Android User Locked Out Of Google Accounts After Moving To A New City (itwire.com) 236
Slashdot reader troublemaker_23 shares a post from ITWire
An Android user has been locked out of his Google account apparently because he moved... The explanation offered by Google support staff was that since his address details differed, billing information with Google wasn't current and hence the user's purchases could look fraudulent... During his interactions with Google support to find out why he had been locked out, he was told that "It is our policy to not discuss the specific reasons for an account closure"...
He was initially directed by Google staff to a site where he had to scan his driver's license and credit card and told that he would have to wait 24 hours to get his account unlocked. But after this time passed, he was told that the account would not be unlocked and Google would not tell him why. He was advised to abandon his old account and start a fresh one. However, this meant he could not use the credit card that he had used on the old account...
The affected user called this "a warning to others not to put all your eggs in one basket, because these days, you have no rights over that basket whatsoever." But Friday the user posted an update on Reddit, quoting a Google staffer as saying "we routinely monitor account behavior on Google Play and take action on potentially suspicious activity. Unfortunately, in your case, your account was wrongly flagged and suspended. I have just reopened your account... I sincerely apologize for the stress and inconvenience this has caused you."
He was initially directed by Google staff to a site where he had to scan his driver's license and credit card and told that he would have to wait 24 hours to get his account unlocked. But after this time passed, he was told that the account would not be unlocked and Google would not tell him why. He was advised to abandon his old account and start a fresh one. However, this meant he could not use the credit card that he had used on the old account...
The affected user called this "a warning to others not to put all your eggs in one basket, because these days, you have no rights over that basket whatsoever." But Friday the user posted an update on Reddit, quoting a Google staffer as saying "we routinely monitor account behavior on Google Play and take action on potentially suspicious activity. Unfortunately, in your case, your account was wrongly flagged and suspended. I have just reopened your account... I sincerely apologize for the stress and inconvenience this has caused you."
I think he just got scammed . (Score:5, Insightful)
he scanned his dl and credit card into a google site ??
yeah .. i think he may be in for a bit more inconvenience other than being locked out of google
Re:I think he just got scammed . (Score:5, Informative)
he scanned his dl and credit card into a google site ??
No, it just looks like scam, but companies are that brazen nowdays.
Both eBay and PayPal have, at various points, requested a copy of credit card and driver license sent to them because of some verification they made up. My electricity provider and my dentist even wanted my SSN! Of course I told them off.
Someone I know had been locked out of the eBay account because eBay would not even accept a European DL instead of US one.
Re:I think he just got scammed . (Score:4, Interesting)
Blizzard demands your Driver's license if you make the mistake of installing their 2 stage auth app on a mobile device and need to remove it without access to the device.
I hear trying to get your Guild Wars 2 account back if you lose access to the original email involves a copy of your Social Security Card, Birth Certificate, 2 Photo IDs, the original box + receipt, and a phone call to India.
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Yes, this also happens (or used to) if you created your Battle.NET account in Europe and you wanted to change it to America (the servers are separated by region and that also affects the currency they charge you and the available promotions).
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Ubi installs the 2 stage auth for you and does the same.
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Better to jump through the hoops you need to in order to CHANGE your e-mail address is Blizzard's system.... That, at least, will be a one time deal.
After that... use a gmail account which you also pull down via IMAP to a local server or another online service (so you have 2 copies of every email). This is what everyone does, isn't it?
Re:I think he just got scammed . (Score:4, Insightful)
After that... use a gmail account which you also pull down via IMAP to a local server ...
The discussion here is about people losing access to their gmail account without notice and with no way to get it back.
Re:I think he just got scammed . (Score:5, Interesting)
My electricity provider and my dentist even wanted my SSN!A
No problem, as soon as you sign this, which indemnifies me without limit for any misuse if this identify theft qualify information. In other words, if someone breaks into your computer and steal this, you pay all costs related to straightening it out, including, but not limited to, costs of credit score monitoring, all actual costs due to fraud, any increased interest I might have to pay on loans as a result of damage to my credit score, legal fees, lost wages, etc.
What's that? You're not willing to accept responsibility for this information that you require but have absolutely no use for? Then I guess we won't be doing business.
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Can you just use a fake SSN? Do they actually use it for purpose that requires it to match the one the government has on file?
Re:I think he just got scammed . (Score:5, Informative)
That's more or less the law in the UK - if a company stores personal information about you they are legally obliged to keep it secure and therefore may be liable for damages if they don't (although proving it would be the challenge). You are also entitled to know what information they are storing for no more than a nominal processing fee.
Re:I think he just got scammed . (Score:4, Informative)
Been there with PayPal.
Moved to another city and PayPal decided to freeze my wallet. First of all: there wasn't any kind of continuity in discussions I started to regain my account since one could only message via some feedback form on their site - not by mail. The answer was given in a mail that couldn't be replied so all I was left with was to fill another form and paste the past discussion to the form since everytime a different person was answering each of the feedback. Just frustrating.
Only way to regain the control of the accoung (and my money) was to scan a passport and a fresh bank statement and I refused to do so since this was just dealing with a "toy bank" PayPal. Instead; I decided to wait for my credit card to expire because then all the money gets transferred to my bank account. Avoided PayPal since then.
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The first link (.onion) is to a Tor hidden site, you can access it via the Tor browser bundle [eff.org].
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You might to keep up on whether they have your SSN. I refused. five years later, I get a new job and new insurance. The insurance company got my SSN from my employer and they in turn gave it to my eye doctor. I have tried to get them to get rid of my SSN, but every time they submit a payment, the SSN comes back to them.
This is to make sure you're not cheating your government out of medicare, medicaid, insurance supplements, or tax benefits. It may only be a legal requirement for medicare recipients, but they are a large enough fraction of health care customers that they dictate process for all the rest of us.
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never gave them credit card number (Score:3)
I have android phone, use google mail for some things (monitoring alerts) and of course google play for free apps..but I won't give them credit card number.
Guess I won't have this particular problem
Re:never gave them credit card number (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a Google phone, they have my credit card info for occasional billing. I move frequently between the UK and Japan, changing my registered address and phone number, and it's never a problem. This guy seems have been the victim of a genuine mistake.
If anything it's been getting easier to do this over the years. It used to be that it would look at your locale, see you had apps installed from a different locale's Play store and uninstall them for you. Now it just updates them properly, even if your current local repo doesn't list them.
Re:never gave them credit card number (Score:5, Insightful)
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My phone will work just fine without a Google account. I also get most of my apps from F-Droid, but there are a few paid ones on the Play store I want. Since they only cost a few quid it's not a huge deal if I lost access to them for some reason. In fact most were bought on the "10p App of the Week" deal. To be clear, that's 0.10 GBP, or about $0.12.
I take a pragmatic approach. I know Google can be unreliable, I know GCHQ reads everything I send in plaintext, but those services are still useful if you treat
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Well thank god no one knows my IP address is 127.0.0.1
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should never give cc # to google, wise-ass
Re:never gave them credit card number (Score:5, Insightful)
> apparently they didn't like the change in my IP address.
This did not happen.
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How do you know "This did not happen"? IP address is not just a random number
Because Google know it's a random number and therefore don't rely on it for device identification. Google the absolute masters of information actually have some brains to warrant that title.
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> apparently they didn't like the change in my IP address.
This did not happen.
Right? I use a Japanese VPN all the freakin' time. It's a tossup as to whether or not I'll appear in the US or Minato-ku, Tokyo. Still no account issues.
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I do not even want to imagine what happens to people that use VPNs
Well, I can tell you as I routinely use VPNs. They don't work well with Google, so I don't use Google services. They don't want my business, and I don't want to give it to them.
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I use a VPN sometimes, and I've moved around the country several times, and I've accessed my Google account from all kinds of different places and IP addresses. Never had a problem.
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Google seems to be completely random. When I travel internationally I get locked out of Google talk until I log in to Gmail to "verify" myself.
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Don't bet on it. I've lost access to at least four google accounts when I've moved, apparently they didn't like the change in my IP address. No credit card involved.
That's really insightful. With that logic, the tens of millions who travel for work or vacation everyday, use public WiFi, or connect via their mobile company's randomly and usually short lived DHCP IP address must have terrible problems using their Google accounts.
Or it wasn't an IP address change at all that Google didn't like, but other activity that got you banned not once, not twice, but four times?! Maybe you should examine what exactly you're doing. You're a click-bait headline in waiting. "Google ba
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What's this "your data" thing? AFAICT we're talking about peoples' game identity, right? e.g. if you get locked out of your Google Play account, then maybe you lose control of your Clash of Clans base and have to start over.
Yes, that sucks insofar as how much you value grind-progress in a game, and I understand that can be a quasi-real thing that people get attached to, so I'm not going to dickishly blow it off.
But calling it "your data" is kind of stretching things. My data is on my computers' disks, not
Time to make our own cell phone OS? (Score:2)
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This is kind of ridiculous... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's frustrating that you pretty much have to go to the media/public and embarrass a company before they will fix issues like this. Not everyone has the time to do this, and not everyone will be able to get enough people to listen to raise a big enough fuss to get the company's attention. I wonder how many situations like this happen that we never hear about and never get resolved?
"he was told that the account would not be unlocked and Google would not tell him why."
If your account is disabled you should have every right to know why and there should always be a path to correct it. What the hell?
I'm an Apple user; if they pulled this crap with my Apple ID it would be extremely irritating; you can have a lot of money wrapped up in these accounts in the form of purchases!
Re: This is kind of ridiculous... (Score:2)
The flip side is, it's a big world. If I see murders and rapes on the news, it doesn't mean I necessarily need to be afraid in my own neighborhood.
So far, this kind of thing that Google has done hasn't affected me or my friends or my family. So one misunderstanding won't represent all of Google for all people.
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with the dire exception of Amazon, every time I've a problem and support doesn't give a rat's ass, I tweet the company about it. Every time it gets resolved.
tldr: companies and people will screw you 90% of the time if nobody can tell. Except Amazon, for some reason.
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I'm an Apple user; if they pulled this crap with my Apple ID it would be extremely irritating; you can have a lot of money wrapped up in these accounts in the form of purchases!
With Apple, you're the customer. With Google, you're the product, and they really don't care, because eyeballs are fungible.
One of the very few things Apple gets right.
Re:This is kind of ridiculous... (Score:5, Insightful)
With Google, you're the product, and they really don't care, because eyeballs are fungible.
This is of course complete bollocks. Otherwise why would they even try to make a good user experience?
Google sells advertising. You can use their services for free, or choose someone else's, or pay to have the ads removed and get some extra features. Some services don't even have ads at all, like Docs, because they make their money from business users. And of course, some of their products are not free, like their phones, and some are just there to provide a gateway to other services like Chrome OS.
Notice how Chrome OS doesn't have ads baked in, unlike say Windows 10 or Ubuntu. Microsoft make you pay and look at ads. Are you not Microsoft's customer, even though you paid for Windows? Do you think they don't care if you use someone else's OS?
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If your account is disabled because they suspect you are actually an identity thief who stole the account, they probably don't want to tell you what gave you away.
"We flagged you for fraud because you bought 10% more than normal within 24 hours of changing your billing address" is not required. "Fraud alert" would be infinitely more than this guy claims he was told, and would give away nothing.
There was a path to correct it. The story is newsworthy because for some reason the normal way to correct the problem wasn't working.
If the path to correct it is blocked, one could argue that the path no longer exists.
Move to another city and it might look like you are an identity thief; then, one Apple employee screws up and you might be rejected in the appeal.
I have three accounts loaded on my phone right now, each of them from a different country, two of them with the same payment, only one of the accounts has a payment from the same country as th
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Well, now we're getting Google Stores as well, so maybe that'll make it easier.
Re:This is kind of ridiculous... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is kind of ridiculous... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the important thing. Whether we "buy" or "rent" or "license" or whatever, isn't the point. What matters is that companies make the effort to treat people properly. For example, at any time the power company could just cut me off and leave me freezing in the dark on a cold winter, and buying a generator shouldn't really be the "answer" to that, rather, companies which provide "critical" infrastructure shouldn't be allowed to just go cutting things off at the first sign of inconvenience to them.
And of course regulations can go too far to the other extreme.
But it isn't about market freedom or personal responsibility or socialism or whatever, it is about the film Brazil and an innocent man named Buttle who was the victim of bureaucratic error.
If we are using CPUs and SSDs as glorified desks and filing cabinets, the "bureau" in bureaucracy -- if we are simply building an even dumber and colder bureaucracy in silicon, then WE ARE DOING IT WRONG.
Re: This is kind of ridiculous... (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy went from Google to Amazon? That's like trading a fully loaded Honda Accord for a Honda Civic with no A/C.
Re:This is kind of ridiculous... (Score:4, Insightful)
They can, but it would be a PR nightmare and would be splattered all over the news within a day of it happening.
No.
It appears that when this kind of thing happens it's "splattered all over the news", but that's because when it doesn't make the news, you never hear about it. It's a perception error.
rights (Score:5, Insightful)
"warning to others not to put all your eggs in one basket, because these days, you have no rights over that basket whatsoever."
This can not be repeated enough.
Re:rights (Score:5, Insightful)
This can not be repeated enough.
I concur. Google has a history of completely shutting people down like this. This week we saw them apply the "internet death penalty" to people who (admittedly through their own negligence) violated a policy on ordering Pixel phones. Now there's this guy who did nothing wrong at all, and there are plenty more like him. It's been a real problem for Android developers. Accrue a random/arbitrary TOS violation against any one Google service, and they wipe out your _entire_ Google existence, including your Play Store developer account and all apps it owns. Google Play, GMail and calendars, Google Drive, Docs, Voice, Wallet, AdSense, Hangouts... _All_ of it is shut down for allegedly violating the TOS of any one service, and the only avenue for appeal results in either radio silence or a canned autoresponse.
This mirrors Google's abysmal track record at handling YouTube complaints. Anyone can file a "strike" against any other user for any reason/bogus reason. A single user can generate multiple strikes against one target. If your YouTube account gets locked out, and you aren't famous enough to generate a big public backlash (h3h3 ETC) against Google, you're screwed.
Savvy developers are now essentially minting a new identity from which to publish apps. New burner Android phone with a cheapo plan and clean number not tied to any other Google service. New GMail account activated with the burner phone. Google Play developer and merchant accounts registered to a family member's address. Install Android SDK and Chrome into one VM configured with a VPN, and never run SDK or Chrome anywhere else. ETC... At least this way if someone registers a bogus complaint against your app, you might lose your app but you don't lose access to your entire personal Google world and all of _your_data_ stored therein.
As Google continues to automate away the burden of interacting with their users, it will only keep getting worse. I'm honestly surprised this guy got in touch with a human being.
Re:rights (Score:4, Informative)
There was no negligence involved. The people who violated the ToS did so to make a buck. They didn't order Pixel phones for their own use, they ordered them for the explicit purpose of resell.
Perhaps they got there because the company in Delaware said they'd make a few extra bucks, but either way, it was done on purpose.
The only negligence is in the company's for failing to tell the "buyers" that this may be against their terms of service. The buyers all saw $$$ and decided to participate. I'm guessing Project Fi phones are cheaper or something so the company can sell them for list price and make a few hundred bucks for both parties.
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Re:rights (Score:4, Insightful)
"warning to others not to put all your eggs in one basket, because these days, you have no rights over that basket whatsoever."
This can not be repeated enough.
You effectively have no rights over any basket. The FBI can invent charges, come into your house, take your server, and return it in pieces.
This is a problem that has to be solved at a much higher level than google. A legal one.
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It is why I have an iPhone, MacBook and a nexus tablet. It is why I have my own Nas and went to the trouble of setting up my own backup system on it. It is why I have Gmail, but also download all my history into a pop account once z month.
I learned from the early 2,000"s with the major windows viruses rampaging across the net. Do not lock your self into just one set of things.
I store my eggs locally (Score:2)
I download all of my email and store/browse it locally, and try to do so with any of my accounts, depending on them only as a temporary method of caching my items until I can fully capture and store the transmission, and then delete them online, relying on my own backups. I don't feel I can ever rely on online storage, and try to be prudent in what I leave online to be possibly accessed by others, and as a precaution try to keep everything online and remove any online copies under my own control as soon as
Shit happens (Score:2)
The difficulty these days is in getting corporations to fix their shit. In Google's case I suspect that, because the number of products that happen to be users is far bigger than the number of products sold to users, customer service simply isn't part of their mandate. It probably isn't even on their radar until somebody rubs their nose in it publicly.
Re:Shit happens (Score:4, Insightful)
Google doesn't even HAVE support in any meaningful way. If something gets fucked up with any of the usual google services (gmail, calendar, etc) you're screwed and that's all there is to it. Short of having a friend who works for google or being a big enough public figure to shitstir there's no way to contact a human and no way to resolve the problem.
Google should use the USPS Change Of Address db. (Score:2)
Tens of thousands of large businesses subscribe to this database and can follow their customers when they move. If Google simply checked this, then they'd be able to validate that the customer really did move.
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Please. Out of any company I can imagine (even including Microsoft) there is no other company that suffers from NIH than Google.
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Similar to my phone problems (Score:3)
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Does it normally cost money to receive calls where you are? In every country I've ever had pay-as-you-go SIMs, receiving calls is free and works even if you have no credit.
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Not sure if you're in the US, but I thought it was standard practice in the USA (and Canada, anywhere else?) that mobile phone users had to also pay to receive calls. There was some logic to it: cell phones are issued with local regional numbers, so just by looking at a number there is no way to know whether it is a cell or a fixed line. The logic is that why should the caller be penalised for calling a cell when they expected to call a fixed line. The receiver paid the difference. This is exactly how inter
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Other countries zoned their cell/mobile numbers so the caller knows what they are calling and can choose to ring or not. This means the caller pays for the entire call, since it is *their choice* to make the call.
If someone came to my doorstep and I opened the door and was immediately presented with a bill/charge for opening the door then I'd be bloody pissed off. Yet that's exactly how cell phones work in the US. You can claim all you like that I "chose" to open the door but that's just being silly.
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Sorry, it is exactly like the door example: someone rings me, I have zero control over that, all I can do is choose to answer it or not. Someone rings my door bell, I have zero control over that (walking up to someone's front door is not trespassing, in the UK or the US) and all I can do is choose to answer it or not.
The reason paying for phone calls is so barbaric is that it's so completely ripe for abuse. How's that problem with robo callers working out for you over there in the US?
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Sorry, it is exactly like the door example: someone rings me, I have zero control over that, all I can do is choose to answer it or not. Someone rings my door bell, I have zero control over that (walking up to someone's front door is not trespassing, in the UK or the US) and all I can do is choose to answer it or not.
The reason paying for phone calls is so barbaric is that it's so completely ripe for abuse. How's that problem with robo callers working out for you over there in the US?
Texting is even worse (at least before most people got plans with unlimited texts) - in that case, you couldn't chose to not answer. If someone sent you a text, you got charged. You couldn't decide not to receive it.
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Wow! I only lived in the US for six months about five years ago and don't recall having to pay to receive texts. But I do recall having to pay $2 a month for "texting service" and also being bamboozled by the pricing structure depending entirely on "minutes" with no clarity over how that applied to "incoming minutes" or "outgoing minutes" or "international outgoing minutes" or "long distance minutes" or "text messages". Purposefully creating and preying on consumer confusion is a scourge of the telecommunic
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Social media saves the day (Score:4, Insightful)
He had to go public to correct the situation. Just like with security flaws, full disclosure is the only way, or it won't get fixed.
Do not trust Google... (Score:2)
They do not care about the customer, the only thing they care about is the bottom line. Of you do not have a way to publicly embarrass them after they screwed you over, they will just keep doing it to you. If you can, stay away from their "services" altogether.
Might be more to the story (Score:2)
I suspect there might be more to the story. Maybe a transaction was attempted on their credit card before they updated their address. In any case, Google needs to do a better job in dealing with these situations. It is not reasonable to be forced to create a new account and lose all of your purchases. It does highlight a critical weakness in buying virtual media through online services, like Google. If you've purchased apps, music, books, movies, etc. through Google and they disable your account, it is
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Buying physical media may be safer, but as everything requires online activation of one sort or another now, and you can only use a given serial number once, you're just as screwed WITH the DVD as you are without.
Too big to fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Now a days tech companies are all about creating too big to fail entities. Be it Uber, Amazon, Google, Facebook... The amount of trust we are placing on them, our dependency on them, can turn out to be dangerous in the long run.
Do No Evil (Score:2)
I reached the end of my love affair with Google long before now. "Do No Evil" sounded sincere 20 years ago, but it's pretty hollow today. It doesn't matter whether this was an accident or not. Not owning my own data is just bad medicine by any account. I won't do it.
I've wondered, instead of funding the Googles/Microsofts/Dropboxes of the world, we need to work on easily deployable mini-personal-cloud-server-in-a-box distributions. Email/webmail, iCal, rsync, with your own blog thrown in for good measu
Re:Do No Evil (Score:4, Interesting)
"easily deployable mini-personal-cloud-server-in-a-box distributions"
I love the sound of this, but the problem is maintenance and security.
Right now: yes, we could sit down and spec out an appropriate PC, choose from FOSS and put together a gnarly software distribution that does what we want and we could start selling these things.
But what happens in 12 months? 24 months? The distribution needs to be maintained and updated and that takes resources and costs money. The business model will become stretched to include that indefinitely, so the only practical way is to use subscriptions, which many don't like. The fundamental problem is, however: anyone savvy enough to want this is also smart/capable enough to roll their own, while everyone else doesn't give a shit and will stick with "free" Google services. The customer is a relatively experienced privacy conscious professional who is too busy to maintain their own. Sure, there's a market there, but I worry it's too small to allow for any scaling that the product will need to reach a reasonable price point.
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But what happens in 12 months? 24 months? The distribution needs to be maintained and updated and that takes resources and costs money. The business model will become stretched to include that indefinitely, so the only practical way is to use subscriptions, which many don't like.
I have a vague recollection of a company covered here on Slashdot that tried to do this by selling preconfigured hardware, a true turnkey solution. Profit margins on the gear was supposed to fund ongoing software maintenance, together with leveraging existing supported projects like ownCloud.
It sounded like a good idea and a viable business plan. Evidently it wasn't, because I've been unable to unearth any hint of its existence in my searches today.
Might have been just a proposal.
We need legislation to stop this sort of shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many Internet giants have this mentality, that they don't need to give you an explanation if they close your account. You may say that the account is on their service. I say that if they want to be so central to modern life, they have a responsibility they're trying to avoid.
They've had plenty of time to come up with their own solutions, internally or as part of associations. It's time the government stepped in.
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Too bad that ain't gonna happen for at least the next two, likely four, or possibly even eight years.
We've elected a very anti-regulatory executive and legislature. Not only will regulations like you suggest not even be considered, there is going to be a flurry of Deregulation coming soon.
Good time to be a Corporate Citizen, I suppose.
Let's be honest (Score:2)
It's like people are so used to computers and interacting with the face of monolithic corporations, that they've forgotten that fallible people are on the other side flipping the bits with spatulas... and sometimes those bits might get a little overcooked.
They don't care about false positives (Score:2)
Google gets its fraud detection software up and running, and assumes everyone it finds is a fraudster. Hooray! Of course you don't give fraudsters any information about how you detected them, they'll use it against you in the future! Just a blank wall...let them eat THAT! So satisfying for the millennial developers at Google.
The idea that false positives might occur...well maybe, but it's not a problem. Locking people out of their accounts? Someone else at Google will resolve it. Google offers thes
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This is also a good argument against bio-metrics. What the fuck do you do when your eye scan is rejected?
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Man this place has gone to the dogs.
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Kids, do your school work rather than pissing about on the computers.
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You sound 12, but I'm guessing you're an immature 16 year old. *Slow clap*...well done idiot.
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Mate, I don't need to be an internet tough guy: it's just that you're a cunt and the sad reality is you most likely will always be one. You think you can act like a total anus online and "get away with it" but I don't need to know who you are: no one really likes you. To make life easier, just do us all a favour and fuck right off. Kthxbi.
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Love it. I hope at least some other netziens (you like that term?) will get a chuckle from your antics. Job well done mate.
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PS: What's midol?
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No time wasted here my friend. Sorry, try again. However, I am pretty confident that I've successfully wasted your time all day. Oh wait: your time is worthless isn't it. Ha ha, sucks to be you.
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PS: In case it wasn't obvious, browsing Slashdot is always "sunk time" and I only come here to be mildly amused and take part in the chit chat.
This is another "handle things yourself" (Score:4, Interesting)
This is another "handle things yourself" situation. I have an Android Phone. No Google Account is attached to it. Google Can't lock my Phone. Google can't track my Phone. Google can't bill me, Google doesn't know my Phone number. My phone, and the apps I have installed on it, are my business, my Contacts are stored in my OwnCloud on my system. As are my Calendar events, as are my places. I don't use Google's Location services, I use Passive GSM Beaconing and GPS. and I get my Maps from Osmand Open Street maps.
Phone crashing without a Google Account (Score:3)
This is another "handle things yourself" situation. I have an Android Phone. No Google Account is attached to it.
I had a supervisor who started having problems with his Verizon android phone crashing frequently. Couldn't figure out why at first, but it turned out there was some aspect of the phone that would crash with no Google Account attached. He barely had any apps installed, so it was likely something that came in the ROM. No Google Account for him of course, he never made one not being a tech savvy person (he didn't even have his own e-mail address, his work e-mails went to his secretary, and any personal ema
Re: (Score:2)
Google Can't lock my Phone. Google can't track my Phone.
It's worth remembering who it was that wanted these features in the first place (hint, not Google).
There are android users who are not locked out ? (Score:2)
There are still come android users who are not locked out of google accounts ????
what ?
And the funny thing is that... (Score:2)
why I am not surprised (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Eroding trust one step at a time.
There is no excuse for Google's behavior. I have been "locked out" by my bank a few times when I had suspicious transactions, and each time I was able to call the number on the back of my card, answer a few security questions, and get it unlocked. It never took more than two minutes to resolve ... and the transactions really were suspicious. The first time was in a bar in Lijiang [wikipedia.org] when I lost a wager, and had to buy a round for the house, and the second time I was buying some prescription drugs in Tijuana
Re: Google (Score:4, Informative)
Banks are regulated with heavy consumer protection, google is not a bank.
Re: (Score:2)
...and the second time I was buying some "prescription drugs" in Tijuana.
There fixed that for you.
Re:Google (Score:5, Interesting)
...and the second time I was buying some "prescription drugs" in Tijuana.
If you go to Tijuana, or Juarez, or any other Mexican border towns, you will find drug stores selling name-brand prescription drugs within one block of the border. The prices are far lower than in America, because the Mexican government negotiates lower prices with pharmaceutical companies, and because of the different litigation systems. You can also buy far more stuff without a doctor's prescription. It is legal to buy most drugs and bring them into America so long as they are not for resale.
Re:Google (Score:4)
Bush #43 specifically passed legislation outlawing negotiating with drug companies. There's your Capitalist free market.