Where Do You Go When Google Locks You Out? 332
Lobais sends in the cautionary tale of a man who was locked out of Google Groups for three years — losing the ability to administer his own open source project in the process. "After about a year of using Google Groups for the PyChess project, I started [noticing] a problem. When I wrote mails to the list, no one would answer. And when I answered other peoples' post[s], they seamed to ignore them and press for new answers. As I tried to check the online group to see what was happening, I got a 403 Forbidden error. After a short while I realized that this error was given for any page on the groups.google.com subdomain. The lockout meant that I was unable to manage the PyChess mailing list. I was unable to fight increasing spam level, and more importantly I couldn't reply to anybody in my community. I wasn't even able to visit the Google help forums, which are all on groups.google.com. As the services are free of charge, I never really expected any support options. ... How can we know how often this kind of thing happens? If any admin can lock you out by a sloppy click, and give you no option to defend yourself, then it is bound to happen once in a while."
Title but no story! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
It's because there's nothing to see here. Just take a hint and move along.
--
DHS
free but not cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the problem is that Google has a terrible support for their services.
My experience with them is that when things go wrong, you're screwed (unless you pay, it seems).
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Google doesn't respond to its own abuse either. Via their cache they often do requests (to check if the pages still exist?) on our servers. These sometimes trigger our www-burglar-alarm (they actually do something that is not allowed). When you send an abuse mailing you never hear again.
Feedback is not one of their strong sides.
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Informative)
Hello, a Googler here. I'm not sure what your specific issue is, but if you want to prevent the crawler (GoogleBot) from doing things, you need to set up the robots.txt file appropriately. If you still see the bad requests, they are being triggered by some kind of human action and you'd need to figure out what (the headers sent with the request should tell you).
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Informative)
The robots.txt file is ignored if the final target is not in the domain.
Thanks for the header-reminder.
Re:free but not cheap (Score:4, Informative)
The robots.txt file is ignored if the final target is not in the domain. Thanks for the header-reminder.
Time for a dummy redirect inside your site first? Disallow that directory in robots.txt and robots should stop following before they get redirected to the final site.
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
What you're saying is very interesting, but in contradiction to my experience with GoogleBot's behavoiur.
I've seen GoogleBot-images do a normal crawl of the images on the site, respecting robots.txt and all, and then, start a crawl over the images it was explicitly forbidden from indexing, from the same IP (*definitely* a Google IP, not an impostor), just with the User-Agent header changed to an empty string. Nice, eh? It was way too fast and way too cordinated to be triggered by human action. And if there was actually a human involved in telling the bot to return to the site, *ahem*, "incognito" a few seconds later, I'd be more than happy to tell them to bugger off properly when they're told to.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
He already has stated it was from a Google IP address.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt it's true. There is certainly not enough diagnostic info posted that proves the fault lies with Google.
One person's confusion about configuring a website (robots.txt is part of the configuration) does not constitute a breach of any sort by automated skimmers.
...Even links that may modify your site. It's the admin's responsibility to lock it up -- and test -- before release.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
the link is fake and was never created by our cms.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
the link is fake and was never created by our cms.
Are you logging http-referer (typo as per the RFC) headers? You might find that the fictitious link is coming from someone else's page and Goog's just following it.
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do search engine bots send referrer headers though? (honest question, since I stopped looking at/caring about bot activity a long time ago...)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
have you searched in google for
link:www.yoursite.com/whatevertheurlis
To get a list of pages google perceives as linking to it?
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see their Feedback(tm) product listed anywhere. Maybe it's still in beta.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Well, changing commands in my cms is not allowed in the Netherlands. It isn't a valid link but they should not be trying either.
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure but... why do you care? It seems to me that you should filter/tune your alert messages. You must get tons of spew from all sorts of IPs all the time. Every single one of my servers sees all manner of shit. Attempts to exploit IIS vulnerabilities (I guess I shouldn't be surprised that its more time efficient to spam vulnerabilities at every host than to check what you are connected to), exploit software that isn't even installed etc... google cache rechecks seem like they would be the least of your worries.
I mean... it is essentially a false alarm, and you want google to make an exception for you when, its your alarm that you setup thats really bothering you. Tune the alarm.
-Steve
Re:free but not cheap (Score:4, Informative)
No we don't get a spew of messages. Google is the only one. FWIW: I wanted to know the origin of the link they requested and they did not bother to reply.
It is not one of my worries: I mentioned Googles response policy and this is an example.
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Funny)
FWIW: I wanted to know the origin of the link they requested and they did not bother to reply.
I hope you tried
::takes off shades::
Googling for the link
YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
BS. Unless the path they're trying is excluded by robots.txt, why shouldn't they try links? Because you say so? Well, then you'd at least need to argue for it.
It's your job to properly configure your webserver, and it's trivial. Worrying about bots trying out stuff is just a waste of time IMHO: If there is a hole, fix it - if there is no hole, there is no need to keep track of every squirrel sneaking around the premises.
What does that even mean haha??
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is about intention in the Netherlands: you do not have to succeed to break the law.
Are you implying Google's intent is to actually change something on your website?
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On every single CMS I've seen that uses that setup, the edit link is publicly listed in the article or article list. As others have stated, setup your robots.txt properly. That isn't Google's problem.
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Informative)
And what makes you so sure Google did not just followed a link? put differently, how do you know it's the fault of google and not the CMS/webmaster? are you sure it wasn't a rogue spider simply giving a Googlebot UA string, that is, did you check the ip addresses. etc... ?
Also, going to that page and being greeted with a "you need to be logged in to do that" message is not the same as trying to log in. not by any stretch of the imagination.
If your CMS doesn't check credentials AND you're not excluding bots from these URLs via robots.txt, you have a huge problem - but Google is not it ;)
Not every link that is spidered shows up instanlty (or ever) in search results, so that doesn't really mean anything.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In the Netherlands you can view http://example.com/command=view&id=12345 [example.com] but you are not allowed to change that to http://example.com/command=edit&userid=5&id=12345 [example.com] because you are pretending to be someone you are not (like a failed login attempt). It is about intention in the Netherlands: you do not have to succeed to break the law.
First, Google's an American company, and even though our IP laws are screwy, it's generally recognized that it's the server's responsibility to block unwanted requests, and not the client's responsibility not to make them (especially in this case where it's obvious that there's no intent of wrongdoing). Second, I guaran-freakin'-tee that no one at Google said, "know what, it's Tuesday and I'm bored; let's fuzz CBravo's CMS to see what happens". Despite your protests, either now or at some point in the past,
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Software and services are entirely different in this context...
Once you have some free software the copy you have doesn't change unless you choose to change it, thus if it was working it will continue working the same.
A service on the other hand, is entirely under the control of a third party and can change at their whim.
This article is entirely about a service that started off working, and then the company providing it stopped providing it to the one particular user with no explanation as to why.
Re: (Score:2)
Right if he had hosted the service himself using FOSS software he would be fine.
Re:free but not cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
seems to be a common theme with free software and free services - it often starts out as the cheap option, but ends up costing more
And the evidence for that would be ... what?
i'm fine with people using free stuff, but seriously don't complain when it blows up in your face.
And how does complaining do you any good when commercial, expensive stuff blows up in your face? When Microsoft discontinues products? When Apple kills your app in their App Store? When DEC goes out of business? When Symbolics takes a research project, makes it proprietary, and then proceeds to kill it? Open source and free software were founded because commercial software had blown up in people's faces time and again. With open source, you at least have options for dealing with the problem, with proprietary software, you're stuck.
As for Google, if you want for-pay services, get a Google Apps domain. Those applications that you pay for are supported. And Google offers you the ability to download and backup your data so that you aren't stuck.
Even if you use the free services, so far, I have had a lot less trouble with free Google services than with any of the for-pay hosted web services I've used.
Re:gratis but not free (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you've misunderstood the term 'Free Software'. The word 'Free' in Free Software is used to refer to *freedom*, not the cost.
So with software the situation is actually the other way round to the way you present it. If you are using Free(dom) Software, then you have the source and can do whatever you need with it and you aren't held hostage by someone else's actions. If you're using non-Free Software, *then* you seriously shouldn't complain when it blows up in your face.
Using non-Free Software (even if it's gratis) often starts out as the 'cheap option' -- not necessarily in terms of cost, but in terms of local knowledge and training and effort. But it often ends up costing more, because of its inherent limitations and because you can't actually *fix* it to meet your requirements, or even get bug-fixes for it without having to replace it wholesale with a new version.
I Think the Reason He Was Locked Out Was... (Score:5, Funny)
...he used "fora" as the plural for "forum" and triggered some kind of douchebag filter. These douchebag filters were first created as an experiment by Google in the late '90's to keep out the folks who wrote "boxen" as a plural for "box," but were later taken off-line. I fear that one of the filters may have missed the purge and now it is evolving, learning...
Re:I Think the Reason He Was Locked Out Was... (Score:4, Funny)
douchebag filters were first created as an experiment by Google
Do you know where I can get a copy? I want to install one for my employers HR department before it is too late.
Re: (Score:2)
... lose up in the skynetz.
Re: (Score:2)
According to the OED the plural of forum is forums. Fora is only use when referring to Roman public spaces.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, TFS describes someone whose IP was apparently banned by google groups but somehow you being a dumbass and forgetting both your password and the answer to the security question is similar?! Give me a break...
Re: (Score:2)
There is a very good reason that Yahoo's policy is that way. If they allowed a password reset via email and your email account was ever compromised, all of the accounts that allow a password reset from that email account are vulnerable. In your case it would be take over email account, reset flickr password, associate new email address with flickr account. They really should have an alternative method to proving your identity such as faxing in a copy of your driver's license or something though.
Re:free but not cheap (Score:4, Informative)
If I'm allowed to select a security question myself it's a random combination of characters.
The answer to all security questions on all services I'm signed up for is a random combination of characters.
Reason: It's the weakest link in a security system and should never be used, ever.
(I use LastPass to make sure I don't need to remember passwords - and before someone answers that I've just given my passwords to a service, no, I haven't. Study their architecture)
Re: (Score:2)
Request that they stop "spamming" you, otherwise you will make use of CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and they can be fined for thousands of $$$ per spam.
Appeals process (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Other than it being obscure, I'm good with what finally resolved the problem - he (sort of) paid for premium support.
I think that if a person or business becomes dependent on a 'free' service then charging for premium support is reasonable. But the quality of service had better be top notch where the first level support is trained to be real good at escalating problems instead of simply sending canned responses that don't really address the issue. If managed well, it can also be a revenue stream in that t
Re: (Score:2)
IME, Google's premium support generally does exactly this.
You may not always like the answers - some aspects of their systems work slightly differently to what one might expect and cannot be configured otherwise, so I hope you haven't developed a whole bunch of business processes which assume particular behaviour - but they're normally intelligently written in clear English and bear some resemblance to the question asked.
Re:Appeals process (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately there's no way to explain what triggered an abuse check to good users without also explaining it to spammers, and obviously that would reduce the anti-abuse systems effectiveness very quickly.
So, full disclosure, I work on abuse at Google. False positives are obviously a problem and we try to minimize them. When they do occur, there's usually a way to appeal it, either automatically by using SMS/phone verification or by writing into support and getting a manual review (contrary to what you might read we do have free support for our products and large numbers of people use it every day). It sounds like in this case Groups did not provide an appeal path, or at least didn't do so three years ago. I'll check to see if this is still the case.
Finding a way to improve the appeals process without letting through large amounts of spammers is a tricky problem and we know we could do a better job of it today. Throwing up a call center isn't quite as trivial as it sounds for a bunch of reasons.
Re:Appeals process (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Appeals process (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Appeals process (Score:5, Interesting)
At the company where I work (a hosting company) we give a user one chance to clean up their stuff. If they fail, we disconnect them (again, if the offense was bad enough to disconnect on the first time). After that, it's $50 a pop to reactivate the service, and if they continue to screw up we keep pulling the plug. Eventually they seem to figure out we won't allow that kind of garbage, and either clean up... or go away and become someone else's problem.
Not an ideal solution, but it seems to work wonders.
Re:Appeals process (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Appeals process (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, but I came for an argument. Microsoft support is much better when it comes to abuse.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, full disclosure, I work on abuse at Google.
I know it's not your department, but I can't pass up the opportunity of actually having the ear (eyes?) of an actual Googler.
Several weeks back, Google Group's digest emails feature stopped working for a few weeks, without explanation. More specifically, I get digest emails for comp.lang.java, comp.lang.javascript, and comp.unix.programmer, if that helps.
Any idea what happened during those two weeks? I know it impacted a bunch of users (I Googled around and several people had the same experience in the same
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I doubt this will help me, but maybe someone else.... My youtube account got locked...sometime in the past year? I didn't use it very frequently, and only ever used it to rate videos (I'd never posted a video, ever). Unfortunately, I don't have access to the email account I originally created the youtube account with, so...although you have a form for finding out why you got suspended, I can't use it. I have no way to find out why my account got suspended, no recourse. I don't care a whole lot be
Newsflash: The companies don't give a damn... (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't care about your chess hobby. They don't care about you. Not Apple, not Google, not Microsoft, not Donner, not Blitzen. You're a number, a nothing. The cloud will swallow you whole.
Set up your own damn server.
Re: (Score:2)
And the "not Donner, not Blitzen" thing; genius!
Re:Newsflash: The companies don't give a damn... (Score:5, Interesting)
Several years back I had built up quite a large following on a Yahoo group. At one point the group had over 600 members, not bad. I did some posts on other groups on related subjects. Maybe one of them complained. Anyway, one fine day Yahoo refused to let me login. All attempts to contact the company were fruitless. I found that not only my account but also the entire group was nuked. Fortunately I had a backup of the registration emails. I shelled out some bucks for a server, emailed all my group members with the new group address, and never looked back.
Re:Newsflash: The companies don't give a damn... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fortunately I had a backup of the registration emails. "
Well done, and a step many would overlook.
Re: (Score:2)
You still need support with your own server, whether it is on a dedicated server at a host, like Server Beach, or at home on a permanent IP/biz class cable. (this assumes a small project). From my experience, the 'rent a rack' is the better way, as their service tends to be pretty good, and they will even fix your own mistaktes when possible.....for a fee. Owning your own physical box at home is nice, but the number of ISP's that will host is limited, making you vulnerable again.
Of course, if you aren't
Re: (Score:2)
Owning your own physical box at home is nice, but the number of ISP's that will host is limited, making you vulnerable again.
If all you're doing is handling batched news for a handful of groups, you don't need to host anything from home. You could use UUCP if you liked... if you could find someone to give you a feed, which I presume is the hard part of all this.
Re:Newsflash: The companies don't give a damn... (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends - you can leverage the cloud without being dependent on it.
If you store your life on gmail, be sure to have a complete IMAP backup someplace. If you host your website on a provider, be sure you have everything you need to rapidly redeploy it elsewhere and make sure you own the domain and DNS/etc.
Go ahead and leverage the cloud, but be able to pick up and move at the drop of a hat.
Now, if downtime is super-precious then I'd probably go with a better-supported option. However, the reality is that most clouds provide better service than most individuals can provision themselves with. There are other reasons to go it alone, but reliability usually isn't one of them.
Re:Newsflash: The companies don't give a damn... (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't get why people think this "cloud" thing is a step forward, given it means less privacy, less control, less reliability, and requires constant net access, not to mention shifting terms of service and the like. And for what? Cross-device access? I can see this being good for some people but I'll pass.
Re: (Score:2)
I still don't get why people think this "cloud" thing is a step forward, given it means less privacy, less control, less reliability, and requires constant net access, not to mention shifting terms of service and the like. And for what? Cross-device access? I can see this being good for some people but I'll pass.
The real advantage is delegating the task of managing all this to something else, along with the responsibility. If you want what you are looking for, then as you say you need to take responsibility
Re:Newsflash: The companies don't give a damn... (Score:4, Insightful)
I still don't get why people think this "cloud" thing is a step forward
Two words: MEDIA HYPE
Re:Newsflash: The companies don't give a damn... (Score:4, Funny)
'... not Donner,...
In fact, they'll eat you alive!
anyone actually read the article ? (Score:4, Informative)
looks like none of the above actually read the article, its not asking for help as he has contacted support through the enterprise support option and all has been resolved, he's just saying on the free support it's taken google 3years to fix the issue.
to be fair to google, I wonder how many support calls from non paying customers they must get a day so probably from the work load 3 years is probably quite fast :-)
my only other comment would be, why has this made /. not exactly news worthy.
Re:anyone actually read the article ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite, with the free support they didn't fix the issue - they took a year to tell him he'd broken the Terms of Service, and then no reply as to why. Even then, when trialling the paid-for support, they still managed to bill him when they shouldn't have.
As for not being news-worthy, how else can people highlight these kinds of issues?!
Re:anyone actually read the article ? (Score:5, Funny)
Post it to the relevant mailing lists? Oh, wait..
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
to be fair to google, I wonder how many support calls from non paying customers they must get a day so probably from the work load 3 years is probably quite fast :-)
Oh, I don't know - 20,000? That'd be one every 4 seconds.
The EFF and (Score:2)
Private Legal Counsel.
3 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
As i read it: He was locked out, ignored it mostly for about 2.9 years and got it fixed within a few days. IMHO someone more determined would have been able to resolve the issue in very short time.
CU, Martin
Re:3 years? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
No support from Google (Score:4, Informative)
Google has no support for anything. Not Youtube, poor support for Android it seems, and rather poor support for the Google Groups also it seems. I wonder what else is not supported properly at Google.
You have been warned!
Re:No support from Google (Score:5, Interesting)
A few months ago I needed to contact Google UK over an unpaid fee for their use of a photograph. Even though they have an office with staff, they have made every effort to be invisible and uncontactable. If you do get hold of the office number, and call it, you are given a myriad of options. If you work your way through each option, they _all_ ultimately tell you to go to the Google web site and send an e-mail. There is no possible way to get put through to a human in any department. Google do not like talking to people.
ps. To add to your comment about poor support for Android: There are several critical errors in Google's sample code provided to Android developers. The errors have been pointed out, and fixes supplied, by kind-hearted developers who wanted to help others. Yet it is apparently too much effort for Google to update the sample code, meaning that every new developer coming to Android must struggle with the same problems.
Re:No support from Google (Score:4, Funny)
Google do not like talking to people.
Well, they do have a reputation as a company run by engineers.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
[citation needed]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything google. (Score:3, Insightful)
They will impose a stricter map-refreshs-per-hour policy and charge a fee(albeit small) for that Google Maps Key. Next thing, that small Web House Company that did sites for those real estate agents, Rental Car Companies, and Motels will have to pay a fee, and need to recoup that.
Put all your eggs in someone elses basket at your peril I say. At least with hosting you can have backups and pick up another provider if things turn to custard.
The real lesson (Score:3, Insightful)
So just make sure you always have a fallback email account. If your life really does revolve around being able to post to, or administer, a particular group of people then why not set up a secondary account with the same privileges? It's not that hard to do.
Now, if you'll just hang on a second I'll pop over to my alternate /. account and mod this up.
What are you complaining about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google does not owe you anything. When will people realize that? You outsource everything to Google, then complain when they lock you out. This is why one should avoid services like Googles, and it will be worse when they will try to convince you you should use some Web 2.0 computer operating system. In fact, this has nothing to do with computers - if you sleep, drink, eat and work at somebody elses property, don't expect to feel like home. It's sort of surprising (or maybe not!) to even encounter such questions on Slashdot - you actually expect everything to work fine, when you are but a mere invisible client to a benemoth that Google has become. If you want to be smart, rent your own domain name and website for 100$ a year, spend a week coding it (obviously if you can do PyChess, you should be able to do some PHP and databases), and tap yourself on your shoulder - you have just achieved independence from Google, and are now part of a distributed Internet model, instead of the ugly, error-prone, monopolized client-server system, where even contacting support is a reason for headache. Now, c'mon - WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? Google has millions of users, they have bold ambitions, but you cannot server the entire planet EFFICIENTLY with one corporation, no matter how large (bureaucracy takes over), you just can't. This was ought to happen, either to you or somebody else, and it will happen again, make no mistake about it.
Re:What are you complaining about? (Score:5, Informative)
I have a similar problem with gmail (Score:2)
On my gmail account, I get e-mail sent to another gmail account that is similar to my account name but 3 letters longer. Whenever I send mail to that account, it goes directly to me. The e-mail header information says it went to that account so I'm assuming (possibly incorrectly) that it isn't a simple forward rule. The real problem is that I can't e-mail the owner of the other account to get him to look into it because he doesn't get it or doesn't read it, and google definitely has NO place for me to re
Re:I have a similar problem with gmail (Score:4, Informative)
On my gmail account, I get e-mail sent to another gmail account that is similar to my account name but 3 letters longer. Whenever I send mail to that account, it goes directly to me.
This might not apply, just a shot in the dark, but the "3 letters longer" doesn't begin with + does it?
You can put "+whatever" after your gmail account name and the account will receive it. This feature permits tracking the source of spam and filtering out emails you don't wish to receive. (IE, "me+sd@gmail" arrives at "me@gmail")
Apparently you can also include periods anywhere in an email address and they are stripped out and delivered to the account. So "me@gmail" and "m.e@gmail" both go to the former.
If this is the case, the simplest solution is to filter those messages to trash.
What about a new account? (Score:2)
I'm sorry but this does not ring true for me at all.
1. It is highly unlikely that a http 403 raw is presented to the "authenticated" user. Especially from someone like Google. Even the most basic of web infrastructures intercept 400 series and 500 series http responses and present the user a "formated" page that is human readable. I recon the company that basically controls most of the internet content on the planet would probably do this as well.
2. Did it not ever occur to the "admin" to create a fake a
403 intelligence forbidden (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, if it was by accident, it never dawned on the guy to create a new user, then contact the admin and tell him his original user was blocked and ask why, if on purpose if by accident, could you fix it please....
Or he could have contacted the gmail support service (tied into newsgroups as well) to clarify why his emails were not getting there, and if this could be rectified. Contrary to many other companies, when you contact gmail service support, they actually can talk to other departments on your behalf seeing as most other services tie directly into your gmail account...
This happened to me -- only with Sun (Score:4, Interesting)
I had an open source project hosted on Kenai -- Sun's answer to Google Code and Git Hub. I was happily using it for mercurial, wiki, mailing lists, etc, ad nauseum.
Until one day I woke and could not.
Not only could I not push changes, I couldn't authenticate to the wiki, or the bug tracker either. I couldn't even create a new account, because every new account I created mysteriously didn't work either.
I sent an email into the support guys, and they looked into it.... eventually. It turns out Sun has some kind of "no fly list" and my name was on it. It turns out that I was also unable to access any other Sun services -- including Solaris patch updates on SunSolve.com!
So, I have to send an e-mail to Sun, and wait. And wait and wait and wait. Weeks go by, then months. I had to move my project, being unable to push to my public repo was killing me. Happy Google Code customer now.
Anyhow, finally months later, I get a message from Sun: "Whoops, sorry, we've turned you back on"
Like I'm going back.
Black lists are becoming more and more common. (Score:3, Interesting)
Google and Sun are far from being rare in the use of blacklist and cloaked censorship.
The nastier of such censorship techniques are those that are well cloaked in that the only thing you see is a lack of anything indicating you are actually being seen by others. There are message boards that seem to allow you to participate, posting messages etc. But in reality the only ones seeing what you are posting is you and maybe a few admins aware of the cloaked censorship. Some of these censored cloaks happen because some police or authorized (by who?) personal are to fat to get off their ass and actually do something meaningful and real, but instead try to justify their pay sitting behind a computer as a cyber sleuth.
And you thought spammers were bad. There are those who by authority promote spamming by suppressing what is not spam.
Imagine a patent troll applying such techniques so to take claim over something being done in the open, the illusion of in the open.
Imagine the prior art resources Google has in usenet archives that they can selective suppress.
One thing Google should do ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... is always let all disabled accounts access the help forum, unless and until those accounts specifically abuse the help forum. There should not be a need to create alternate accounts to do this.
They (and lots of other companies) should also tell people what specific term of service was violated (e.g. spamming vs. posting kiddie porn vs. uploading movies with someone else's copyright, etc, whatever the case may be). If it is necessary to kill all the lawyers to get this done, then that would be a good start.
Re:"No option to defend yourself"? (Score:5, Informative)
Why not create another account to let your users know what's going on, and to contact Google support staff?
Why not read the fine article and discover the he did just that and it didn't help?
Re:"No option to defend yourself"? (Score:5, Informative)
I have just read it, while he did create another account to let his group know what was going on. It really doesn't sound like he tried very hard to get in touch with Google for proper support, he just waited three years for an answer to fall into his lap.
He at one point complains that all the support pages linked into Groups so he couldn't access them, but he clearly could after creating his second account. The guy just sounds a bit lazy, the way he whines at the idea of moving to a different hosting/forum provider etc
Re:"No option to defend yourself"? (Score:4, Interesting)
The guy waited for 3 YEARS to get an account issue resolved. He waited. He sent a couple e-mails, browsed a few pages, asked on a couple forums and that's pretty much it. Hell, I would've spammed support via e-mail 3 times a day and would have called EVERYONE all the time, if that issue would have been oh-so-important.
If you don't get a reply to a support request, send another. And another. And another. Go everywhere and tell everyone what happened to you. In 3 years you can learn legal stuff and sue their asses just to get the problem fixed.
Seems to me that his group/mailing list is a very sluggish thing going on, and he really didn't care what was happening. In 3 YEARS you can do an amazing amount of stuff to get your problem resolved. The above poster is 100% right. That guy was simply not trying. End of story.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thankyou! I am guessing the guys who modded me "troll" are also of the lazy type who would prefer their problems to magically go away without them putting any effort into it!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And your lawyer's claim would have been what, exactly?
"They stopped giving me free stuff, without giving a good reason. It's ILLEGAL for them to not give me free stuff!"
Believe me, I've been there, and it sucks (my domain - predating Google - was once misclassified as a spam site by Google's search algorithm; the preferred/only method of resolving this is to know-a-guy who's facebook friends with Matt Cutts [google.com]), but I don't know any legal theory that entitles anyone to monetary damages for not letting you play
Re: (Score:2)
Why not create another account to let your users know what's going on, and to contact Google support staff?
Why not read the fine article and discover the he did just that and it didn't help?
Because now everybody else (and we're quite a lot) knows the answer without having to RTFA. (thus your informative mod)
For me it's one of the greater virtues of Slashdot. In a quick browse I can have the news and all the most obvious questions and additional info, answered and linked. I even think, from time to time, about submitting something to Slashdot just to get the base analysis.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just surprised how, after all his issues, the length of time with no response, and being billed in error, he still ends with:
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds a bit like Stockholm Syndrome.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes it did, the pychess google group continued to operate, he just didn't have administrative control over it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Stand outside a Google office with a sign for 10 mins outta do the trick!
Re: (Score:2)
Will google pay for travel and related costs? Ah, thought so.
Re: (Score:2)
Travel time, from my work to the Google office, about 10 mins. Travel time from my house when I was in London to the Google office about 20 mins. Travel time from most places I have worked to a Google engineering / sales office, less than 20 mins. It's not THAT much of a burden.
Just to follow your logic, when you go to your bank branch, do they pay you for travel and related costs? Ah, thought so.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Usenet died in September 1993. In fact, on Usenet it is always September 1993.