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Google just deleted my personal account out of the blue

42 points by goldenkey ↗ HN
Recently Dennis Cooper had his blog and associated account deleted by Google without much recourse or reason provided:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757

Coincidently, I just received two emails from Google telling me my entire account is suspended and about to be deleted as well. I can appeal but without knowing the reason, it's pretty hard to argue anything except, I didn't do anything wrong!

I've uploaded a picture album of the suspension/appeal emails here:

http://imgur.com/a/ARrLP

I wonder if other HNers are also getting suspension/deletion out of the blue, if so definitely let us know. I use my account mainly for email, I have absolutely no porn in my email, and pretty much just email family and get tech related subscriptions, social related notifications. It's all super tame, so I'm at a loss. I really hate to say it, but Dennis Cooper might have been right, I feel like the rug has been pulled from under me. "Only when they come for you, do you realize haste was a virtue."

Is Google on a (possibly automated) account deletion spree?

12 comments

[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 26.6 ms ] thread
spacenerf
Possibly so: happened to me few days ago. Account suspended for apparent (unspecified) terms of service violation. Followed the link provided to appeal- said I have no idea why they've suspended me. Account reinstated without explanation.
goldenkey
Wow, this is getting pretty bizarre. Just a small bit of anecdotal evidence so far but I'm wondering if Google made a mistake with many of these suspensions including Dennis Coopers' but they are missing a backup of Coopers' so they are just opting to say nothing, to avoid self-implication. It'll be interesting to see how this one turns out.
boksiora
missing a backup? i don't think google ever really deletes anything from their servers... even if you request deletion, they will still keep your data
smt88
Dennis Cooper was apparently publishing stories with content including pedophilia, incest, and necrophilia. I'm not sure you and he are in the same boat. Also, 2 (that you know of) out of more than 1 billion users is far from a suspension spree, especially when 1 of those 2 people was publishing something that would be embarrassing to Google.
goldenkey
Usually Google Site/Blog posts do not stay up for long if they are reported. It seems really uncharacteristic for Google to delete his blog out of the blue instead of after a history of post flagging/deletion and constant battling with allowed content. Was there a history of constant skirting of allowed content and a leadup to the deletion? From what I've read about the incident, there was none. Which leads me to believe that this all might be a mishap by an automatic heuristic-checking script. You bring up a good point though, Google has many many users, over a billion - so we do have to consider all these angles and collect more information about recent suspensions/deletions before we decide if there's' a cover-up of negligence. Based on the timing though, I can't shake an uncanny feeling.
lumberjack
My guess is, your account got automatically flagged for whatever reason.
uuoc
And now you understand that you are not google's customer. You are their product, and they only tolerate you for as long as they can sell your attention to their advertisers for a profit.

Next time, host it yourself, on hardware you own, and you won't receive a letter telling you that all your material is about to be deleted.

sfrailsdev
This is one reason I recently bought a larger backup drive.
Raed667
Try contacting the people at "online censorship"[0] they might be able to help.

[0] : https://onlinecensorship.org/

goldenkey
Thanks but the account doesn't mean much to me. I'm just concerned about the big picture.
Raed667
Sure. I agree that the attitude and the support of Google (Facebook, and Twitter as well) is becoming problematic.

I'm leaving the link here incase someone needs it.

WhatIsThisIm12
Happened to me. I posted about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880008

It's a relatively new personal account I created to be "clean" of google tracking. The night before I had been in a youtube chat of a donald trump rally and may or may not have been "spamming" posting memes too quickly. Could be that.

I had the account reinstated quickly after sending them an email like wtf?