Don't Mess with The Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.dansdeals.com/archives/98444 <comment><USER2> First post, might as well be a cautionary tale. My father, a pretty old programmer by anyone's standards, regularly warns me of this sort of thing. He was pretty much shafted by CompuServe many years ago on a miniscule scale compared to what is possible now. He lives his life in what I previously described as a paranoid bubble of data control.

Until I inevitably burned myself with Google. I have no idea what happened but my account was terminated suddenly. No warning and no explanation as my backup address was no longer valid. This was two years ago. I lost documents, account details, contacts, calendars, email history, conversations between people on hangouts plus my phone decided to ask me to sign in again and became as useless as a dumbphone instantly.

Took about a month to reorganise my life and I lost contact with people, failed to complete tasks because my record was gone, lost control over my personal finances which were in Google sheets. Probably burned a week of my life on this as well.

Now using a cheap Nokia 106, POP3 box with gandi.net, mozilla Firefox and lightning, encrypted USB sticks for backup and LibreOffice. Never been happier.

I am genuinely afraid of going through this again. Everything remains portable between OS and provider now. Things are more volatile than we realise. I understand my father now.

I'm not against using all in services like Google but you need backups, an exit plan and a DR strategy explaining where all the services will go plus the time to carry it out. If you don't have these or it's too expensive to do this even for a personal user, don't even cross the starting line with the product.

Edit: Also beware of potential mergers, political whim and products being redacted or broken for long periods of time. All of these have affected me over the years.

<comment><USER3> Going on a tangent, there should probably be a set of universal backup formats that can be advertised as being somewhat portable. So that, if you need to can take your mail and other online business stuff elsewhere if need be. Beyond this article a user might start working for some place that does not allow external app use, but they can bring their data with, to be loaded onto the service. I guess like github and git. but with mail and calendar stuff.

my 2c.

<comment><USER4> We do have those formats. Mbox for mail, iCalendar for calendars, vCard for contacts. They're all IETF standards.

Google provide data export from nearly all of their services in standard formats. Where no established open standard exists, they provide clean HTML or JSON.

[https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout)

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't actually call Mbox a standard. Thunderbird supports it, but I'd argue it sucks as a way to escape Gmail, because no competitor to Gmail supports it as an import method. In fact, even Gmail itself can't import from Mbox. It may be a standard in that it's defined somewhere officially, but it's not really a standard in the definition that it's commonly used.

As someone who has nearly completed their GExit, I'd say I found Takeout to be borderline useless as an export strategy.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't you import the Mbox archive in Thunderbird/Claws-Mail/something and then copy the mails to whatever cloud provider you wish to use?

<comment><USER7> And it's pretty easy. I have a few accounts on Thunderbird and I can drag and drop e-mail directly from one account to another, I think they are .eml files. You can also have local accounts just for storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. For telephone companies, there are rules about when they may disconnect you, e.g. the Arizona Utilities Division write

> f I am unable to pay my entire bill, what can I do to maintain local dial > tone?

> The Arizona Administrative Code specifically states that a telephone company > may not disconnect a customer for failure to pay an unregulated portion of > their bill. To maintain local service, you must pay for the regulated > (landline) charges on your telephone bill while you work to resolve problems > with the other portion of your bill. If you fail to pay the unregulated > charges on your bill, those services may be subject to disconnection and a > deposit to reestablish. (R14-2-509)

> How much notice does a telephone company have to give before disconnecting > service?

> A telephone company is required to give 5 days advance written notice before > disconnecting service. (R14-5-509 Section E)

In this case, Google killed people's email without any prior warning, and in retaliation for an unrelated business transaction (selling smartphones). Having your email disrupted like that is at least as bad as getting your phone cut off.

<comment><USER9> Fastmail. I'm just a regular (paying) customer, not a business or anything. I've opened a small number of tickets, one or two of the RTFM variety. I've always got a human response and satisfaction, even a "here, let me RTFM that for you."

I can't imagine being locked out of my fastmail account for anything other than _abuse of my fastmail account_. Or not paying my bill.

<comment><USER10> We also stalk you on... I mean, we read the same tech news sites you do.

(I'm on third line ticket duty right now, so if you have something significantly more complex than RTFM, or an actual bug, you'll probably be talking to me this week)

The most common cause of getting locked out other than you abusing your fastmail account is having your credentials stolen and used for spam/fraud, which is why we recommend 2 factor authentication:

[https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/securityupgrade.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/securityupgrade.html)

But yeah, even then we don't lock you out forever - just need you to reconfirm your identity and re-secure your account.

<comment><USER11> Awesome - I moved across to fastmail a couple of days ago. I've been using a custom domain for email for awhile (josephg.com), merged with a gmail account. I'm very happy I set that up because moving to fastmail was a cinch - there's no forwarding to do, just a few DNS records to reconfigure. And with a custom domain I'll have that email address for life, no matter what happens to fastmail.

My gmail account (josephg@) gets a tremendous amount of email for other people. Earlier this year I was getting a lot of marketing trash from a particularly excited group of car dealerships in Illinois. Around the same time youtube suspiciously started advertising new cars to me. Its all way too creepy, and reading articles like this about people's gmail accounts getting locked out I'm very happy to reinforce my digital independence from google.

<comment><USER12> The only thing that has put me off Fastmail very recently, and indeed I moved to another provider (Runbox), is the loss of their Family plans.

Requiring three accounts now for instance would cost $150 a year minimum for the size I would have needed and unfortunately because I needed to rearrange my old grandfathered plan to re-organise accounts I'd have lost my previous plan.

Basically, Fastmail is good (very good), and you can still do admin type stuff by creating your master account first and creating your 'users' under it, but do look around if you are price conscious.

NOTE - I know you can't please everyone and that doesn't detract from the fact Fastmail was extremely stable, fast and had excellent customer support so don't take this as a 'Fastmail is bad' type post, because it isn't. Just look around and make sure you're getting the rid price/value for your needs.

<comment><USER13> Fastmail killed their Family plan?

Damn. I was going to move to them at the end of this year when my VM (where I currently run my mail) is up for renewal. But if I now need to buy several Standard plans instead, and get several gigabytes of storage I don't need, then that's less appealing.

Runbox looks good. Any other suggested alternatives?

<comment><USER12> PloarisMail is pretty 'barebones' on the face of it but works well:

[https://www.polarismail.com/](https://www.polarismail.com/)

Zoho is actually very good too but they (like Gmail) enforce IMAP connection limits, so it you have a lot of folders etc or use mobile clients like K9 that open a connection per folder then you can get errors very regularly.

The above is true for Zoho on the free plans anyway, but it may be different for the paid ones. But the free ones have pretty much all you could need if you don't run into the high number of IMAP connections issues.

[https://www.zoho.com/mail/](https://www.zoho.com/mail/)

If you have enough accounts to make it worthwhile I think Rackspace is supposed to be very good, but last I looked you needed a minimum of 5 accounts (I only had 4) so it didn't work out:

[https://www.rackspace.com/email- hosting/webmail](https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail)

<comment><USER13> Really helpful. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Disclaimer: I don't speak for Google and don't have any real context into why this occurred. Speaking as myself, a private citizen.

I work in Spam & Abuse and it's possible that this is the result of some clustering algorithm that was trying to take down sharders / phone buying rings. It's very possible that the SWEs responsible didn't consider this possibility (that legitimate customers would be used to shard purchases) and I'm pretty sure if the affected customers appeal they'll be reinstated, maybe with a warning. I certainly wouldn't characterize this as intentionally punishing the individuals who purchased phones on Google's part -- notice that only users who directly sent their phones to the reseller's address were taken down. Smells like automation to me.

The "deleting all their data if the appeal doesn't go through" thing is actually because of privacy policy and Google can't keep your data around for longer than 90 days give or take after your account is suspended. Again it seems heavy-handed but is more a perfect storm of big-company policy decisions with good intentions overall. Know that if you ask Google to remove your account, you'll actually get everything wiped! (That's a good thing imho!)

It really is unfortunate that FPs (or "mostly-FP"s) in Google's systems impact people so badly. FWIW for most Google services if you abuse them you usually get a service level suspension rather than your entire account suspended, probably for this exact reason.

<comment><USER15> If you watch an old tech talk re: Google disaster recovery topic, the Googler explains that a user's info is never fully deleted because it's too expensive to do so given back-up duplication is processed multiple times in multiple locations and sometimes over multiple technologies. In other words, cancel your google account today and your data may be "deleted" but it's really, as in _actually really_ , still on magnetic back-up in several locations, but it's just really hard to get to and put back together, so is considered "gone". Unless you're a really big organization with the means to go to such troubles, like maybe the government or Google.

<comment><USER16> How is that compatible with legal requirements for deletion? I think that, at least in Germany, you can demand that a company delete all data associated with you, and the company has to comply with it.

(Whether German data protection law applies in Google's datacenters is a wholy different story though.)

<comment><USER17> It's not required in Germany either. The data protection law allows to "lock" data instead of really deleting it from all devices. And IMO that's the only sane solution to deletion requests.

Otherwise, any kind of backups would be unlawful for a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The world's growing dependence on mega-services provided by the likes of Google is why I started the Free Data Foundation.

The goal of the project is to support OSS that can replace "free" services that subsist on our data. Interestingly enough the maiden project is tentatively called Tmail (short for torrent mail).

It works somewhat like TOR in that it will depend on volunteers to host nodes that will communicate with existing email providers (outlook, gmail, yahoo, etc) and relay the mail over 80 to RPis preloaded with MDA (mail delivery agent) software.

The goal is be able to expand the service to allow people to sign up for email accounts without running their own software (a la gmail).

It gets way deeper than that, but I'll leave it there. You can follow the project at [https://github.com/freedatafound/](https://github.com/freedatafound/). I've also bought [http://freedatafoundation.org](http://freedatafoundation.org) but there's currently nothing there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Rule Zero: Never rely on a URL that you don't control. Use your own domain name for your e-mail addresses. Use your own domain name for canonical links to content. If you control the URLs, you do not depend on any one provider.

Rule One: If you only have one copy, you have no copies. It is an act of faith to assume that a Youtube video or a file in Google Drive will remain available, just as it's an act of faith to assume that a hard drive will never fail. Anything from a hacker to a natural disaster could destroy your data. The "cloud" is made of servers, not magic.

If you follow these two rules, you have nothing to fear. Google could suspend my account tomorrow and it would be nothing more than an inconvenience. I change a couple of DNS records, restore some data from nearline and I'm back in business like nothing happened.

<comment><USER19> While I'm in complete agreement with you (everyone should be responsible for protecting and ensuring the integrity of their data), it seems a little unreasonable to expect the average gmail user to purchase a domain name, link it to an email provider, (optionally) migrate their emails, etc.

Same goes for YouTube videos. Content creators typically maintain copies of their work, but casual youtubers don't.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it is unreasonable. I think we've fallen into a culture of low expectations regarding the ability of "normal users". Many people will (perfectly legitimately) choose convenience over quality or reliability, but I think we should be pushing users to engage more seriously with the tools that they use.

We can certainly do more as developers to make things easier, but I think we have a tendency to pander to an imaginary "AOL granny". We often present oversimplified advice, because we expect too little of users. To pick a random example, I think we're too eager to say "use Dropbox" rather than "use Dropbox, but buy yourself a NAS too because X, Y and Z".

I think that there's a substantial latent desire among ordinary users to have more control over their technological lives. People are increasingly worried about the power of big tech companies, but they don't know what to do. We aren't doing a good enough job of informing users; those big companies have an obvious incentive to keep users uninformed. We're not communicating the risks and benefits well enough, we're not providing clear explanations of the alternatives to the Big Five.

In the process of writing this comment, I've had several startup ideas. I hope that the people reading this are having ideas of their own. I think that there are substantial opportunities to start returning control to users.

<comment><USER20> For a whole variety of reasons, you need know what you're doing to properly host your own email now.

From the risk of domain name takeover, to hosting provider takeover, to modern spam requirements (ip reputation, dkim, spf, dmarc), to just plain sysadmin ability and ideally run an HA system.

Agree that there are probably some startup opportunities, but the the reality is that you'll just be transferring the user's trust from AmaGooFaceSoft to you. You might be more trustworthy... or you might go out of business.

EDIT: To be fair, I'm probably missing a whole bunch of creative solutions that give the user control without requiring them to run a service.

<comment><USER21> Quite a few you're missing indeed.

Many ISPs give out a domain name and email service for free with internet contracts — you can set it to redirect to gmail until you need it, then just switch it over.

Tada, problem solved.

<comment><USER22> Until your ISP closes your account for whatever reason.

<comment><USER21> That's why you use a trustworthy ISP.

My current ISP, for example, is actually a local company providing datacenter colocation and consulting services to the state's government and local and national companies, but they also run a small ISP as side business.

<comment><USER22> _> they also run a small ISP as side business_

Which means their small ISP business is something they wouldn't mind so much getting rid of, along with your account.

The point is, you'll always depend on someone else. Your data will always flow through someone else's network. The cloud is someone's computer, and the internet is someone's cable.

<comment><USER4> You always have to rely on _someone_ , but you can structure your affairs so that you're only temporarily reliant on them to provide service _today_ , not to provide service _indefinitely_.

If your email address is "firstname.lastname@example.com", you're stuck with Google. If they suspend your account, you're in big trouble. If your email address is "email@example.com", you're a free agent. You can use Gmail or Fastmail or some random hosting company or a mailserver on a Raspberry Pi. You can use DNS or forwarding to send your mail wherever you like, you can transfer your domain name to any registrar you like. Rule zero.

If all your files are in Google Drive or Dropbox and nowhere else, suspension of your account could mean total data loss. If you have a local backup on a NAS or a mirror on Glacier or Backblaze, you're just mildly inconvenienced. Rule two.

Eliminate single points of failure wherever possible. Avoid vendor lock-in. Don't rely on a service unless you have a contingency plan if that service fails. Treat everything as if it were hopelessly unreliable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a big wake up call for me.

I have everything in google: Drive, email, voice, docs, sheets, etc. I was actually about to sign up for Fi. The convenience of everything in one place is great. But I don't think I had quite thought through a disaster like this.

With this article in mind, need to reevaluate. I guess either regular local backups and/or diversification of service providers would be a good step.

<comment><USER24> 1\. Have your own domain name. You can change provider from Z to Y at the flash a DNS record gets updated. Email is designed as a federated service, but to be so your email _address_ needs to be too.

2\. For files, use a cloud solution and have 2-3 computers updating their local copy (home PC, work PC, phone, small Pi box acting as server). I have a Digital Ocean box running ownCloud, soon to change to nextCloud. Put your code or next essay on Git.

3\. Don't trust any service provider, especially if they're not dependent on explicit income. You can still have everything in one place, but that place is many places at the same time.

4\. Don't store what you don't need to. Complication and confusion also comes from hording. Don't need it? Delete it, and be assured it is completely deleted.

<comment><USER25> Don't forget about the guy whose twitter account was stolen because a hacker got access to his email _because_ the weak link was a custom domain and poor security at Godaddy. The domain was hacked, giving the attacker full access to email, and therefore ability to change passwords, transfer ownership of a prized twitter account and more. It has been discussed here quite a bit. The folks that answer phones at domain registrars don't usually have adequate training and social engineering is common.

<comment><USER21> Then don't trust a registrar.

Get a domain directly through a NIC that offers that directly.

<comment><USER25> Can you recommend one? I've never heard of this.

<comment><USER26> Many NIC's support this but they aren't really setup to handle individuals (they prefer resellers do that) expect to pay a lot more for the privilege. You can usually find the Registrar by just going to nic.tld (e.g. [http://nic.io/](http://nic.io/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The worst thing about it is that it's almost impossible to talk to a human about the problems you're having with Google's free services. Even if this was a honest mistake, there's no human to talk to in order to correct it. And yes, you could pay for Google's G Suite (former Apps), which does have support available, but then again that locks you in, because you can't migrate purchases and connections to a free account later.

Free stuff is never free, you end up paying one way or another.

I have long since migrated off Google Apps and am paying for FastMail and Dropbox (with the 1-year history add-on), which ends up being about $243 per year, or about $20 per month. Now that's kind of expensive. Along with other recurring payments for online services, I end up paying about $38 per month for online stuff.

Now I'm being a frugal kind of guy, having suffered from poverty in the past and I'm not paying for useless shit I don't need, but if you can afford it, then allocating about $50 per month for your online independence is worth it, because the alternative is to be held hostage by companies like Google.

</comment><comment><USER28> Pretty incredible - especially with how little that a hardware product purchase has to do with a user's data. Imagine for a moment that google required people to have an account to access all their services - that they have the ability to cut you off arbitrarily across ALL their services for a TOS violation should scare anyone. Imagine if facebook cut your account and thereby ties to many of your friends and acquaintances for promoting a competing ad company?

These companies have lulled us into their systems with good intentions and free services, and now they wield tremendous power over our lives. I don't actually want to go back before the days where these services were fragmented and it was very difficult to juggle many closed services instead of a few. Still, its what happens when the company owns the whole vertical of individual user's data.

<comment><USER29> > Imagine if facebook cut your account and thereby ties to many of your > friends and acquaintances for promoting a competing ad company?

This is very imaginable. Facebook has never attempted to be privacy or user friendly; DO NOT USE IT. You are the only product they have of value.

In general, do not use third party login for anything personal you care about. It's not a password; it's nothing you control.

<comment><USER30> I remember when Spotify switched to requiring facebook for signup and were pushing linking the accounts on existing users. Perhaps it was a bug but at one point they made finding and following other users very difficult without facebook integration. Apparently they switched back to allowing email signup again some time ago but it left a very sour taste in my mouth. I still have my account today so I suppose that's a testament to how well they've run their service outside of that issue.

Anyway, I hope developers keep incidents like this Google one in mind and let people create standalone accounts. Certainly at the very least supporting more than one provider and allowing you to link another email address if they don't feel comfortable dealing with the very serious responsibility of managing and encrypting usernames and passwords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > he people affected don't have access to Gmail, Google Drive, Google Voice, > or anything from Google. They don't have any access to gift cards, bills, > travel confirmations, work documents, etc that were saved in their Gmail > accounts.

Yikes. That is scary. A large part of my online life is tied to Google. I was even debating getting a Project Fi phone too. Because well it is convenient and cheaper, but it would mean sink everything even deeper into Google.

For fun though, let's imagine if Google or Facebook ran a country. They would control the news you read, the apps you can install, they know where you are at every single instant (via your phone), they know all your secrets (who you talked to, what sites you visit, how often), they know who you know (contacts), Nest thermostat at home even controls how warm or cold you should be. In return you get all the super shiny and new stuff: latest technology, watches which measure your cholesterol, VR games, best email experience, unlimited archiving of your photos, really fast tear-free rendering of web pages. But if you make a wrong step your plug is pulled and you have no recourse. You go to the store to buy something, you just don't exist in the system - no access to you account. Can't travel because it refuses to route you. You can't talk to email or chat to other people because they can't reach you.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, that's why they don't want to run countries (be a government) - legitimacy of political power comes with a social contract, fluid and quite vague, unlike TOS.

Violating it often ends up in bloodshed and revolutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Most people are missing the important piece here: The terms of service is preventing you of doing whatever you want with a physical product you bought.

The F!. You bought the phone with full retail price. You didn't break any laws (as far as I understand it). Why does Google has a say on what you can do with "your" phone.

2018: You can't sell your phone (as a used phone).

2020: Google Drone picks up user phone from his apartment as he is banned from Google.

<comment><USER34> Google doesn't have a say on what you can do with your phone.

Google does have a say on what you can do with their service.

These people were clearly trying to game the system. Google caught them red- handed and has now exercised their rights.

<comment><USER35> But the phone's terms did state (according to TFA): "You may only purchase Devices for your personal use. You may not commercially resell any Device, but you may give the Device as a gift."

<comment><USER33> That's exactly my point. I'm critiquing their policy.

<comment><USER35> Sorry, I read it as protecting their policy

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm co-founder of Daplie ([https://Daplie.com](https://Daplie.com)) and we offer a home cloud (pointedly dubbed "Cloud") that competes with some (or potentially all) of Google's G Suite.

The Internet never seemed so small, closed, and locked as when we got our notice that our ads account was suspended (and we got no explanation other than that the reason was 'on a list they weren't allowed to talk about'). It suddenly became super clear just how much Google monopolizes the web and had the power to censor products and services and ideas they don't want.

Not evil, eh?

...

</comment><comment><USER37> Google has simply gotten too big and too impersonal. If they were smaller, only did one or two things, and locked you out of those things because of a ToS violation it'd be frustrating but it wouldn't be catastrophic. Similarly if they just had more humans interacting with their customers, then incidents like this would get resolved in a more humane way (but can you really do that at Google scale?).

We live in the era of tech giants owning vast swathes of worldwide markets because they got there first and developed proprietary IP to make it work. Which they deserve plenty of credit and have been rewarded richly for but I would prefer to see the pendulum swing back at this point to businesses which have a more personal touch. Fewer giants, more mom'n'pop shops which might not ever make anyone a billionaire but would create jobs for people who interact with other people.

Customer service, consulting, service businesses built on open source IP, humans running the machine--that is one possible future. The other is a couple of tech giants controlling everything and the machine running the humans. I know which one I'd rather live in. One change we can all make to promote this is simply limiting the business we do with companies that make it hard for you to get in touch with a person. If the market starts to value the human touch more then these companies will improve or be replaced.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow, way to burn trust in your brand over a few hundred phones.

</comment><comment><USER39> Besides not depending on centralized (especially 'free') offerings of any single company ourselves and spreading the word, warning people with less technical insight, there are some things we can do when building services to help the average user avoid this:

\- Offer at least one properly decentralized authentication option. Do not force your users to depend on google/facebook/github/whatever authentication services.

\- Provide a way for registered users to change their email address and/or authentication method.

\- Even on your backend, try your best to avoid locking yourself in to the services of a single provider, be it hosting, storage, email or anything. By doing so, you are not only locking in yourself, but indirectly your users as well. Prefer open source and self hosted services.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is why Apple and Google will eventually become horrible evil companies. I won't do anything to piss off Google or Apple because my life is stored in their ecosystems. This, they can get away with being shittier than AT&T.

The financial loss I would sustain if Google locked me out would be substantial. The emotional loss if Apple locked me out would also be substantial. My entire personal life is basically in iCloud in some form or another.

My situation might be a little extreme because I travel constantly and stay in touch with my family digitally but my tight coupling with a digital ecosystem will become the norm.

<comment><USER41> > My entire personal life is basically in iCloud in some form or another.

True enough, only for me it's just not stored _only_ in iCloud, (something that is cumbersome to accomplish with Google services). If I get locked out of my iCloud account, everything (that matters) is right there locally on my Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is it legally enforceable for a company to dictate what you can or cannot do with a phone that you bought from them? Sure, the terms said whatever they said, but is it enforceable/constitutional? I mean, people sell their phones all the time for whatever reason.

<comment><USER43> I would have thought the Doctrine of First Sale protects you legally (as in, they can't _sue you_ for reselling a phone), but I don't think there's any legal protections on provision of a service.

Bottom line: Never rely on a corporation.

<comment><USER44> The doctrine of first sale is dead. It died to the copyright cartels. You own nothing where a copyright is involved. The copyright maintains ownership of the device, not you.

The courts may have once done something about books with shrinkwrap agreements forbidding sale, but the same does not apply to software or things containing software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I would shit bricks if my Google account was suspended. It is the super node that connects pretty much every other service that I use.

<comment><USER46> Then these news should be a wake up call for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I recently made a decision to stop running my own mail server, figured it was long, long overdue to pay someone to handle my email for me.

Stories like this are why I didn't pick gmail for this service, which would have otherwise been my first choice.

<comment><USER18> Can I ask what your email stack was? I'm working on a project that's a cross between TOR and bit torrent to provide free (encrypted) email to the masses that doesn't monetize data. I've been on a crash course of all things email lately.

<comment><USER47> Ancient, set up maybe 15 years ago. Postfix, spamassassin (which wasn't effective, spam being the bulk of the problem pun intended), RBLs, and a nice almost two decade old .procmailrc for categorization.

I'm still in the process of trialling new providers. I'll be using fetchmail along with my existing procmailrc. The part I'm outsourcing is the spam filtering and availability on the MX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> That is exactly why I transferred my email to paid fastmail account. That is why I'm gradually resigning from usage of any Google services except search. That is why I'll never ever buy anything from google.

I had figured out everything when they closed Google Reader. I understood that they give no flying whatever about their users.

Because you, people, are not their customers. You are their commodity and advertisers are their customers. So yeah, don't mess with your owner.

update: spelling

<comment><USER49> Try DuckDuckGo, it's really quite good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > At a bare minimum Google should have allowed emails to be sent to their > accounts and not bounce back to the sender as undeliverable during the > appeal process.

I don't know. When an email is delivered to the destination mail server, that counts similarly to having a letter delivered to your physical mailbox. The time of delivery is important for any deadlines mentioned in the letter/email. If I'm locked out of my Gmail for 4 weeks, and then find a 3-week-old mail that had a 2-week objection period, I'm out of luck. (Unless I've got a good attorney and the willingness to defend my case in court.)

Also, when a mail is bounced as undeliverable, the sender will notice that I won't be able to react to the mail, which might prompt them to contact me on another mode of communication if the matter is urgent.

</comment><comment><USER46> We have to stop being naive about our email accounts.

My recommendation is to buy a domain name use that as the primary email.

It may cost in total around $100/year but it is definitely worth it.

<comment><USER50> I hear clintonemail.com is available

<comment><USER50> Too soon?

<comment><USER51> It isn't available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I just did a cursory search for options to backup google account.

The most comprehensive option seems to be [https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout), which offers to save data from almost all google services to a downloadable ZIP file. That is manual solution though, with no official way to automate.

Other option is to back up data from each service separately with different tools:

      * offlineimap for GMail,
      * goobook for Google Contacts (mainly for Android contacts),
      * gdrive for Google Drive.
      * other tools for other services.

I'm curious to hear other's thoughts on their experiences with this.

</comment><comment><USER30> Could this have been fraud detection automation? I would be shocked if they didn't at least let you dump the contents of your account and setup temporary mail forwarding. It's their service and these people didn't follow the rules but when they ask us to essentially entrust our digital lives to them they owe even the misbehaving users (as opposed to criminal users) who broke a TOS agreement something more than just scorched earth tactics.

</comment><comment><USER53> But there's one option they didn't mention:

      DON'T BUY THE GOOGLE PIXEL.

I mean, that's the real message I'm getting from all this.

<comment><USER54> You mean:

        DON'T USE ANY GOOGLE SERVICE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Reminds me a lot of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town)

</comment><comment><USER38> Slightly OT: Is there something funny going on with this post? 1 hour, 103 points and it's already at the bottom of HN?

<comment><USER5> It's often quite stunning how quickly posts showing malpractice by Google disappears off the front page of HN. I wouldn't dare speculate as to why, but it's pretty common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> _" Quite frankly it's scary to think about how much I rely upon Google for everyday life. Losing everything that I've accumulated with Google for the past 15 years would be devastating."_

It's probably best not to lean on a private entity like Google so heavily. People are literally giving them their whole lives. I've stopped using practically all of their services (maybe a search here or there), for this and many other reasons. I've hardly been inconvenienced at all.

</comment><comment><USER56> It's gaining media coverage: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/google- su...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/google-suspends- customer-accounts-for-reselling-pixel-phones)

</comment><comment><USER57> I can't help but wonder how many people had this kind of account suspension for random reasons? I bet most of them aren't noticed. These people should be more vocal, because regular folks just have no idea how risky to rely on just one company for everything they do online.

In future, I'd hope some sort of digital risk management become a common practice, just like a fire drill or food storage in real life. They should also be taught in schools.

<comment><USER58> I had an account suspended, I still don't know why. It was a generic account my roomate and I used to manage stuff that we shared at the time. I still have some stuff hooked up to it. Logged in one day to get my new credentials from PIA and it was disabled. All I did was open a ticket from the backup account listed (my main account) asking what the deal was, and....POOF! account reactivated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The same Gmail block happened to me circa 2010 without any explanation. It just stated that I "may be violated one of the service policies". Lost all data and access to every service that I didn't remember password for. Since then:

1\. Use my own domain for email w/ Google apps to be able to reset it to different mail provider fast if something happens w/ Google access. Office 365 allows to use own domain--while paying for Office and cloud anyway why not connect own domain to the service.

2\. Never use Facebook etc to authenticate anywhere--the same thing could happen w/ Facebook access. Access to services should not be directly connected to social activity. Now always password and email so access to a service could be easily recovered via email.

</comment><comment><USER60> _1\. Don't mess around with Google or any company that you simply can't live without._

I know a better rule: Organize your life and data so you don't depend on a company.

Many people forget that Google isn't some sort of official service provided by the government but a public for-profit company that's largely guided by shareholder value maximization. While there's no doubt that the latter has big advantages over the former in many areas, there's a lack of public education on this matter. People (unfortunately including me) trust Google with so many kinds of personal data, it's scary.

<comment><USER61> > I know a better rule: Organize your life and data so you don't depend on a > company.

Quite unfeasible request. You'll meet companies at the end of one line or another. You have to trust some company. You still need server providers, you still need a domain name, you still need reliable hardware manufactured by a... company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> This is a watershed moment for Google. Providing free email service was a way for them to get lots of data. The goal of course being to learn to massively scale computer networks, how to maintain them, back them up etc. Your data was the equivalent of 'cannon fodder' in their secret goal of controlling the world. Clearly, email has now become a burden. They can get orders of magnitude more data from the internet of things whose number now exceeds the human population on this planet. And all these things are talking to each other, sending data, etc. Our lives are inextricably dependent on these things - like automobiles, telephones, electricity, factories, etc- When google learns to optimize these networks, supply chains, distribution channels, etc. they will control the substrate on which we base our lives. People's behaviors, choices, values , etc will be manipulated without them even knowing it. Witness the first and most superficial attempt at this game - facebooks' 'fake news' campaign. Eventually, the AI that will inform these choices will be so complex that humans will not even know how to recognize it, let alone stop it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd say I'm surprised that Google would lock you out of your own data despite their claims that you still own your own data, but Google has repeatedly demonstrated that this is not the case. I would be surprised if any of these users get their data or their accounts back without involving a lawyer, based on prior examples. The author says they've contacted the EFF, and hopefully the EFF will offer assistance.

This is one of the biggest problems with these vertically-integrated ecosystems, your entire online life becomes managed by a single company, which can revoke your access at will, effectively deleting your existence from the Internet. Don't be the sort of person who falls for this. Get a domain you control, direct mail from it to a mail service controlled by a different company than the domain. Make sure you have a contingency for issues with either one. Ideally make sure neither of those services are run by Google.

<comment><USER63> You own your data, just not the box it is stored in or the gate you pass through to get to the box.

<comment><USER5> Much like a landowner owning all of the land around your property cannot reasonably deny you the right to cross their property to get to yours, I'd argue if Google does not own your data on their service, they must grant you access to that data at bare minimum.

I'm not super well versed in the details, but my suggested reading would be discussion of easement rights: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This just disgusts me. This is the problem with giving everything we rely on to a for profit corporation like Google, et al.

It's not your data if they can take it away from you. Your data is their profit center so we should demand more of these companies or simply avoid them as much as possible.

<comment><USER65> Cheese off the government enough, and they'll freeze _everything_ , bank accounts, ability to be hired, your freedom to not be in jail, everything, not just "your account with them".

The problem isn't the "profit" bit, it's the "everything" bit.

<comment><USER66> I agree that the "for profit" bit isn't the problem, it's the sheer size of Google. Everyone who has been paying attention has watched with dismay as Apple and "don't be evil" Google (along with other, smaller, actors) have become increasingly amoral over the last decade. Same goes, of course, for the government.

I don't see any reason to believe that there's anything other to it than sheer size: as a company gets larger, it becomes less driven by humans and more driven by its corporate structure, or whatever.

I use FastMail, and I don't imagine for a second that it would act any more ethically if it were in the same position of market dominance.

<comment><USER10> I'll let you know if we ever get to that point :p

Right now we're very much driven by humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> The good (really, the bad) news is that whatever seems to have happened, haven't really happened.

No user's data is ever deleted by Google (or any other company) ever, even if you have deleted your account.

If you run some hosting company, you know it. You have backups and backups of backups.

Once I contacted a website who frequently SMS'd me to scrub my phone number and to not do that again. They did it right, but after a few weeks I began receiving SMS again. Probably they ran into some issues and some of their data were restored from their backup.

Some companies could even have read-only backups so that they can have their data saved even in a massive attack.

Some developers have argued me not to ever delete user data. Just mark it is deleted, and never show it to user again. Having a way to actually delete your data may be used by some attacker to bring your service down.

<comment><USER68> At Googles scale you can be sure that if they didn't delete things they said they did they would be in big trouble.

In the modern world it isn't acceptable to keep backups indefinitely. Big web companies keep backups for 14 days. When you close your account, 30 days later they delete it off the main servers, 44 days later they delete it from the backups, which might take 4 days in case of a national holiday or strike in the drive-crushing department, so 48 days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Hm. Another lesson - avoid Google for critical accounts. Having your account handled by someone who can suspend it because they didn't like how you bought your hardware is simply too risky, besides just how weird it sounds. It highlights that Google wields too much power over their users.

</comment><comment><USER70> That's it. I will never use google for anything vital anymore.

</comment><comment><USER71> Didn't some kid get their email shut down because they were under the age for having a G+ account?

It is insane how coarse grained Google is regarding all this. You would think they could shut down one part of the account without killing the whole account.

</comment><comment><USER72> Wow, this is so messed up.

And for doing something that I believe the law mandates companies to allow their customers to do, i.e. resell their purchases.

</comment><comment><USER73> I think this would be illegal in the UK due to the Data Protection Act:

Some excerpts from Wikipedia on DPA:

"Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date."

\- Would Google be allowed to discard emails sent to you from others? Would this constitute personal information?

"Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data."

\- Would Google be allowed to prevent access to your personal information?

Seems like the DPA should protect against this...

<comment><USER74> I believe that personal data in the context of the Data Protection Act means data about you, so it wouldn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> This sort of thing truly needs to run into regulatory force. I don't believe in government being up our collective skirts for everything but regulation does have its place and this, I think, would be appropriate use of such power.

And this does not apply to just Google. We've had run-ins with Google, Facebook and Amazon on different fronts and for different issues. And, in all cases, our clients had their accounts suspended forever, permanently, done, no more.

One case happened about six years ago. Google opened-up a product called, if I remember correctly, "AdSense for Domains". The idea was that, rather than park your domains with GoDaddy (or whoever) and have GoDaddy earn $0.02 and give you $0.005 on ads placed on your domains you could, instead, park them directly with Google and get paid directly.

One of our clients had over 250 domains on GoDaddy. They decided to move them ALL to Google. The process entailed moving them over to the Google provided DNS, followed by an automated approval process that took minutes. All 250+ domains got moved and all 250+ domains got approved.

About three days later: "All your Google accounts have been suspended due to fraudulent activity on your Google for Domains pages". Upon digging, it appears they claimed excessive clicks on ads. Well, nobody clicked on any of them. At least not our client. The domains were many years old and were logging ad clicks on a regular basis when parked with GoDaddy for years. In other words, normal behavior.

So, Google acted like a totalitarian regime run by an asshole and cut off our client. All for the $50 a month these parked domains were going to earn him. What really sucked was that his AdWords account got rolled into that as well, so they lost all ability to use AdWords to promote their legitimate business. No appeal. No email. No way to communicate.

Can't get more despicable than that.

Oh, wait, you can!

A different client. They had been advertising their products on Facebook with some results. Nothing great, but they were learning. Their product, for women, featured images of a woman wearing a normal bikini. No, nothing racy, just a normal looking bikini worn by a model. Facebook flagged the ads as inappropriate despite the fact that, during the same period of time, you could regularly see half-naked Victoria's Secret ads on FB all the time. So these guys, not wanting to get into trouble, changed-up their ads to simple graphics. No problem.

About six months later they decide to take advantage of a lucrative affiliate program for a business course. They decided on a budget and started to advertise it on FB. No scam, a course tens of thousands of people had taken. Legit through and through. About a week into this FB emails: "Your advertising account has been suspended permanently." No reason given.

They reached out to FB with their appeal form. No reply. Tried again. Snotty reply saying "Please consider this decision final. This will be our last communication".

And so, this company, a valuable and upstanding member of society, is now cutoff from advertising on Facebook forever. Done. For life.

This, in no uncertain terms, is pure highly refined bullshit totalitarian crap. This is NOT how business is done outside of the realm of games played by petulant children. It is disgusting, to say the least.

In the real world business people engage in conversations to find common ground. If a magazine doesn't like your ads, the editor will discuss them with you and seek modifications. They don't cut you off for life. That's some violent bullshit there.

No, I think it's high time the likes of Google and Facebook visit the receiving end of a good government style reaming. I'm so sick of it I am more than willing to get the ball rolling. What's the best course of action? Any law firms who read HN interested in a nice fat class action lawsuit?

Consumers can't be treated like this. It has been going on for many years. High time we put an end to it. Any takers?

<comment><USER76> I don't know if it's so much attributable to malice as it is that it's their business model of working hard to satisfy the 99% but neglecting the concerns of the 1% that cause trouble and take up a lot of labor without yielding commensurate return to the bottom line. I don't know if regulation is the solution, but at the least, we should be mindful of this and try to arrange their lives to be anti-fragile to these unexpected shocks.

<comment><USER75> I am going to be harsh here. It's not malice. It's the lack of an education. No, I am not talking about college.

I am talking about manners, caring, being considerate, respectful and not insolent, petulant and completely oblivious to what human decency and respect entail.

Places like Facebook are almost entirely populated by a generation of young people who are intellectually smart yet socially vacuous to an unbelievable extent. It is an insolent, immature generation where 27 year olds can actually behave like my 9 year old's do, or worst. And, in many ways, it's like Vulcans with shitty attitudes. No human part at all. An empty logic machine operating with a flawed and fucked-up version of logic they have created.

That's what's going on. They now rule the world and have very little in the way of human decency within them as a guide. And, of course, through intense age discrimination there are no adults to teach them how to behave in the face of real human beings, with real lives, kids, businesses, problems, bills to pay, concerns and needs.

This is the only context within which a person could possibly decide it is OK to utterly destroy someone's income without as much as a conversation.

And, since they don't seem very interested in correcting their behavior (or don't even understand why they should) it might be time to throw the only possible correcting factor people on the outside can reach for: Government goons.

It sure feels like it's about time. Too many of these stories out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Anyone have any good links on how to host your own email with spam blocking and such?

<comment><USER78> It's incredibly difficult and time consuming. I've found that a good compromise is to buy a domain name (or use one you already have), and pay for a reseller hosting account with a reputable service provider. You'll get a level of customer support that is far above a standard hosting account, full control over your email settings, and you'll have full root/WHM access to your account. As a bonus you can spin up a website whenever you want for testing or production, and make back your monthly fees by selling webspace to a single client. It sounds like a lot to just have good managed email, but I only pay about $15/month for the reseller account, barely more than a regular hosted account.

I went with A Small Orange, they have incredible support and they stay on top of abuse reports so their emails servers never get blacklisted. I've also used Tiger Technologies in the past and they are superb as well.

With that said, I'm still considering replacing Gmail with something like Fastmail even though I'm satisfied with the email service from ASO. Having a web-based account outside the reseller hosting umbrella makes two-factor auth a lot easier to manage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Is this even legal? To hide something life this in terms and conditions? It goes against what most people consider "to purchase"

<comment><USER80> Some things are, some things aren't and yet still get put into EULAs of all sorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> God help you if you use your Google account to sign in to important services.

</comment><comment><USER82> Is it unusual to have such terms in a hardware device? I'm guessing that Google loses money on the hardware but makes up the difference in other ways (i.e. personal data, etc). But, other industries use the same model without such terms. Are they trying to lock down identity so that it almost always has a one-to-one relationship with the device?

</comment><comment><USER83> I've been thinking a lot about my personal dependencies, and how I can mitigate points of failure. The mental exercise I've been going through is basically imagining Netflix's Chaos Monkey [1] running loose on my life.

How can I be resiliant to data loss? Job loss? Cognitive loss? There are ways I can mitigate these risks, and some ways I can test to see if my mitigation strategies will work in practice. But how do I do that without devoting my life to it?

It's nice to dream of some kind of antifragile existance going forward, but for now the easy conclusions tend to come down to the 'two is one and one is none' variety. Backup everything I can, including but certainly not limited to my data and services.

[1]: [http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released- in...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-into- wild.html)

</comment><comment><USER84> Wait you have to have a Google account just to order a pixel phone? How dumb would you have to be to do that when you're doing shady reselling deals? But this is why I distrust any online transaction that cannot be done without a guest account unless there's some solid reason. There's no such reason for buying a phone.

<comment><USER85> 100 % agree. They tried to outsmart Google and got outsmarted!

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Being locked out of my Gmail account is something I have worried about in the past. I have moved all essential email traffic to a domain I control. I do worry about my wife and her photos though. She uses Apple photos primarily but syncs them to Google Photos.

Is there an open-source cloud photo-management solution like Nextcloud or something?

</comment><comment><USER87> This is a cautionary tale for those who buy solely into one eco-system. I know the convenience makes it tempting, but they control everything and if you do something they don't like, even unknowingly, you'll pay a price. Amazon too, has been known to blacklist folks, without warning and with only one chance to appeal.

</comment><comment><USER88> "Don't mess around with Google or any company that you simply can't live without."

If your life/internet usage is that simple i think you might need to take some computer/internet lessons in learning about alternative services that work just fine. There is internet beyond google and Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER89> I'm mildly uncomfortable with my primary address being outside my control. (Like most, I use gmail too.) A year or two back I registered stretch.email, as Stretch is, in fact, my last name. Obviously most of the more common 'stretch' domains are taken, but this one was available and seemed appropriate. I have since discovered that enough services don't support newer tlds as to make it basically unusable for authentication purposes.

Anyway, I guess I'll probably end up with mail@[firstname][lastname].com, but with some disappointment. I suppose I can always keep the .email and just forward it to the other though.

<comment><USER90> Strange – I've been using a .coffee domain and haven't run into a problem yet (although I've only used it maybe 30 times, not adding too many new accounts these days)

<comment><USER89> Many things support it, but many don't. I'd say something like 1/4 of the time I have problems. And often stupid problems, like sign-up works, but unsubscribe doesn't. _That 's_ frustrating.

<comment><USER90> Sometimes bugs just happen to be terribly convenient, don't they?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> It's really a problem with Google offering more and more services. On the one hand it is nice and convenient, but every additional service increased the risk of everything being lost because of some silly mistake.

</comment><comment><USER92> That's pretty rich, coming from a company that likes to avoid paying taxes.

</comment><comment><USER93> Why would you put your data that matters to something like Google and trust it?

I keep my data that matters locally on _my_ disk. And a backup of it too on a removable usb-drive. Call me old fashioned.

</comment><comment><USER94> This sort of thing is why I don't have an active Google account. I don't feel the need for one.

(I do worry about dependence on Github, though. Github needs a mirror.)

<comment><USER95> Just use Gitlab. It's free and open-source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Bizarrely I wrote a novel last year about this kind of thing happening in the future. If anyone wants to read it I'd love some feedback ;)

</comment><comment><USER97> A reminder: I need to migrate my email account away from gmail, one service at a time. Can't imagine the day when same thing happens.

</comment><comment><USER98> I lost a Google account for using it to post a combative message on the State Department's youtube channel.

Google didn't tell me that, of course, but I don't use that particular account for many things and it was the only thing I used that account for in a long time.

Likely part of the push by Washington to get information companies to guide what dialogue is acceptable to post online.

</comment><comment><USER99> This is precisely why use (and pay) a variety of providers for my services. No single point of failure AND I am directly a customer.

</comment><comment><USER100> Yandex mail is a decent and free alternative. You can even use your own domain with no charge: [https://domain.yandex.com/domains_add/](https://domain.yandex.com/domains_add/)

They could, of course, do something similar to what Google did here, but using your own domain mitigates some of that.

<comment><USER7> In my experience, Google flags most Yandex (and Zoho) e-mails as spam.

They probably justify it with some "you must train our network to accept your address" bullshit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> I think I'd be really in deep sh*t if this happened to me, I have all my domains under google domains now, not to mention the vast majority of my email/contacts/sheets etc are all google managed... even with a dump, it would be excessively difficult to move/recover my accounts on other systems tethered to my gmail.

</comment><comment><USER102> Does a service exist that compresses your entire Google Account (GDrive/Docs/Gmail/etc.) to an archive and then uploads it to your Dropbox (or other cloud storage) account?

I don't want to ditch using Google, I'm too integrated, but I would like to back up everything to a second source just in case.

</comment><comment><USER103> That's really fucked up of Google

<comment><USER80> Well, what do you expect from an advertising company?

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Why did they let the order go through and cancel their accounts?! they should of canceled the order

</comment><comment><USER105> Looks like Google is reinstating accounts.

[http://www.slashgear.com/pixel-phone-flipping-scheme- googles...](http://www.slashgear.com/pixel-phone-flipping-scheme-googles- statement-on-a-ban-hammer-17464528/)

</comment><comment><USER106> What happens with someones 2FA accounts that use google authenticator in this scenario?

</comment><comment><USER107> Executive summary lesson: don't by a new android phone, especially if it's a google pixel, or Risk getting your account banned. Good job google, great way to maintain your customer's confidence.

</comment><comment><USER108> This has always scared me but the risk is low enough that I never feel like spending the time to figure out how to migrate my gmail account.

Is there a paid service out there that just does it for me automatically?

</comment><comment><USER109> And this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is why you back up all of your files _locally_.

<comment><USER110> But e-mail is more than that. It's how many services authentication/re- authenticate you. You can't even connect a new computer to your Steam account without 2-factor. And if all you have is an e-mail account, then you loose access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> If this is true it is very disturbing. I have a Google Apps for Work account, I wonder if anyone of these people did. They would lose their business email access.

</comment><comment><USER112> The lesson here is not "don't mess with Google". The lesson here is "don't be entirely dependent on a corporation".

</comment><comment><USER113> Not that I plan to spite Google, but this is one reason I use Google Takout to download all of my data (photos, email, etc.) periodically.

</comment><comment><USER114> This should be illegal

Good grief, I'm off to backup my shit now

</comment><comment><USER115> Maybe a bit of a contrary opinion here but I think Google is in the right. You break the terms that you agreed no when creating your account, you loose your account.

I was in a similar situation recently where I lost my adsense account. My appeal got rejected, and once they made the connection to my other adsense account which was run by a business entity, they banned that adsense account as well for violating the terms with creating another adsense account. That it was linked to a YouTube channel that lost monetization and partner status didn't matter. That it was not even breaking the terms as it was owned by a legal entity instead of me as a person didn't matter either. Try to contact a human to get this mistake out of the way? Impossible.

It's important to know how fragile your entire online existence can be. Plan for these kind of things and backup often. Don't trust cloud services and have a emergency strategy ready.

For me, I took control over my domain, moved it to fastmail and would be ready to rewire the mx records to a different server anytime. My dropbox account is getting auto-pulled to my NAS at home which is powered by a RAID setup, and once a week the files are compressed and stored somewhere else. It's setup in a way that if dropbox deletes a file, the NAS doesn't delete it unless manually given permission to wipe deleted files. Same goes for Google Music - all files I buy or upload are getting auto-downloaded to the NAS and securely stored.

I have multiple Google accounts for different things: Music, YouTube, Analytics and all services that allow it have multiple account managers setup, just in case a account is getting terminated and login is no longer possible.

Then I still have 1 google account that I am using as login email for very important things, just because it's the least likely to get compromised.

After signing up somewhere with OAuth, I also immediately go into the settings and give myself a password and valid email to not rely on the OAuth provider.

Paranoid? Don't think so. Since knowing that my data is waiting at home for me and can't just disappear, I am sleeping a lot better. It was a bit annoying to go from the convenient "my google account is my life" to this solution, but the ease of mind is so worth it.

</comment><comment><USER85> 1\. Why is everyone here condoning the act of these people to make _extra_ money?

2\. If you are doing such shady stuff create a new Gmail account and do it

<comment><USER116> Regarding question 1:

(1) Because the First Sale Doctrine is supposed to give people the right to resell their legally acquired goods. Retaliating against people who resell something they paid for already is extremely bad form on Google's part, even if they have found a tortuous way to legally do so.

(2) Regardless of whether Google was justified or legally within their rights to do so, cutting off people's email with no warning is alarming. Many people depend on Google's email and data storage services; if they're going to cut off your access because they don't like what you've done on something _completely unrelated_ that may be a good sign that _all_ of us should stop using Google's services while we can still do so gracefully. What if next they decide that they don't want to continue offering email service to people who bought an iPhone instead of an Android? Or people who voted for Trump? They could most likely determine both of those facts if you are using GMail as your primary email provider...

People here aren't really approving of what those folks out to make a quick buck were doing specifically -- they're concerned about _the way Google does business_.

<comment><USER85> Thanks for (1). BTW, if it makes business sense for the folks to resell mainly for profit; google can also retaliate in a way they like to respond. This is like tax-evasion - if you find better accountants/tax-consultants you do better than your govt. In principle -> these people tried to outsmart Google -> and got outsmarted.

Not that I am justifying Google's actions.

For (2) I look at it from a different point of view. I am glad that Google did not cut email for some random Joe - just using a random-number-generator. Only those that did something which _may_ be hurting their business. please note, I am not supporting G totally.

> What if next they decide that they don't want to continue offering email > service to people who bought an iPhone instead of an Android?

But what is your problem then? If they do not offer please move away. It is the same with apple; unless you have a _actual_ apple hardware you cant open appleID or even watch apple live product launches.

While I am not condoning Google or apple, it is how they want to do business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> I shudder at the prospect of getting my Google account disabled. I'm way too dependant on it for email, Chrome, and Android.

</comment><comment><USER85> The OP should have advised people in the forums, do not use your original userID with google to mess. Create burner account.

</comment><comment><USER118> This is miss-titled, ity should read Do not mess with Google's Pixel TOS when buying that device.

</comment><comment><USER119> What if you pay google a monthly/yearly fee for gmail? Can they cancel your account then?

<comment><USER120> Apparently so. On the Google Apps/G Suite (which is basically the paid business version of Google services, including Gmail) page about restoring a suspended user ([https://support.google.com/a/answer/1110339](https://support.google.com/a/answer/1110339)), "You can't restore an account that was suspended for abuse or for breaching the Google Terms of Service. To see why a user was suspended, click the exclamation on their account page for an error message. Then see below for your corresponding recovery options."

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> Taking the "no" out of "Do no evil". Now it's 33% more efficient!

<comment><USER78> The phrase is "don't be evil", so it's actually "don't" they should excise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> is there a google IFTTT that will copy all data from Google to say One drive -everynight?

</comment><comment><USER122> "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." \--Reagan

</comment><comment><USER123> Better yet: Don't do business with fascists.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: At least 200 people participated in a scheme in which they purchased (multiple) Pixel phones and had them shipped to a dealer in NH for resale to others, in contravention of the Google ToS.

In response, Google suspended all their accounts, without the option to download any their stuff, including email and drive data, etc.

<comment><USER124> My response to Google deleting peoples email accounts.

Google deletes artist's blog, a decade of his work: This makes me laugh my ass off. This is a bit of a pet peeve I have with people and modern technology. They believe they have a right to use a service even though they're not paying for the usage of the service. Then they turn around shocked and angry when the free service is removed. `Why! why did they do this to me, this is the biggest injustice! How un-professional of them!`. Kind of like the dicussion I have with my collegues that `shouldn't you know.... support the open source frameworks we use to make money with?`... `Why would we do that?` ... Kind of leaves me speachless.

<comment><USER125> Someone losing a decade of work makes you laugh your ass off?

<comment><USER124> Yes, when a simple usb hard disk drive could of saved all his work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER126> "1\. Don't mess around with Google or any company that you simply can't live without."

Wrong. Get off of google ASAP. I have my own email. Yes I pay, yes it is a little bit less convenient. But I don't have to worry about such stuff. I still use the search engine but should actually use startpage.com instead.

Gandi offers Email with domains. If you have your own domain and need email services, you can also use this guys: [http://infomaniak.ch/](http://infomaniak.ch/) Less than US$20 per year. And non EU non US jurisdiction as a bonus.

There are python scripts available that back up your google email data via IMAP. I downloaded everything before I moved.

</comment><comment><USER127> It is beyond shitty that the notification mail doesn't even give a clue as to what the violation was. It's a bit hard to mount an appeal against a genuine mistake if you're clueless as to what that mistake was.

</comment><comment><USER128> "Ignorance of the terms isn't an excuse, so be sure to read them." I stopped reading after this sentence.

The American legal system is so stuck-up and disconnected from reality it would be funny if people wouldn't be screwed by it so often. Lawyers are given way, way to much power and common sense seems to be dead. Lawyers are paid humongous amounts of money for simple tasks, while big companies can and will pretty much screw whoever they like.

</comment><comment><USER129> _Some people had family photos saved in their drive that are now lost. It's the 21st century version of losing priceless mementos in a house fire._

...I feel no pity for them. That's what backups are for. Real backups. Like, on HDDs that you have in your hands. It has never been cheaper to back up data than today.

</comment><comment><USER130> I really hope people would stop using google. It's quite scary how people trust these liar companies, that definitely are not your friend. Alternatives needed from nicer companies..

</comment><comment><USER131> This is so low and childish that I am sure only Google could do something like this.

<comment><USER132> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and especially not vitriolic ones. Throwing acid around is damaging to the kind of discussion we're hoping for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Why did they let the order go through and cancel their accounts?! they should of canceled the order

<comment><USER133> Good thinking, same here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> >Don't Mess with The Google

What a bunch of scammers. Not only did they deprive people that actually wanted the phones for their personal use, but they also engaged in a coordinated effort to profit from them.

<comment><USER135> > What a bunch of scammers. Not only did they deprive people that actually > wanted the phones for their personal use, but they also engaged in a > coordinated effort to profit from them.

That's pretty harsh. They weren't depriving anyone of anything. Selling the phone on means that someone who wants one for personal use, gets one. And there's nothing inherently immoral about coordinated efforts to make a profit. That's what businesses are after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Just curious here, but why are people outraged over this? They clearly violated Google's policy, and there were repercussions. Those rules are there to protect Google; perhaps their only legal recourse to cover themselves after a rule violation is to suspend the account?

<comment><USER72> What if your landlord cut off access to your apartment, and everything inside, because you happened to have 3 guests visit and stay with you this month, instead of the 2 allowed by the lease? Would that be okay with you?

And that wouldn't even be as bad as this, because a lease is a far more legally applicable document unlike TOS's which no one reads. Further, at least your violation there is related to your apartment. The TOS being violated here was for a hardware device that isn't the service being disrupted. And the worst part is that the act that was in violation is one that governments want to encourage, to the point that owners are protected from being sued. Since Google can't attack them the ordinary way, they are using their leverage on those users with their other products to prevent them from conducting this act.

This whole thing is terrible in many ways.

<comment><USER136> What if your "landlord" (and by landlord I mean your buddy who is letting you stay in his apartment complex free of charge other than making you read through the occasional newspaper flier) cut off access to your apartment, and everything inside, because you happened to have a raging house party that encompassed the entire 20th floor of his building. None of those apartments were occupied so you just broke down the doors and let people run wild. They destroyed pretty much every apartment on the floor.

Would you expect that to happen? Would you want a lot of sympathy from other people because he just cut you off without prior warning? No?

The whole thing is terrible only in the way that people like this and the dealer who buy up products that are high in demand and low in supply are the scum of the earth. They provide absolutely no value to the supply chain and make life more difficult for honest buyers.

<comment><USER137> Even under the worst lease violations you can think of, it is illegal for a landlord to keep your stuff. They can throw it out on the curb, but they cannot keep it.

Google not only cut off services, they cut off access to remove users' content. I don't see how that is defensible.

<comment><USER136> They cut off access to a COPY of a users content. They didn't TAKE anything from a user. If, in 2016, you're relying on a free service as your only copy of important data, you're a fool.

Countless governments across the world could literally, without any notice, delete all of your data at the drop of a hat on ANY public service. See: megaupload. It's not the job of a free service provider, who literally makes _0_ promises of data integrity, to provide you unlimited access to your data until the end of time.

<comment><USER137> "You don't need to worry about keeping your data anywhere else" is the heart of Google's pitch for all their services, including Gmail, Docs, Drive, and most recently Photos. I mean, the ads for Photos are literally people feeling better knowing that their stuff is safely stored with Google.

It seems reasonable to hold Google responsible for what they say.

<comment><USER138> Google quite frequently lose photos people store with their services: [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/photos/QuKiYj...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/photos/QuKiYjKCXPM) [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/photos/bNSFIy...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/photos/bNSFIy0Mx0Q) [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/photos/7Xf0Cj6_...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/photos/7Xf0Cj6_ixU/1JbVu4fbCAAJ) [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/njdwFPaq...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/njdwFPaqSeo)

Personally, I lost photos of my kid's Sep 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> I ratified peace treaty with Google - I trust their service more than my ability do properly configure backups and servers.

Example here? Someone abusing T&C and making profit on their phones... It's just like printing counterfeit money, stealing profit from the gov. No wonder why they got unhappy.</comment>


Python 3.6 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-360/ <comment><USER2> Anybody else finds it ironic that Python and Ruby are doing their major releases on Christmas, but Perl who started all this "ready next christmas, but we won't tell you which" meme, doesn't? They did their big one last year, but only once.

Kudos to Python and Ruby for nice major updates.

[duplicate to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13244337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13244337)]</comment>


Show HN: swytch.net - my attempt at a social network - <AUTHOR>

I've just launched swytch.net, a little social network I've been working on for a month or so. It's nowhere near ready for public consumption but the core ideas are there and I'd be interested to hear what others think.  Here are some of the things that I think differentiate it from facebook and co:
1) multiple profiles: having one set of "friends" from all your different social circles limits you to sharing only what you're willing to share with the entire group.  On swytch, a user can have a separate, distinct profile for each social circle.
2) robust privacy: each profile is either public or private.  Content is either open to anyone or restricted to your followers.  There is no third tier - you don't have to worry about friends of friends accessing your data.  Social networks need stronger, simpler privacy - not more privacy controls.
3) private by default.  I think the perception that users don't care about privacy is way off the mark.  Users don't always know about privacy settings and their implications but that's not the same as not caring. On swytch, everything is private by default. On private profiles, nothing but the username is revealed to non-followers.
4) location: sites like foursquare and gowalla offer this but they're too gimmicky. I think they have to be because their entire service is based around location, they have little else to offer. However, location data combined with updates, photos events etc is very useful.
Please kick the tyres and tell me what you think. There is no landing page yet but you can sign up here (only a un & pw are required):
http://www.swytch.net/sign_up <comment><USER2> I like a lot of this. The simplicity, multiple profiles etc. I'd switch from Facebook if everyone else I knew would too. I think you need some kind of Facebook interaction built in to get it going quickly. Facebook has so many users that first adopters are giving up a lot to move.

Edit: Signup was easy, the username admin was available. Sweet.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback, very useful. Integration with other services is on the todo list but for the time being I want to focus on the core features and user experience.

I think it can be useful without a large existing social graph. For example, I went to a local tech meetup last month and met some interesting people. I wouldn't necessarily add them as facebook friends but I am following them on twitter. The downside is I now get updates on anything they post when I only really want updates on the things they're working on.

As I said in a previous comment I think social network is the wrong label for this product. It's more of a group communication tool. The broadcast/follow model is a very efficient and useful way for groups to communicate and that's the core of of swytch.net - it's group communication with less noise and more signal. Because it's not trying to be the 'one true network' it doesn't need a huge social graph. Just the people that you want to communicate with in a specific context need to be on it.

> Signup was easy, the username admin was available. Sweet.

:)

<comment><USER3> maybe you can center on temporary social networks, a kind of throw-away account system for social networking when you need it...

Like, I meet some people somewhere and we want to engage more, so someone creates an identity just for that and mails friends to do the same and link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I think that grey is a bad color: too dreary and dull. Also, tell people how they can use your social network in a way that Facebook cannot do, i.e. provide use cases and have strong calls-to-action to try those features out. I would focus a lot on the multiple profiles feature.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its missing the social aspect right now - I can't find anyone (much less my friends).

</comment><comment><USER6> good effort, but ui could be better.

going to swytch.net[<http://swytch.net>] leads to no heroku app found

don't see much value in a social network where everything is private.. is it still social ?

gowalla does step 4 + a lot of other cool things.

again good effort, and keep it up, maybe eventually you will find that feature that is killer.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback. I need to rethink the 'social network' moniker. It's more of a communication tool.</comment></comment>


Dismantling Fukushima: The World's Toughest Demolition Project - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/dismantling-fukushima-the-worlds-toughest-demolition-project <comment><USER2> On a 40+ year time scale for clean up, there's only so much that can be planned and executed - I'm impressed that they have produced some kind of public update like this. Japan itself may undergo political, technological and ecological/geological changes in the timeframe that will impact this work. The fact that the technology they propose to use needs to be invented, researched, built and tested in the first place gives me enormous concern that this situation is still very much out of control and responses will be largely reactive to changes in the situation of the current site.

The timeline also can't foresee issues of mistakes in the remediation process, which seem to be likely given that no country has fixed a problem like this and the material inside a melted core is a big unknown and probably can't be worked on directly by human beings. Step 5 in that illustration on how to take apart a melted reactor states "drill down to break the melted fuel into chunks, pack it into casks, cart it away and you're done!" I mean that almost feels tongue in cheek. The chances for serious casualties and tremendous radiation releases exist in each attempt to drill into a reactor containment and there's 4 damaged reactors at this time. The project risk, unknown variables and the scope of proposed solutions leaves me wondering can they truly put a price tag on the work at such an early stage. It's absurd to think that I may not see Chernobyl or Fukushima's remediation happen in my lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"At Fukushima you have wrecked infrastructure, three melted cores, and you have some core on the floor, ex-vessel," Barrett says. Nothing like Fukushima, he declares, has ever happened before._

I distinctly remember the HN conversation at the time. The pro-nuclear crowd was arguing, as it was happening, that this could _never_ occur. The cores would _never_ breach the containment vessels, they said. Guess you folks got that one wrong.

I bring this up only because a lot of pro-nuclear arguments comes down to bold assertions from experts that certain things could _never_ happen. Yet, here we are. A big helping of modesty seems like a good thing in this field.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, a lot of the rhetoric from both sides tends to be extreme. The other side of the argument is that this is clear proof we must never use nuclear energy for anything ever again, and instead continue burning our limitless supply of fossil fuels.

I think the reality is: we need to make nuclear energy didn't work. TEPCO could't do it. Hopefully someone else can.

<comment><USER5> I do think that what Fukushima shows is that when you have a nuclear power plant, you have the possibility of really big problems caused by natural disasters well above what you planned for. The questions are what you can plan for and what you do plan for?

Ideally we'd put nuclear reactors _way away_ from all natural disasters, _and_ design them to withstand magnitude 10 earthquakes, F-5 tornadoes, Category 5 hurricanes, and, say, bombing by massive conventional munitions during wartime. And we'd have perfect, guaranteed safe forever storage of waste. Practically, it isn't clear that this is possible.

 _I think the reality is: we need to make nuclear energy didn 't work. TEPCO could't do it. Hopefully someone else can._

The question is, do we want these things to work until they don't? Or do we want them to be guaranteed to work no matter what happens? I am not sure the latter is possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly, Americans have a living President with hands-on experience demolishing a destroyed nuclear reactor. Jimmy Carter helped dismantle a Canadian reactor at Chalk River during his time as a Navy nuclear submariner.

<comment><USER7> Interestingly, his former boss, US Navy Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover, who pretty much created nuclear power as a thing, expressed severe regrets and reservations at having relied on nuclear power for the navy and in its use for civilian power generation:

"I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. I am not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war. Unfortunately limits — attempts to limit war have always failed. The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available.... Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it."

Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982), via Wikipedia

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Willingness_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Willingness_to_.22sink_them_all.22)

<comment><USER5> I think you have to understand nuclear powered ships in the context of WWII history.

The critical loss for the Japanese navy was at Leyte Gulf, which was the largest naval battle in the Pacific during the war (and possibly the largest naval battle in history). The significance of the battle was that the Americans secured Phillipine Sea against Japanese shipping and this cut the Japanese off from the oil fields in Indonesia in terms of transporting oil back home. it was only after Leyte Gulf that organized kamikaze attacks began, and the Navy was largely put out of the war by that battle.

What that means is that Japan lost WWII when they lost access to oil. So the issue with naval ships is diesel or nuclear. About 1/3 of the US navy is nuclear-powered. The rest runs on diesel. Thats enough our navy (but not our air force, army etc) can continue to run if oil is not available for a time. Our military is still very dependent on oil but not like the Japanese were.

<comment><USER7> I'm well aware of this history, as well as the earlier transitions of the US fleet from wind to coal (under Admiral Perry) and the British fleet from coal to oil immediately prior to WWI under Churchill. Naval energy needs have driven _several_ fuel transitions, and there's a considerable amount of interesting work that continues to come from the US and other navies.

If you'll read further into Rickover's remarks, he makes clear that he pursued nukes because he felt it was essential to national security. _But if there had been an alternative_ he'd have avoided it. Possibly not even, given the benefit of hindsight.

Your 1/3 of the US naval fleet being nuclear powered doesn't jibe with stats I can find. Nuclear propulsion is presently limited to aircraft carriers (10) and submarines (82 total), or 21%. A number of cruiser and destroyer nuclear ships were commissioned but all have been decommissioned to the best of my knowledge. Wikipedia cites a total of 80 nuclear powered ships operated by the US navy, since 1954, and 430 ships presently active, on reserve, or under construction. If you limit your concern to _commissioned_ ships, then you'd have 33% nuclear propulsion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_United_States_Navy)

As for oil: with most effective naval power being projected via aircraft, the reliance on oil remains rather high. Yes, the US would be able to launch nukes or float a flattop off someones shores (given them opportunity for target practice), but if you want to launch aircraft ... somewhere other than into the drink ... you've got to top them off every so often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We can all only hope that now goes everything according to plans.

I fear, a second Tsunami in the region would be a second (maybe bigger) disaster and free even more radioactive material.

They still have enough problems. There is for example the trouble with huge quantities of radioactive water -- that is anything else than solved.

</comment><comment><USER9> This rises a question in me: What did we do for Chernobyl? It was decades ago, so most of this technology didn't exists yet. Or it was not nearly as bad as Fukushima?

<comment><USER10> Basically, we just covered Chernobyl with concrete and left it alone. As long as nobody goes near it, it's not doing any harm.

According to the article, for political reasons, Japan wants to dismantle Fukushima, instead of simply neutralizing it, covering it up with concrete, and walling it off for a few decades before the cleanup happens. This is where the challenge comes from.

<comment><USER11> Regardless of their plans, they still need to handle the leaking groundwater, which AFAIK wasn't a big problem at Chernobyl.

<comment><USER10> Chernobyl definitely had concerns with groundwater contamination. There were significant amounts of strontium within the exclusion zone, and the core had melted down into the earth, although I don't think it reached the water table. However, from everything I can find, the migration through the soil tended to be extremely slow, making it a fairly local phenomenon. In the end, cleanup efforts were abandoned since they had low impact on human health or radioactivity outside of the exclusion zone, and were worse for the environment than simply leaving things.

Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the journal subscriptions, so I don't have the full text of this, but I _think_ this is the paper you want to read for an overview: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/96WR03963/abstrac...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/96WR03963/abstract)

The conditions are very different at Fukushima, mainly due to the proximity to the ocean, so I can't really give an educated summary of the challenges with that. One thing that you have to keep in mind, though, is that water is an _excellent_ radiation absorber, and it's actually safe to go diving in active reactor pools as long as you're more than a couple of meters away from the core. I'd expect that the radiation in the ocean would disperse quickly and harmlessly.

[https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember "older" // "elderly" Japanese folks volunteering themselves as available to help deal with Fukushima, along the lines of "What to I care of radiation, I'm old and have already had children? I want to still contribute, call me up". I wonder about this as a source of labor for demolition.

<comment><USER13> Chance of cancer and/or sterility isn't the limit of the problem. Acute radiation sickness would put a damper on their enthusiasm real quick.

Until you have this jumbled mess of radioactive debris thoroughly mapped, you don't want to send anyone in there, and once you do, there are going to be a lot of places they just can't go. Cleanup workers lying on the ground vomiting their guts out aren't helping anyone.

<comment><USER4> I also don't think that the situation is grave enough to sacrifice human health, yet. Certainly, if one person could sacrifice themselves to save 100,000,000 from certain doom, then it's an easy calculation. (Not me or my family, though, please.) The current situation is more like "this is expensive to keep cool". No need to kill anyone else.

<comment><USER14> >I also don't think that the situation is grave enough to sacrifice human health, yet.

Yet? The odds it ever will be are infinitesimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> tl;dr Site's a shitshow, 40 year cleanup plan.

<comment><USER16> On the bright side, Japanese engineers get a blank check to build some awesome robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is the most interesting fukushima news I've heard in a while [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOtxx7zpyz0&list=WL8CB60B177D...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOtxx7zpyz0&list=WL8CB60B177D3FAD58)

<comment><USER18> This is mostly just quackery and non-science, they keep repeating the same old stuff that the government is keeping us in the dark, and that the health effects of Fukushima is far greater than it actually is.

<comment><USER17> I don't think you watched it.

<comment><USER18> I watched enough to know where it was heading.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who should be Twitter's revenue czar? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/who-should-be-twitters-revenue-czar

<comment><USER2> Is anyone else tired of seeing the term "czar" used to describe someone who's job is in no way like that of an actual czar? This sounds as ridiculous as "revenue emperor" to me.</comment>


The last PHP wrapper for MySQL you'll ever need - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dionyziz/Life/blob/master/models/db.php

<comment><USER2> <https://github.com/indyarmy/MDW>

This has the limitation of not being able to chain queries via OOP, but does use PDO and is tested enough to be considered stable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ok.. constructive criticism here... not trolling...

A) Not a class. Who writes non-oop PHP anymore? B) Globals. Seriously? What if I need 2 connections in a page load? This won't work. C) Use PDO.

I see the value of the exercise, and I applaude you for it, but PDO has TRILLIONS of sql queries under its belt.

You should use PDO.

<comment><USER3> One non-obvious benefit of PDO is that it lets you separate data from the query, making it much more secure to SQL injection attacks.

Also, as a rule, never put SQL in the page you're rendering... you want it in another class, away from your code so that you only have to write it once if it's used in numerous places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couple other issues with this, which make it not very useful... for one thing, SELECT * is notoriously slow compared with selecting just the columns you want, and your select wrapper doesn't allow for joins which makes it less robust. Plus there's no way this can handle subqueries or anything like that obviously, so it's not really uh, useful.

More critically, you're using a lot of addslashes, which is not a safe way to escape input. You need to use mysql_real_escape_string or you're open to injection attacks.</comment>


This song was generated by over 100,000 micro-votes (from internet participants) - <AUTHOR> https://crowdsound.net/lyrics?h=1 <comment><AUTHOR> It is actually the largest musical collaboration in history. The prior title was held by Avicii's X-You.</comment>