8 ms·

I think the most fun part with Google is that if some wayward algorithm decides it doesn’t like you, along with nuking your app and developer account it will pr

I think the most fun part with Google is that if some wayward algorithm decides it doesn’t like you, along with nuking your app and developer account it will probably nuke your 20 year old gmail, your kids Google Drive accounts, your wife’s YouTube premium, the Adsense account of some company you worked for in 2008, and disable your Nest cameras. And you’ll never reach a human to sort it out.

ferfumarma 3mo ago
The vulnerability of your Google identity is terrifying.
m00dy 3mo ago
it's a nightmare.
techpression 3mo ago
We experienced this with Anthropic, not the same blast radius obviously, but out of nowhere account was terminated. No support available. It was via someone’s 30+ year old classmate via LinkedIn the account got reinstated. As a counterpoint to the right to the repair there should be a right to recover.
- Gigachad 3mo ago
  There was a more direct case where someone’s child had been interacting with Gemini inappropriately resulting in Google nuking the entire families Google accounts.
  - techpression 3mo ago
    That’s quite insane, especially considering how Google is pushing Gemini into every single product.
  - bayindirh 3mo ago
    I still remember how uploading photos of man's own child created the catastrophic chain of events. Kicker? The photos were requested by a doctor. Ref: https://www.koffellaw.com/blog/google-ai-technology-flags-dad-who-took-photos-o/ https://www.koffellaw.com/blog/google-ai-technology-flags-da...
  - alexp11223 3mo ago
    It was a fake story on reddit.
    - lukan 3mo ago
      You noticed the sibling comment? With the original story published by nytimes? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... edit: ok, seems a different story, but better gets the point across
    - throw-the-towel 3mo ago
      Si non e' vero, e' ben trovato.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - trashb 3mo ago
    Google has been nuking accounts since their inception. I have seen people being locked out as early as 2011 of accounts that could only be unlocked by sending a copy of an ID. Due to regulatory change of saving of information based on age (first 13 and above was ok, then became 16 and above).
    - rjmunro 3mo ago
      > Google has been nuking accounts since their inception Google has been dealing with accounts opened for fraud, spam and other evil bots since their inception. They should be nuking those. What's needed is some way of reverifying an account that was closed incorrectly, maybe some kind of independent ombudsman service or something to get the account back.
avaer 3mo ago
The blast radius is far worse than any "malware" Google could protect you from. TFA is playing it up, but it is arguable that this is a real virus, except the shady hackers are Google.
- microtonal 3mo ago
  I don't think 'virus' is the right term, since it should self-replicate. 'Malware' or 'spyware' are probably better terms.
- saagarjha 3mo ago
  Malware on Android causes more harm, both to individuals and collectively to all Android users, than Google locking people out of their accounts. These aren't even in the same order of magnitude. There are countless examples of people who have lost their life savings, all their data, etc. Losing access to your Google account sucks too, and I don't necessarily agree with what Google is doing here, but you're completely off base here.
  - mapontosevenths 3mo ago
    If it makes my phone, that I paid for, do things I dont want it to do then it's malware.Especially because those things make the device less useful to me. Google thinks they own my phone. They do not. I do not consent to this change, and will be voting against it by using the only remaining option: Moving completely out of their ecosystem. They really left me no other choice when they decided that they didn't need the owners consent.
  - ferfumarma 3mo ago
    The comparison is not Google app store security vs nothing. It's app store security vs app store security with verified developer IDs The fact that the android fraud is not endemic means that the later is not worth the increased risk of losing your Google account.
- austinthetaco 3mo ago
  Was this comment made by an LLM? i dont know anyone who drops "blast radius" in casual conversation besides claude.
devsda 3mo ago
What happens if you "accidentally" become persona non grata with both Google and Apple? If you want to participate in the society, you will forever have to resort to shady tactics. Shady can be defined something as arbitrary as using GrapheneOS. A temporary workaround like using alternatives like GrapheneOS for those affected will only delay the inevitable but it doesn't stop it at all.
- pimeys 3mo ago
  It's a great question to send to the DMA authorities: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en More of us ask this question, the better we are heard. Except if this is exactly what they want, then we need to vote better.
- Imustaskforhelp 3mo ago
  Over the long term, we definitely need something like Linux phones. I find it bizzarre by how little companies support this mission of Linux phones.
  - echoangle 3mo ago
    I don’t want to be too pedantic but Android uses the Linux kernel. Degoogled Android is basically what you want.
    - eMPee584 3mo ago
      no, because screw all that java crap, they optimized for control and developer quantity, not for ux, customizability, performance...
  - microtonal 3mo ago
    Why do you need a Linux phone (as if Android is not a Linux phone), when there is also AOSP. If Google closes it up, it can be forked, but I don't see any fundamental benefit of throwing away decades of development done on AOSP.
  - 3mo ago
orian 3mo ago
All service providers above some scale should be obliged to create a transparent processes or be taken for external jusges. Even better: all providers of services with more than 100K users or 10% of country internet users should be forced to provide API to export / import data in open format.
- int_19h 3mo ago
  Maybe service providers above some scale just shouldn't exist, period? It would be a lot harder to erect walled gardens if you're only serving a small subset of users - they would balk and leave at any attempt to prevent them from interacting with others outside of the ecosystem, and it would be a lot easier to do so.
matheusmoreira 3mo ago
> And you’ll never reach a human to sort it out. Unless you blog about it angrily enough that you somehow make it to the HN front page and some insider sees it and solves the problem for you. Getting my own domain and setting up email on it is one of the best things I've ever done.
- daakni 3mo ago
  About to go down that route as well, just need to find a email provider with ideally servers in the EU
  - Pxtl 3mo ago
    I'm really looking forward to Thundermail.
  - graemep 3mo ago
    Run your own server. Very easy with something like Mailinabox. You might need to find a relay for outgoing mail.
  - Geof25 3mo ago
    I am on protonmail+ my own domain. Works alright
  - noisy_boy 3mo ago
    Fastmail has been working well for me.
  - jazzyjackson 3mo ago
    Infomaniak (swiss) has a decent deal of a couple of free mailboxes with any domain you own through them. The webmail client kinda sucks but I just sync it with native clients. Using username:password for SMTP feels pretty weak tho they don't have Oauth2 support. lol now I'm talking myself out of it but it's worked great for years.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    Proton Mail and Tuta Mail come to mind. Any will do. You can trivially switch later if needed.
seviu 3mo ago
One of my best friend has a Jolla phone. He never had WhatsApp. He refuses to use google. Only till recently he started using signal. He has been using an old Nokia phone till he was forced to upgrade by his operator. He is European and here in Europe WhatsApp dominates. Despite all that and having a very social life, driven by work, he manages. I recently ordered a Jolla phone. I don’t want to know about android. I might tolerate iOS. But shelling thousands of $ for a phone that is controlled by an external company… I am looking out for messaging alternatives. I am at a point where I think linking your identity to a phone number is not right either. Let’s say we should all wake the fuck up. This is not right. Having a phone with such spyware is a potential attack vector I don’t want to have on the most important device I own.
- trinix912 3mo ago
  It's all good until your European bank starts requiring unrooted Android and iOS for their mobile banking app, then tries to force you to use that app instead of letting you sort things out at their building. Then the government starts requiring you use unrooted Android or iOS to sign into their website for administrative tasks, and so on.
  - pmontra 3mo ago
    The endgame is that I will keep a phone in a drawer next to a 20 yo hardware token I still use to access a bank. When on the move, we will see.
  - seviu 3mo ago
    If that ever happens (what am I saying we all know it’s happening). Then just a phone in the drawer I use it just for such administrative tasks.
    - trinix912 3mo ago
      Right, until you have to use a mobile app to pay for parking or validate your bus/train ticket and so on. Yeah, "I can use my physical card", for now. Long-term we need a better solution than keeping an extra up-to-date phone.
powerapple 3mo ago
That happened to me, lost 16 years old gmail account, which is my main account for my digital life. It happened after I disabled some tracking, and Google was no longer able to recognize me, even though I had my phone number registered, it was not enough.
- duskdozer 3mo ago
  I suspect this will happen to me soon, though all I do with it is occasionally sign in just to keep it registered. It now refuses to log me in unless I am on a specific IP address, no matter how many MFA steps it requests and I pass.
- qingcharles 3mo ago
  Same. Lost my 2004 Gmail because they silently enabled 2FA and the phone number on the account is a long lost one. I have the username/password and the recovery email is set to me. The account also forwards all emails to me, so I still get the mail, but I can't log into the account. Not yet found someone to do a SIM swap for me and get the 2FA code...
heroku 3mo ago
[dead]
MSFT_Edging 3mo ago
I've seen multiple stories of people buying phones from Fi, the phones never arriving, google refusing a refund, and on a chargeback, their entire google account gets shut down.
- eks391 3mo ago
  Holy crap that is scummy. I still use 2 Google services, of which neither would crumble me if lost (YouTube, and my old email which now acts as my spam inbox). I have lost accesses before, when I was still partially dependent, and had to give up my privacy to get access again, long enough to get off. It sucks but I do consider myself lucky that I was able to prevent the life crushing consequences that some people have had. Such a terrible company.
sylware 3mo ago
You go self-hosted and try to stick to real small alternatives, subset of technical standards, etc. I am not a US citizen, but a EU one (well, since we have seriously rogue and toxic EU states, I dunno how long it will last). And guess what, the handling of the issue of technical interop for administration online services is done... at the top of the top of the political power: in my EU country, only the president and prime minister do define it. Yep, you read well, it is THAT MUCH important: parliament, no power over it, 'technical authorities' have actually no real power over anything, etc. It requires the same level of power than deciding to make more nukes. Basically, in 2015/2016 our president/prime minister at that time literaly gave all the administration (and dependencies) online services to big tech (a technical document which is basically 'law' with a content 'opening the gate' for big tech). Well, I say 'they gave it', but they could have 'sold it'... we have a department in our DOJ to monitor past politicians who could have set up some public money channels in order to benefit from it, often indirectly, afterwards. The following president and prime ministers did change nothing... how deep the rabbit hole goes? Brain washing via hardcore lobbying? Corruption? IRL, you had country administration related web sites, working more that fine with "any browsers", small and big, citizen made, small company made, now it is over, they were all broken for web apps which do work only with whatwg cartel web engines with their abomination of "computer language" requiring an even worse SDK. Same with file formats. There is light though, if this document of technical 'law' is properly modified, the whole administration and dependencies have 3 years to restore simple web sites and support minimal and subset of file formats.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
port11 3mo ago
I would strongly advise using your personal account to access the developer-side of the Play Store. No, these services shouldn’t all be bundled under a single account…
- empyrrhicist 3mo ago
  Missing: [not]
  - port11 3mo ago
    Indeed. I should get more sleep. Thank you!
user43928 3mo ago
To avoid this, I tried to close my Google Play Developer account. A decade ago I published a free app on it, which was online for half a year. It was to no avail. They will not close the account. I received only automated responses about bringing my old app into compliance with current policy, to then transfer it to another developer account. Only then would Google graciously allow me to close my Developer account. Meanwhile, private Google services charge me the wrong prices, because I have a Payments profile in another country. It is associated with a Merchant account, which is linked to the Google Play Developer account. The support concluded that this can also not be closed, and that I should close my Developer account first. It's hell.
- cwmoore 3mo ago
  wonder what that app was for
- test6554 3mo ago
  Gotta move to the EU and sue based on right to be forgotten
  - maccard 3mo ago
    Suing a company will almost certainly result in them exercising their right to not do business with you and shutting down all your accounts - exactly what OP was trying to avoid
    - c0n5pir4cy 3mo ago
      In some EU countries - it could be seen as retaliation if you sue for something and then Google closes your accounts, some EU countries have strong protections here. More importantly for Google though it's under extra scrutiny under the DSA at the EU wide level - so it doesn't have a clear right to not do business, it has to do terminations correctly with clear reasons set out in terms, there are mandatory notice periods etc.
      - 3mo ago
paulnpace 3mo ago
Yep! One way, or another, we gotta' get people out of the system.
renegat0x0 3mo ago
I tried recently to create dev. account. I have not yet been successful. It is a painstaking process. I had to submit my ID, my phone number, email. Then to verify I had to give my address. They rejected my ID twice, so I had to submit driving licence. I am several weeks in, and could not even produce a single app. Their algorithm already rejected me, for no obvious reason.
Revanche1367 3mo ago
This almost happened to me 4-5 years ago. I don’t recall every detail but right around the time I was deep into a new job interview process, Google Pay decided it needed to verify my identity. It may have been triggered by one of my cards expiring but I don’t think I had ever used the service to actually pay for anything at that point and just had a card saved. Anyhow, I was almost immediately locked out of my primary email account as well and got delayed in sending documents to the potential employer and had to explain that I got locked out of gmail. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn my lesson and still use that gmail account as my primary email but I did at least open alternative accounts on other cloud providers.
somehnguy 3mo ago
This is why I don't mess with any of Google's AI offerings right now. Losing access to my Gmail (technically a google apps for our domain) account would be devastating. I think the risk that some google ai decides I'm abusing their ai and bans me is too high.
hbn 3mo ago
This has been known for quite a while; when I published an Android app ~10 years ago I saw lots of people advising you to create a separate Google account to publish apps under, because a robot can just terminate your entire online identity for the crime of trying to contribute to Google's app ecosystem. I left behind Android and as many Google services as I could in 2020 and so far I've only been more vindicated with that decision over time.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago
That sounds liberating
ravenstine 3mo ago
Leadership at Google should face prison time for this sort of practice. We wouldn't accept it in the physical space, so why do we accept it cyber space?
simonebrunozzi 3mo ago
Have a friend lawyer that will send them a proper letter. They will take you seriously that way. And if you live in EU, use GPT... Actually, use Gemini (!) to craft another great response invoking a number of articles etc that they are in violation of.

ferfumarma 3mo ago

The vulnerability of your Google identity is terrifying.

m00dy 3mo ago

it's a nightmare.

techpression 3mo ago

We experienced this with Anthropic, not the same blast radius obviously, but out of nowhere account was terminated. No support available. It was via someone’s 30+ year old classmate via LinkedIn the account got reinstated. As a counterpoint to the right to the repair there should be a right to recover.

Gigachad 3mo ago
There was a more direct case where someone’s child had been interacting with Gemini inappropriately resulting in Google nuking the entire families Google accounts.
- techpression 3mo ago
  That’s quite insane, especially considering how Google is pushing Gemini into every single product.
- bayindirh 3mo ago
  I still remember how uploading photos of man's own child created the catastrophic chain of events. Kicker? The photos were requested by a doctor. Ref: https://www.koffellaw.com/blog/google-ai-technology-flags-dad-who-took-photos-o/ https://www.koffellaw.com/blog/google-ai-technology-flags-da...
- alexp11223 3mo ago
  It was a fake story on reddit.
  - lukan 3mo ago
    You noticed the sibling comment? With the original story published by nytimes? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... edit: ok, seems a different story, but better gets the point across
  - throw-the-towel 3mo ago
    Si non e' vero, e' ben trovato.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- trashb 3mo ago
  Google has been nuking accounts since their inception. I have seen people being locked out as early as 2011 of accounts that could only be unlocked by sending a copy of an ID. Due to regulatory change of saving of information based on age (first 13 and above was ok, then became 16 and above).
  - rjmunro 3mo ago
    > Google has been nuking accounts since their inception Google has been dealing with accounts opened for fraud, spam and other evil bots since their inception. They should be nuking those. What's needed is some way of reverifying an account that was closed incorrectly, maybe some kind of independent ombudsman service or something to get the account back.

avaer 3mo ago

The blast radius is far worse than any "malware" Google could protect you from. TFA is playing it up, but it is arguable that this is a real virus, except the shady hackers are Google.

microtonal 3mo ago
I don't think 'virus' is the right term, since it should self-replicate. 'Malware' or 'spyware' are probably better terms.
saagarjha 3mo ago
Malware on Android causes more harm, both to individuals and collectively to all Android users, than Google locking people out of their accounts. These aren't even in the same order of magnitude. There are countless examples of people who have lost their life savings, all their data, etc. Losing access to your Google account sucks too, and I don't necessarily agree with what Google is doing here, but you're completely off base here.
- mapontosevenths 3mo ago
  If it makes my phone, that I paid for, do things I dont want it to do then it's malware.Especially because those things make the device less useful to me. Google thinks they own my phone. They do not. I do not consent to this change, and will be voting against it by using the only remaining option: Moving completely out of their ecosystem. They really left me no other choice when they decided that they didn't need the owners consent.
- ferfumarma 3mo ago
  The comparison is not Google app store security vs nothing. It's app store security vs app store security with verified developer IDs The fact that the android fraud is not endemic means that the later is not worth the increased risk of losing your Google account.
austinthetaco 3mo ago
Was this comment made by an LLM? i dont know anyone who drops "blast radius" in casual conversation besides claude.

devsda 3mo ago

What happens if you "accidentally" become persona non grata with both Google and Apple? If you want to participate in the society, you will forever have to resort to shady tactics. Shady can be defined something as arbitrary as using GrapheneOS. A temporary workaround like using alternatives like GrapheneOS for those affected will only delay the inevitable but it doesn't stop it at all.

pimeys 3mo ago
It's a great question to send to the DMA authorities: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en More of us ask this question, the better we are heard. Except if this is exactly what they want, then we need to vote better.
Imustaskforhelp 3mo ago
Over the long term, we definitely need something like Linux phones. I find it bizzarre by how little companies support this mission of Linux phones.
- echoangle 3mo ago
  I don’t want to be too pedantic but Android uses the Linux kernel. Degoogled Android is basically what you want.
  - eMPee584 3mo ago
    no, because screw all that java crap, they optimized for control and developer quantity, not for ux, customizability, performance...
- microtonal 3mo ago
  Why do you need a Linux phone (as if Android is not a Linux phone), when there is also AOSP. If Google closes it up, it can be forked, but I don't see any fundamental benefit of throwing away decades of development done on AOSP.
- 3mo ago

orian 3mo ago

All service providers above some scale should be obliged to create a transparent processes or be taken for external jusges. Even better: all providers of services with more than 100K users or 10% of country internet users should be forced to provide API to export / import data in open format.

int_19h 3mo ago
Maybe service providers above some scale just shouldn't exist, period? It would be a lot harder to erect walled gardens if you're only serving a small subset of users - they would balk and leave at any attempt to prevent them from interacting with others outside of the ecosystem, and it would be a lot easier to do so.

matheusmoreira 3mo ago

> And you’ll never reach a human to sort it out. Unless you blog about it angrily enough that you somehow make it to the HN front page and some insider sees it and solves the problem for you. Getting my own domain and setting up email on it is one of the best things I've ever done.

daakni 3mo ago
About to go down that route as well, just need to find a email provider with ideally servers in the EU
- Pxtl 3mo ago
  I'm really looking forward to Thundermail.
- graemep 3mo ago
  Run your own server. Very easy with something like Mailinabox. You might need to find a relay for outgoing mail.
- Geof25 3mo ago
  I am on protonmail+ my own domain. Works alright
- noisy_boy 3mo ago
  Fastmail has been working well for me.
- jazzyjackson 3mo ago
  Infomaniak (swiss) has a decent deal of a couple of free mailboxes with any domain you own through them. The webmail client kinda sucks but I just sync it with native clients. Using username:password for SMTP feels pretty weak tho they don't have Oauth2 support. lol now I'm talking myself out of it but it's worked great for years.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  Proton Mail and Tuta Mail come to mind. Any will do. You can trivially switch later if needed.

seviu 3mo ago

One of my best friend has a Jolla phone. He never had WhatsApp. He refuses to use google. Only till recently he started using signal. He has been using an old Nokia phone till he was forced to upgrade by his operator. He is European and here in Europe WhatsApp dominates. Despite all that and having a very social life, driven by work, he manages. I recently ordered a Jolla phone. I don’t want to know about android. I might tolerate iOS. But shelling thousands of $ for a phone that is controlled by an external company… I am looking out for messaging alternatives. I am at a point where I think linking your identity to a phone number is not right either. Let’s say we should all wake the fuck up. This is not right. Having a phone with such spyware is a potential attack vector I don’t want to have on the most important device I own.

trinix912 3mo ago
It's all good until your European bank starts requiring unrooted Android and iOS for their mobile banking app, then tries to force you to use that app instead of letting you sort things out at their building. Then the government starts requiring you use unrooted Android or iOS to sign into their website for administrative tasks, and so on.
- pmontra 3mo ago
  The endgame is that I will keep a phone in a drawer next to a 20 yo hardware token I still use to access a bank. When on the move, we will see.
- seviu 3mo ago
  If that ever happens (what am I saying we all know it’s happening). Then just a phone in the drawer I use it just for such administrative tasks.
  - trinix912 3mo ago
    Right, until you have to use a mobile app to pay for parking or validate your bus/train ticket and so on. Yeah, "I can use my physical card", for now. Long-term we need a better solution than keeping an extra up-to-date phone.

powerapple 3mo ago

That happened to me, lost 16 years old gmail account, which is my main account for my digital life. It happened after I disabled some tracking, and Google was no longer able to recognize me, even though I had my phone number registered, it was not enough.

duskdozer 3mo ago
I suspect this will happen to me soon, though all I do with it is occasionally sign in just to keep it registered. It now refuses to log me in unless I am on a specific IP address, no matter how many MFA steps it requests and I pass.
qingcharles 3mo ago
Same. Lost my 2004 Gmail because they silently enabled 2FA and the phone number on the account is a long lost one. I have the username/password and the recovery email is set to me. The account also forwards all emails to me, so I still get the mail, but I can't log into the account. Not yet found someone to do a SIM swap for me and get the 2FA code...

heroku 3mo ago

[dead]

MSFT_Edging 3mo ago

I've seen multiple stories of people buying phones from Fi, the phones never arriving, google refusing a refund, and on a chargeback, their entire google account gets shut down.

eks391 3mo ago
Holy crap that is scummy. I still use 2 Google services, of which neither would crumble me if lost (YouTube, and my old email which now acts as my spam inbox). I have lost accesses before, when I was still partially dependent, and had to give up my privacy to get access again, long enough to get off. It sucks but I do consider myself lucky that I was able to prevent the life crushing consequences that some people have had. Such a terrible company.

sylware 3mo ago

You go self-hosted and try to stick to real small alternatives, subset of technical standards, etc. I am not a US citizen, but a EU one (well, since we have seriously rogue and toxic EU states, I dunno how long it will last). And guess what, the handling of the issue of technical interop for administration online services is done... at the top of the top of the political power: in my EU country, only the president and prime minister do define it. Yep, you read well, it is THAT MUCH important: parliament, no power over it, 'technical authorities' have actually no real power over anything, etc. It requires the same level of power than deciding to make more nukes. Basically, in 2015/2016 our president/prime minister at that time literaly gave all the administration (and dependencies) online services to big tech (a technical document which is basically 'law' with a content 'opening the gate' for big tech). Well, I say 'they gave it', but they could have 'sold it'... we have a department in our DOJ to monitor past politicians who could have set up some public money channels in order to benefit from it, often indirectly, afterwards. The following president and prime ministers did change nothing... how deep the rabbit hole goes? Brain washing via hardcore lobbying? Corruption? IRL, you had country administration related web sites, working more that fine with "any browsers", small and big, citizen made, small company made, now it is over, they were all broken for web apps which do work only with whatwg cartel web engines with their abomination of "computer language" requiring an even worse SDK. Same with file formats. There is light though, if this document of technical 'law' is properly modified, the whole administration and dependencies have 3 years to restore simple web sites and support minimal and subset of file formats.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

port11 3mo ago

I would strongly advise using your personal account to access the developer-side of the Play Store. No, these services shouldn’t all be bundled under a single account…

empyrrhicist 3mo ago
Missing: [not]
- port11 3mo ago
  Indeed. I should get more sleep. Thank you!

user43928 3mo ago

To avoid this, I tried to close my Google Play Developer account. A decade ago I published a free app on it, which was online for half a year. It was to no avail. They will not close the account. I received only automated responses about bringing my old app into compliance with current policy, to then transfer it to another developer account. Only then would Google graciously allow me to close my Developer account. Meanwhile, private Google services charge me the wrong prices, because I have a Payments profile in another country. It is associated with a Merchant account, which is linked to the Google Play Developer account. The support concluded that this can also not be closed, and that I should close my Developer account first. It's hell.

cwmoore 3mo ago
wonder what that app was for
test6554 3mo ago
Gotta move to the EU and sue based on right to be forgotten
- maccard 3mo ago
  Suing a company will almost certainly result in them exercising their right to not do business with you and shutting down all your accounts - exactly what OP was trying to avoid
  - c0n5pir4cy 3mo ago
    In some EU countries - it could be seen as retaliation if you sue for something and then Google closes your accounts, some EU countries have strong protections here. More importantly for Google though it's under extra scrutiny under the DSA at the EU wide level - so it doesn't have a clear right to not do business, it has to do terminations correctly with clear reasons set out in terms, there are mandatory notice periods etc.
    - 3mo ago

paulnpace 3mo ago

Yep! One way, or another, we gotta' get people out of the system.

renegat0x0 3mo ago

I tried recently to create dev. account. I have not yet been successful. It is a painstaking process. I had to submit my ID, my phone number, email. Then to verify I had to give my address. They rejected my ID twice, so I had to submit driving licence. I am several weeks in, and could not even produce a single app. Their algorithm already rejected me, for no obvious reason.

Revanche1367 3mo ago

This almost happened to me 4-5 years ago. I don’t recall every detail but right around the time I was deep into a new job interview process, Google Pay decided it needed to verify my identity. It may have been triggered by one of my cards expiring but I don’t think I had ever used the service to actually pay for anything at that point and just had a card saved. Anyhow, I was almost immediately locked out of my primary email account as well and got delayed in sending documents to the potential employer and had to explain that I got locked out of gmail. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn my lesson and still use that gmail account as my primary email but I did at least open alternative accounts on other cloud providers.

somehnguy 3mo ago

This is why I don't mess with any of Google's AI offerings right now. Losing access to my Gmail (technically a google apps for our domain) account would be devastating. I think the risk that some google ai decides I'm abusing their ai and bans me is too high.

hbn 3mo ago

This has been known for quite a while; when I published an Android app ~10 years ago I saw lots of people advising you to create a separate Google account to publish apps under, because a robot can just terminate your entire online identity for the crime of trying to contribute to Google's app ecosystem. I left behind Android and as many Google services as I could in 2020 and so far I've only been more vindicated with that decision over time.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago

That sounds liberating

ravenstine 3mo ago

Leadership at Google should face prison time for this sort of practice. We wouldn't accept it in the physical space, so why do we accept it cyber space?

simonebrunozzi 3mo ago

Have a friend lawyer that will send them a proper letter. They will take you seriously that way. And if you live in EU, use GPT... Actually, use Gemini (!) to craft another great response invoking a number of articles etc that they are in violation of.