And this time I'd like the outcome of this thread not to be just "A Google insider wandered past and fixed this guys problem" but "Here's how we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Because next time it might be me and by then Hacker News might have grown weary of these kind of posts and I won't be able to get the necessary attention.
Nothing. I repeat - nothing - is pushing me to move away from dependence on Google products more than the fear of this happening.
Yes, I posted this because I've noticed that is what happens -- someone comes here and waits for a Google employee to wave their magic wand -- but I am well aware that people will get sick of seeing these on HN (and a company the size of Google offering products people rely on should not have the only contact method being "go to the secret club and say the magic word").
If there were additional authentication methods, or if it even just stopped you from sending mail (if they thought activity volume were too high), that would be... better, at least.
I note (for completeness) that if you pay for your mail service you get an escalation path that goes to a human.
I agree that it would be nice if the free accounts had this option too but having been inside the chocolate factory I can also see why this is not practical.
You can't pay for @gmail.com addresses, or else I absolutely would. If I'm going to make everyone change the e-mail they send me things at, I'm sure as hell going to change it to a non-GMail address now.
Switching to a custom domain is a good idea even if you don't pay for Google Apps. Because if Google kicks you off for whatever reason, you just change your MX record and your email is fine.
YES. I see all these comments above saying "man I'm afraid of being totally dependent on gmail". Owning your own MX record is the way out of that situation.
Yes, it is absolutely prudent and a good way to handle things.
It is also not something which most people have heard they should do. It also requires you to be something of a power user to even understand. Many people are so far into this mistake that it would take time and even more technical expertise to dig out.
So, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the poster's account was compromised and being used to send spam. Would that change your analysis? Why or why not?
My suspicion is that your immediate response will be to change the subject, most likely along the lines of "The problem isn't the temporary freeze on the account, it's the lack of communication." So I'd like to preemptively point out that you didn't make that case in your original argument.
I can only speak for myself here, but let me state unequivocally that the lack of communication and path for recourse is the problem.
PR-wise it might be a tough sell, but I think a perfectly acceptable answer is a pay-per-incident support line that connects to someone who can actually fix my problem.
I would like to see Google create a marketplace for support. They allow people to buy some access to their internal systems, who then sell support service. There would need to be careful vetting and monitoring of the people who buy the access, but if that could be made to work, end users get access to support, and Google wouldn't have to staff it.
Of course, they would have to provide support to the support providers, but that would be a much smaller, more knowledgeable population.
I badly want this particular solution. But the only way to create this startup would be to have good contacts with people in Google who have the authority to experiment with such a setup (because clearly Google WOULD need to experiment to find out whether it worked). I really DO think that someone ELSE, with a corporate structure that better supported the skillset of providing excellent customer support, could make an excellent living providing "customer service" for Google. 90% of issues could be handled just by hand-holding the customers without bothering Google at all. And the other 10% could be bundled up nicely (here's a repeatable bug report; I have 20 lockouts that appear to pass the first screening; etc.). But there would HAVE to be some way for people INSIDE Google to receive these nicely bundled reports and to respond to them.
Let's say for the sake of argument that his account was compromised.
Why lock him out? Wouldn't it make the most sense to let him get in and change his password?
If your answer is 'because the spammer/bot might change his password', realize it would be impossible to detect a spammer/bot before they start spamming, so once the bot has your password, it can login and change your password before it starts spamming. But most bots don't seem to do that.
Or lock the account such that no new email can be sent, but email can be received. At least then you aren't locked out of your archive for the last X years of your life.
Because I'm still left without a service that I may be using for something important. Maybe I've got a deadline coming up and I need to access my emails, who knows.
The problem, IMHO, is not that the account was locked. I'm perfectly cool with that, if thats what it takes to rectify whatever the problem was. The problem is that there is no way to contact Google about it. So lets say it was important to me to access my emails for whatever reason and I find my account locked because it was compromised. I now have no way of fixing this. No way of getting at my data. No way of even knowing why it was locked. If I could call Google up on the phone and they told me "oh, your account was compromised" at least I'd know whats going on. They then could work with me to at least provide me with access to my data while I wait for them to fix the problem and get my account restored. Or they can tell me to change my passwords or whatever it is I should be doing.
Right now all you get is "we locked your account, good luck, mwuahahaha".
How is it a flame? The guy asked how things were going to change to prevent this from happening. That's a legitimate question that EVERY user should be demanding an answer to.
Couldn't agree with you more. Until I started hearing about these seemingly random account cancelations I considered my google account my safest and most secure account (second only to my root login for my laptop).
I too am feeling a very strong force to move away purely out of necessity - I can't have the very crux of my online identity under constant threat of being completely destroyed on a whim with no guarantee of getting it back.
Because next time it might be me and by then Hacker News might have grown weary of these kind of posts and I won't be able to get the necessary attention.
Nothing. I repeat - nothing - is pushing me to move away from dependence on Google products more than the fear of this happening.