One recent Thursday morning, I logged into my email and made an alarming discovery. Instead of opening my inbox, Google directed me to a notice:
Account has been disabled . . . . In most cases, accounts are disabled if we believe you have violated either the Google Terms of Service, product-specific Terms of Service . . . . or product-specific policies . . . . it might be possible to regain access to your account.
It was like I’d gotten dumped, via text message, by someone en route to Cabo. The vagaries left me reeling. I read the terms and policies, but they offered few clues. There were no numbers to call, no tickets to request help. I had a real problem with how things ended, so I filled out a form and sent it into the ether. What exactly had I done wrong? Had I missed the warning signs? Did Google want me or not?
At last count, Google manages a whopping 343 million active Google+ accounts (though the number of actual people using its services is probably fewer) and operates in 130 languages. Google strategically avoids the crush of users by offering little in the way of direct customer service. My calls to Mountain View HQ landed me in a labyrinth of recorded messages that inevitably led to one of a man, sounding only slightly less exasperated than I felt, shutting me down with a “Thankyougoodbye.”
A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on because my Google calendar had disappeared. I couldn’t publicly gripe about what I was going through, because my Blogger no longer existed. My Picasa albums were gone. I’d lost my contacts and calling plan through Google Voice; otherwise I would have called friends to cry.
I turned to Facebook to ask friends who work at Google for help. Living in the Bay Area, I have a fair number of Googler-friends, but the Googleplex has apparently grown so vast that none of them had any idea where to start. One guessed the policy department, another accounts. All assured me that this sort of thing rarely happened.
I had assumed it never happened at all. Sure, it had occurred to me when I had moved my work and memories into the “cloud” that I was relying on other people to keep them safe on their servers. But I figured a company with $50 billion in revenues and the modest aim to “organize the world’s information” had to run a tight ship. Anyway, it seemed implicit that in allowing Google to use my data, I could rely on Google to hold on to it—and to give it back.
In reality, I discovered, Google assumes no responsibility over user data nor is it required by law to do so. In the same notice informing me that it had disabled my account, Google told me for the first time that it reserves the right to “terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.” In its Terms of Service, Google limits its total liability for stolen data, lost data, anything, “TO THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US TO USE THE SERVICES” (yes, in all caps), which could mean as much as the $2.49 per month you shelled out for 25GB more storage or in my case, nothing.
Google not only reserves the right to take away or vaporize our data for any reason, but it also reserves the right to discontinue services, the means to access it, whenever it wants. It does this more often than you probably realize and most recently with Google Reader, which disappears on July 1.
I was getting a crash course on the harsh realities of the Internet and early cloud computing, an era in which we are all just users and nothing more. No matter how much we actively contribute to improving companies’ products or the network of data that makes the Internet possible at all, users are easily discarded. Google’s priorities are squarely fixed on preventing data from falling into the wrong hands—not ensuring it is always available to the right ones.
I wondered whether users could find some reassurance in the law. Banking and investing came to mind first since both are in the middle of regulatory revolutions. At first, the analogy seemed apt. In the same way that we deposit funds into banks or with our brokers, we deposit data into Google’s servers and allow Google to utilize our data while expecting steady access to our accounts. But just as I discovered Google holds its interests above mine, under the law banks can also shut us out, owing depositors no fiduciary duty under the law in most states. The FDIC, not the law, is the safety net when banks fail their customers.
Technology policy expert Susan Crawford offers an alternative justification for regulation in her new book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly in the New Gilded Age, based on the premise that access to the Internet is now as essential as access to water, electricity, and the once mighty telephone, and therefore should be similarly regulated as a public utility to ensure it stays within everyone’s reach.
While critics argue that the public utility model is an ill fit for the Internet, I found one of its consequences particularly comforting. Public utilities have a “duty to serve” under common and statutory laws, meaning that ISPs would have to provide and maintain adequate and efficient services for the general good. Just as water companies can’t leave us dry without notice or very good cause, neither could an ISP.
Google so far does not control the Internet lines, not outside of Kansas City anyway, but even in the old world order, there have been times when the means to connect have mattered as much as what we connect to. Back in 1949, when an already regulated AT&T controlled most of the local and long-distance lines and the mode of access (customers had to pay extra to use phones not made by AT&T), the government sought to break it up even further. Modes of communication, whether wired or wireless, are essential services and Google knows this. Its Android OS already powers 70 percent of smartphones worldwide.
Even if Google may not entirely control how we access the Internet (not in a way that permits the FTC to regulate or that has convinced many states to regulate ISPs as public utilities yet anyway), this may be more of a failing of the law to adapt to the changing world than evidence that this new world order is working for us as mere users.
For now, all we have to balance out Google’s unfettered ability to lose or lock down the data we store on its servers is Google’s commercial sense, its recognition that providing dependable service is the only way it will keep us. I’m not sure that’s good enough for me, the 5 million businesses, or the 45 states that rely on Google, especially since the more users Google has, the less it needs us individually.
In case you’re wondering, in the end, I was fortunate. By Monday, a Googler filed the right internal escalation paperwork on my behalf and on Tuesday morning, six days after I lost access to my account, relayed that it had been restored.
My data was intact save for the last thing I’d worked on–a spreadsheet containing a client’s account numbers and passwords. It seems that Google’s engineers determined this single document violated policy and locked down my entire account. My request to get that document back is still pending.
I returned to the Google fold with eyes wide open to my responsibilities as a user. In relationship terms, I am no longer monogamous. I store my data on other servers maintained by providers like Evernote, Dropbox, and WordPress, and the cloud is my standby, not my steady. I’ve swapped convenience for control: I back up my email and what I care about most on physical hard drives.
I’m also back in touch with my first love—spiral notebooks. Unlike Google, they will never come close to containing the world’s information, so no one but me will ever want to access them. And to encrypt my data, I just rely on my handwriting.
***
Tienlon Ho writes about food, travel and the environment in San Francisco. Follow her @TienlonHo.
Image credits: Alvaro Villanueva (who created this in sympathy during my Google-less week and also because he is a Kafka fan).
Amazing. Thank you for this.
Loved this. Very thinky. Glad to hear you got your access back. I must look into backup options — I could live without many Google services but a mass loss of my Drive would be horrible.
Wow – what a nightmare. Thanks for the dogged investigation and for sharing your findings. Good advice to date around in the cloud.
Chilling. So glad it had a happy ending, but it wouldn’t have without the writer’s internal contacts! This could be anyone’s outcome, I fear.
Tienlon, do you have a suggestion of a program or the like to back up your various kinds of data? I personally back up all of my important documents and photos, but have never backed up my enormous amounts of email… and probably should.
Hi Lila, I back up my email by exporting everything to my hard drive through a locally installed email client (e.g., Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Sparrow (now owned by Google)). It is a manual process, especially since I don’t have a computer with a lot of local drive space and have to fiddle with multiple external hard drives.
I certainly could use a better method myself. What are other folks’ strategies?
P.S. As for backing up Drive docs, there’s a built-in download feature under More that lets you mass export docs to a local drive.
hi tienlon thanks for this post.
I’m curious what exactly was the reason for the engineers to lock down your account? Perhaps this is a specific piece of knowledge we all should know – should we all be worried that we are doing things on our accounts that could arbitrarily be flagged for lock down with no warning?
thanks!
tricia
Thanks for the information. Writing it down is one way. As, backing it up on a jump drive is another. If it’s that important that it would send you into a tailspin. DON’T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET!!!!! (I’m not shouting, I’m making a point in caps.)
I’ve relegated gmail to a spam box I use for signing up to things I don’t care about. I keep my own webhost at dreamhost for websites, blogs, email, some cloud things, etc. I pay dreamhost $10 a month and in return I get at least some respect from them for being a paying customer. Even this small amount of money creates a sort of social contract that I deserve respect and they deserve to be paid for their services. Google doesn’t have that relationship with its users, and likely doesn’t want it.
It should be noted that most cloud service providers support similar policies to mitigate litigation, including those you mention at the end.
It’s also worth mentioning that the paid version of Google Apps operates by a completely different TOS: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/premier_terms.html
You are surprised that a capitalist mega-corporation whose primary purpose is to make its shareholders even richer than they are today cares about you, one of 343 million “users” it tolerates in the name of gaining more prospective customers for its advertising, software, and device businesses? The first rule of living in this society is pay for what you take. It could be fair or it could be exorbitant, but “free” or “communal” play very small parts in this global morality play. Otherwise you are completely without security, as you discovered the hard way. Too bad, but these aren’t the good old days. They’re the bad new ones.
Google is the new Microsoft of the cloud era.
Shocking! And that is what you get for depending on a free service.
I mean, really. Storing your tax info on google drive? What were you thinking?
Thanks to Sean for posting the Google Apps for Business terms (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/premier_terms_prepay.html).
It’s interesting to me that even for paying customers, Google reserves the same right to automatically shut accounts down in the event of an “Emergency Security Issue” (defined as a customer’s violation of policies or a hacker breach) without prior notice, though it will provide a reason “as soon as is reasonably possible,” and if the customer asks. And Google still limits its liabilities to no “MORE THAN THE AMOUNT PAID BY CUSTOMER TO GOOGLE HEREUNDER DURING THE TWELVE MONTHS PRIOR TO THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY.”
I want to mention here that I do not believe the document that seems to have started it all and that is still locked down actually violates any policies. I created it for a client, and as such, my use of the data in it was entirely authorized.
Wally–as a freelancer, I have to track things like mileage and my expenses for each of my projects in very long, boring spreadsheets. I’m not talking Social Security numbers here.
I hope google apps has better policy to protect consumers. In the meantime, I’m backing up all data on TimeCapsule as well.
Scary, especially as I just moved important work data to my 100Gb Google Drive!
For your writing check out Etherpad, you can store your documents locally and still have collaboration functionality 🙂
Those looking for ways to back up their Google accounts may be interested in my app, CloudPull. CloudPull backs up your Google account to your Mac. It supports Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Drive, and Google Reader. It is free to use for a single account.
http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/
John
This same thing happened to my wife. The reason? Her name on Google+ was the name everyone knows her by, but not her real name. They locked her out of her entire Google account, all services, everything. It took a few days to restore but she had nothing for those few days.
I immediately canceled my Google+ account after that. No way I’m linking a social network to my critical information access. If they don’t like what you say, or even just the way you spell your name, you could lose everything.
The worst thing is that there’s really no warning, and no way to know if you’ve crossed the line. Google’s choice to ban your account is equivalent to pre-Magna Carta-style “king’s justice.”
Like you, we started backing up everything locally where possible, though it’s really a trade off and I’m not there yet.
Excellent post. A co-author and I proposed the public utility frame in 2008–see the last section of this article:
http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/cornell-law-review/upload/Bracha-Pasquale-Final.pdf
Here is a response:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2027543
But the more I work on this topic, the more obvious I think it is that Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Twitter are durable monopolists over their respective spheres of the internet, and should be regulated as such.
very useful)
Someone putting too much trust into BB? Of course this should serve as a warning to all. Also this is the reason I do not upload my photos into the cloud or use cloud services. There is no guarantee my information and personal data will be there tomorrow and through terms of service companies do not even hold themselves accountable, if anything happens your are out of luck. The cloud is still a relatively young concept/idea that still has not matured. You have to be a fool to think otherwise.
Given googles wilingnes to lock down an account without explanation and it’s heavy handed approach to this they should really give customers the ability to contact them.
Thx for the tip though I was not and I’m still not really a fan of the cloud for this reason in particular.
The cloud is awesome as a backup medium at best but can you really thrust the company holding your backups not to peek at them.
If you’re in a very competitive field you’re basically exposing your data to unnecessary risk.
I know the likelyhood of that happening is almost 0 but so is the likelyhood of them locking your account and it’s not like they have a way for you to contact them to complain about it once that happens.
Be smart with your data, don’t back up anything to the cluod you’re not willing to risk being exploited and allway keep fizical backups multiple ones in different places if possible.
https://www.google.com/takeout/
I have always been leery of putting trust in any of the on line services. I still prefer my hard drive as to posting in on line services. At least I have a modicum of control.
Thanks so much for sharing. This confirms my feelings.
“Never keep all your eggs in one basket”
🙂
LOL happened to me recently too. I was faffing around in Google+ using a client Gmail account and incidentally put down my date of birth as 01/01/2001, at which point Google promptly suspended the account because I was “too young”.
I had to email them a copy of my drivers licence to get it switched back on. Luckily, it wasn’t my personal account, so nothing lost. But still. Shit eh? 😉
Well that dashed my hopes for ever truly living fully in the cloud. I had even toyed with the idea of giving up my Macbook Pro for a Chrome Pixel ala Jeff Jarvis.
Thanks for sharing the story. I’m going to have to seriously re-think migrating away from dropbox to Drive, and although I put Google in high regard for having the Data Liberation Front, I never thought about pulling the data down on a regular basis because I assumed I would always have access to it.
Yeah…like I didn’t see that coming. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The ‘cloud’ thing is POINTLESS. Why would you put any information in the hands of people you didn’t know on servers you can’t control? You’re just as bad as the guy from Wired, except in his case the information was gone because a hacker called Apple pretending to be him.
Interesting read. Confirms what I thought: you do not rely on the cloud. Period.
So which internal Google department was the right one? Or what is the recommended approach to fix problems like this? “Contact all the Googlers you know?” Please document this to help others that are forced into a similar situation in the future. Thanks!
To illustrate how frequently this happens, It happened to me in exactly the same way. Except I did not know anyone at Google. My access went and came back on its own volition and I have no idea why.
http://asabharwal.com/2013/04/how-getting-locked-out-of-gmail-made-me-kick-the-google-habit/
Interesting. And scary: They closed your account because of something you wrote in a spreadsheet!? Which means that they read it and check it against their terms of service?? They read it??
You wrote:
> Google told me for the first time that it
> reserves the right to “terminate your account
> at any time, for any reason, with or without
> notice.”
Can you share where you got that from exactly? (This is NOT in the ToS)
Thanks,
Hugo
(Ideally if you could share that by sending an email to tosdr@googlegroups.com that would be awesome)
How did it come to pass ‘engineers’ were reading your data? Why wasn’t it encrypted?
There is more to this I’m sure.
Thanks for sharing.
I am wondering about how they determine which file is dangerous. It seems like anyone on earth can have a spreadsheet filled with client’s account numbers and password.
This just shows how insane it is to use these services, exclusively. I mean, why the heck don’t people keep their photos on their machines and only upload those they want to? Why don’t people use actual email services? Why do people blindly rely on Google and others?
If e.g. Google kicked me out, I’d lose nothing. I would still be able to do my work, I’d have all my contacts, all my emails, all my files. I can’t really think of a single (or even multiple) services that would cause me more than aggravation, but nothing would be inaccessible to me.
“a spreadsheet containing a client’s account numbers and passwords.” [edited for civility]
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Currently I own 12 Google accounts for various reasons and it scares me!
About a year ago Google decided to ban me from one of my accounts keeping money in my Google Wallet, deleting all my emails, and wiping hundreds of videos stored on YouTube (many of which are irreplaceable).
Ever since I have been looking for alternatives as there is no recourse should something go wrong. No number to call (well there is, but they won’t listen), no support email, online support is shockingly crowdsourced.
Thanks for sharing this unpleasant experience.
There is one huge wtf in the story: You really store a client’s account numbers and passwords in a cloud-based document? That’s just wrong.
>> I want to mention here that I do not believe the document
>> that seems to have started it all and that is still locked
>> down actually violates any policies. I created it for a
>> client, and as such, my use of the data in it was entirely
>> authorized.
That seems to indicate that Google is watching the data you type into your document and using what you type for various business logic, not just choosing ads to show you. So, for example, in the case you mention, they would see you add numbers in the spreadsheet and they would have to identify them as account numbers of someone else and base on that, assume you are collecting account numbers in violation of some policy… that is a very frightening premise indeed.
[edited for civility] ‘I dont have a backup and I lost my data’. Learn from it and move on.
Now that is scary. Off to back up my important files from my Google Drive!
So despite all this you have failed to ask one critical question. How on earth did Google know what was in your spreadsheet in order to determine it violated their T&Cs?
Sounds to me like they are reading the documents you store on their system, which is both a significant security and privacy issue which in itself should be enough to persuade anyone NOT to use any of their services.
Why you still use them for anything is beyond me. You should be asking yourself some very serious questions about the security of your data and your “client’s account numbers and passwords”.
great thought… I think someone must civilize Internet with some standard protocols… or the atrocities and monopoly of Internet companies cannot be stopped…
[edited for civility]
They provide you a service for free. If you want something safe and secure, pay them.
WOW amazing Thanks for this 🙂
Lucky you, Could that same person help me with my account that was shut off two years ago ? I never got resolution. Never got a human. It was my banking site etc.. lost it all .. I got no reasons why, no way to fix it. Very scary.
I’d still like to get that account back but who knows. it’s probably been destroyed.
How horrible! Could you tell us more what was in that spreadsheet so we can avoid the trouble? Most of us don’t have friends at Google who can pull strings.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, it seems.
My browser: Firefox.
My e-mail: Still Hotmail/MSN after all these years.
My calendar: Outlook, so technically also MSN, tho it can be saved to my devices.
My cloud: Dropbox, and only with stuff I actually need to share, be it between machines or with other people.
My images: Imgur, and only when I need or want to post them online.
My VoIP: Skype, TeamSpeak, Vent, Mumble, etc. You can’t stop my signal.
My backups: A little WD Passport USB hard drive, and a couple thumb drives. Let’s see Google lock me out of those.
Also, don’t trust all your eggs to the Internet. ‘Tis a dangerous and unpredictable place.