria that everything is good again.

richardtoohey2 said:
The point still stands - our choices are getting more limited.

Between Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple etc. etc. we're all doomed anyway.
Click to expand...
There are many other providers of hosting and e-mail service.

Where it gets difficult is this: people want for example a free e-mail service. But they also want that e-mail service to remain up and running when the company hosting the e-mail is served with a legal order against that account, of when they e-mail provider catches the user performing illegal actions. And they want easy-to-reach fully staffed human tech support for when things go wrong (like: I lost my password, or my account was closed because I was caught sending pictures that are illegal, or my account was hacked by criminals from Elbonia, or the court ordered you to close my account but my lawyer sees it should stay open). And they want the hosting company's lawyers go fight for them.

I pay $10 per month for my e-mail and hosting. I know that I can reach my e-mail provider by phone, 24x7, and someone will answer the phone. I know their address, so if I need to personally deliver paperwork (like legal documents), I can get there by car in about 3 hours. I know that if I need to meet with the CEO of that company on an important issue, I can make an appointment, and he will talk to me. I know that their lawyers will try to defend me if they are served with an order shutting me down. All this is from personal experience (been there, done that, got the T-shirt). All that for $10 per month? Pretty good deal if you ask me. To be honest, the fact that I had to give my personal lawyers about $3000 to help defend me made the whole thing quite a bit more expensive, but the hosting company did pay for their own lawyer on my behalf.

Now, if someone wants to have all that service, but not pay for it? Sorry, that's unrealistic. If you need a business-critical or hosting service, a free one is unlikely to be a good choice.
 
ralphbsz said:
There are many other providers of hosting and e-mail service.
Click to expand...
You make good points, but how much longer will we have these other providers for?

Google has lost ~US$13 billion on Google Cloud over the last three years (I was going to paste a link but they are all auto-playing video nightmares) - how is that fair on other players, especially the smaller ones? You will have to have very deep pockets to play in this game.

Guess that is how things work (and always have worked).
 
ralphbsz said:
First hit when you web search for "terraria account google" is this:
www.ign.com

Terraria Now Coming to Stadia After Co-Creator Has Google Accounts Restored [Updated] - IGN

Update: Terraria will be coming to Stadia after all, after the game's co-creator had access to their Google accounts restored.
www.ign.com www.ign.com
It has links at the top to official communication from Terraria that everything is good again.
Click to expand...
This is what they said
...we had a ton of issues to kick off the year stemming from the locking-down of Redigit's entire Google account in early January. After a month of pushing (and with the immense support of our fans), Google finally reached out and was able to provide a lot of transparency around the situation and to restore access to all of our accounts.
Click to expand...
It took two full months and an Ars Technica article for an indie developer with a hit game and 69k Twitter followers to get Google to react. What chance do you have if you're a regular Joe?
 
richardtoohey2 said:
You make good points, but how much longer will we have these other providers for?

Google has lost ~US$13 billion on Google Cloud over the last three years (I was going to paste a link but they are all auto-playing video nightmares) - how is that fair on other players, especially the smaller ones? You will have to have very deep pockets to play in this game.
Click to expand...
I'm paying 1.20 €/month for an e-mail+ service, 100% anonymous (if I really wanted), incl. cloud storage (2 or 5 or 10 GB? dunno 'cause I don't use that). That's 1/3 drink in a pub. IOW I invite one of the people driving that service for a drink every season. Is it worth it? I think so, and if not, how many others did I invite in that season?
You get what you pay for, that's not too complex to understand for anone with an IQ > 85, right? If a commercial company offers you a so-called "free" service, damn what'd ya think that "free" means? You pay with your privacy instead of money. If you go FreezeBook, WhatsApe, Giggle, Ape'le, well, it's your free decision...
 
Just know that gmx.com and mail.com banned my country from registering.
 
also-ran said:
Just know that gmx.com and mail.com banned my country from registering.
Click to expand...
Use a VPN. Generally it's better to have some type of "VPN Kill Switch" too.
VPN crashes, connection drops, and you don't want to expose your IP addr.
Some VPN clients (windows & mac) have kill switch. Built in the client itself.
But I don't know (never done that!) how to run or implement it on FreeBSD.

Related threats on implementing "Kill Switch":
Thread ipfw-killswitch-for-vpn.66813
Thread restarting-network.76075
 
richardtoohey2 said:
You will have to have very deep pockets to play in this game.
Click to expand...
Or provide a service that customers find valuable, and that is unique.

For the last ~22-something years, I've had the same "ISP" serving my mail and hosting needs (I put ISP in quotes, because they're not the provider of last-mile bandwidth). About 22 years ago, they were a larger company than Google: they probably had 50 people, when Google had 5, and Facebook didn't even exist yet. Today, they still exist, they continue to grow, they're probably at nearly 1000 employees, and I know they're hiring. I have no fear that they'll go under any time soon, at least not due to competition. They don't compete with IaaS companies such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not claiming that the FAANG don't have good products. This message is being typed on a computer made by Apple, worth every penny. If it were twice as expensive, I would still have bought it. But that doesn't mean that the FAANG will wipe out all the computing industry.
 
I definitely wouldn't trust Google with anything, but it does go to show you how little people investigate before putting their business somewhere. I mean... I don't know how long ago it was when those Android developers started complaining because they suddenly didn't get any revenue from Google even though their apps had been sold a couple of times.
 
Jose said:
I suggest using more than one account.
Click to expand...
Umm...
does anybody know whether this actually helps?
I mean, FAANG associates you with all your accounts.
Who can give you any certainty they won't block all and lock you out anyway?

Regarding usage of paid email hosters, it is extremely important to make sure to choose a provider who allows you to downgrade your email subscription package.
For example, from personal experience I urgently warn against using gmx.com/.de, as your email account will get closed if you want to go back to the free plan, for example if you aren't satisfied for whatever reason.
(This is many years ago, I don't know whether they have changed this. But I won't ever give gmx a try again.)
 
I've read a few tech people I consider normal losing access to their Google accounts and losing all their documents and they have no clue why. I'm at the point where I'm uncomfortable with that and have transferred everything to my own storage. I've always had my own email server but still use GMail. I'll still use GDrive and Photos but only as temporary storage to transfer to my own. I've paid $20/year for extra storage but I'm canceling that while still retaining the free 20GB.
 
I have not a lot of choices. I have to use some free services. It's not just about free services. There's also paid software/service and hardware. I can't build them at home! I don't have any rational justification, but when I have to choose between FAANG and the Big Boys, I choose the Big Boys, aka IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. I think they'll stay with us for a long time, similar to the East India Company (EIC).
FAANG? I doubt it. That's just my personal observation (==feeling) on the whole shebang.
 
I had to get a google account to get my site listed correctly but I never used the gmail account or did anything but login to the website owner area and log back out when finished.

My hosting package ends next month so I'll lose my roundmail account that comes with it and that's the one I use most.

I have a yahoo account for registering and such but I seem to remember hearing about them scanning emails for keywords to target ads or something on the order.

I had a Tutanota account with a server in Germany, by choice, and it's free for up to 1GB of storage. I hadn't used it in 6 months so it went dead but will probably get another one there.
 
Snurg said:
Umm...
does anybody know whether this actually helps?
I mean, FAANG associates you with all your accounts.
Who can give you any certainty they won't block all and lock you out anyway?
Click to expand...
I don't know for sure and perhaps am being naive. What I do is create a new Google account whenever I need one for whatever reason. They're free. I use it for whatever purpose made me get it and nothing else. I abandon them silently when they're no longer of use.
 
Delete their cookies often, IIUC that's their main method to identify the user, plus CPUID? Can a browser access the cpuid? Can they identify me by reading (from a .js running in my browser) a SSL seed or such that's pinned by my SSL/TLS library? I.e. today it's the same like last week? I'm a total noob when it comes to this crypto stuff...
EDIT I cited none, but just do some wild guessing. See above: I'm a noob...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top