Google Bans all associated accounts

17 points by edzorg ↗ HN
https://play.google.com/about/ip-impersonation/impersonation

If Google perceives something about your app is misleading to users, it will ban your company developer account, and all associated personal developer accounts. Presumably, all accounts associated to them too.

It will ban your accounts based on their perception of an infraction, and it will do so without any consultation or explanation beyond pointing at their Developer Policy and 404ing "terms" - https://www.android.com/market/terms.html

There appears to be zero recourse from this, as at this point the developer is unable to make amends to the app listing.

Has anyone ever come back from this? Why is this policy so heavy-handed? What if Google/a-claimant was wrong in their initial objection to the perceived "impersonation"?

4 comments

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The section titled "Enforcement Process" is more specific about the consequences being proportional to the developer's misdeeds:

> Repeated or serious violations (such as malware, fraud, and apps that may cause user or device harm)[...]

https://play.google.com/about/enforcement/enforcement-proces...

I don't know what else one would expect? I also reserve the right to stop doing business with any business that tries to defraud or harm me (or anyone else).

These are standard terms for any low-barrier-of-entry partnership arrangement. And the only people that really care are the scammers that just got found out. (c. f. the Dash.app saga)

In my case there were 0 warnings, trading successfully then woke up the next morning to a completely terminated account with no response from the dispute process despite the initial party reporting the claim realising they were wrong and providing written evidence to Google that the ban should be recended