This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer services for anything important. They're almost always operating on terms that make individual users irrelevant to them, and when they do something you have no recourse no matter how egregious their actions. Only depend on something when you have a contract in writing with signatures and everything and you're paying for the service (without payment a court's liable to rule that there wasn't a contract). And read the contract before you sign, because a contract with no enforceable penalties will, when the other party breaks it, leave you getting to keep the pieces.
in the last couple years you cannot do things on unrelated sites without authenticating with facebook, twitter, or google. Since I consider facebook the shedevil, I have always had to rely on my google login in order to setup certain things. For example, albeit on iOS, I have to authenticate with google in order to access remote control of an AmpliFi home router, they simply did not code any other authentication methods into it. If you leverage yourself to the be authority on single-sign-on, then blacklisti
You are presuming that they actually violated the terms of service. Since Google declined to state HOW they did so, I tend to doubt that they actually did.
It really doesnt matter. There are certain rights you cannot sign away, no matter what term of service you agree to. The more suspension gets to the point you cannot even pay bills, or conduct business, the more these companies need to have their freedoms stolen from them commensurate to what they did. Lock their back accounts. All of them. Lets see how google does when all their accounts are locked down for 75 days. Lets see them make payroll. Lets see how well their employees defend their dictators when t
"There are certain rights you cannot sign away, no matter what term of service you agree to."
Yes, there are. But if you aren't paying for the service, then any kind of denial of that service aren't among them. You can't sign yourself into slavery, but arbitrary denial of access for something you aren't paying for? Yeah, they can do that.
and when you cannot login to something that IS NOT Google? Like your home router, or your online shopping, or any other service specifically NOT google, that uses google authentication instead of maintaining their own user database? What happens when your bank decides to use Facebook authentication and 2FA to log into your bank account? You show up in person and they tell you "I'm sorry but unless you can get another Facebook account, or get Facebook to reinstate you, we cannot help you", what happens then?
So, I have to ask, is there anybody providing a service for a fee that is locking themselves into Google or Facebook or the like for authentication without providing any other way to authenticate? Everyone I've ever seen may give you a Google or Facebook login you can use if you want, but they all provide their own login/password mechanism as well. Can you name a bank that is actually locking its clients into using Facebook? I am willing to admit that if someone has, it's not impossible that I just would
My only remote access into my Amplifi router off net is using google, there was no other option. My only access on my kids chromebooks is using google. Authenticator apps for 2FA (which banks DO use) are bound to your mobile device. If they delete everything google, there goes your phone and everything 2FA. Even the MS authenticator app to access your office365 is bound to your phone for 2FA. Losing your phone or access to your phone is like stealing someones horse in the 1800s. It deprives them of practica
My ex-girlfriend hacked into my account via a FB login and uploaded 1 video and Vimeo completely erased my account and gave me no recourse. I woke up to find it all destroyed.
Just becuase you’re paying doesn’t mean they won’t summarily destroy your life’s work without notice or recourse.
This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer services for anything important. They're almost always operating on terms that make individual users irrelevant to them, and when they do something you have no recourse no matter how egregious their actions. Only depend on something when you have a contract in writing with signatures and everything and you're paying for the service (without payment a court's liable to rule that there wasn't a contract). And read the contract before you sign, because a contract with no enforceable penalties will, when the other party breaks it, leave you getting to keep the pieces.
If Congressional lawmakers cannot even get social media to behave, exactly what makes you think getting an invoice every month, is going to matter? Take a million-dollar Google customer and a dozen lawyers. Against a Too Big To Fail Mega-Corp? You'll still lose. And you know it.
Take the free beer if you want or need to. Just know that they can stop serving anytime, and there's not really a damn thing you can do about it, except #BM (Backups Matter). All that "contract" stuff you spoke of was enforceab
Being a paying customer of Google is not as big of an improvement as you think.
I work for a small company with under 1000 GSuite Enterprise licensed accounts. One of these accounts was suspended without warning a few months ago. Google support, when contacted, said the suspension is the warning, since the account could still be reactivated.
This was one of our main customer service mailboxes, which handles sending and receiving hundreds of customer inquiries daily.
Google support also claimed that it was due to a high number of messages from the account reported as spam. There is no built in admin tool (or API) for viewing how many messages are reported as spam, but they did offer access to an additional reporting tool. We set this up hoping to see the actual number of spam reports so we could monitor. The reports showed the count of reported spam from that email address over the previous 6 months was zero.
We still have no idea why the account was suspended.
To be honest that sounds like a big improvement. Your anecdote ended with you getting it reactivated and at least some help but no clearly valid explanation. The anecdote in the story and some others are about an irrevocable lockout with basically no recourse. Sounds night-and-day different to me.
This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer services for anything important.
Because of anecdotes? Google has 1.8 billion accounts. Even if there were 100x more people having problems than I've heard of it still makes it overwhelmingly more reliable than what most people can come up with themselves.
I absolutely trust Google for important things. I have a secondary backup as well, but the whole "I know someone who had a problem so they can't be trusted" is just the triumph of an anecdote over data and an acknowledgement that we make utterly stupid choices based on FUD.
I think moving to payment based services is a good thing, but with respect to "free to use" services, the idea that you are giving them nothing of value because you aren't paying them cash is just wrong.
You give them something they find valuable, sure. But courts traditionally don't count that as "consideration" when it comes to contracts, and you can't count on the court you're in going against precedent.
This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer services for anything important. They're almost always operating on terms that make individual users irrelevant to them, and when they do something you have no recourse no matter how egregious their actions. Only depend on something when you have a contract in writing with signatures and everything and you're paying for the service (without payment a court's liable to rule that there wasn't a contract). And read the contract before you sign, because a contract with no enforceable penalties will, when the other party breaks it, leave you getting to keep the pieces.
Re: (Score:3)
in the last couple years you cannot do things on unrelated sites without authenticating with facebook, twitter, or google. Since I consider facebook the shedevil, I have always had to rely on my google login in order to setup certain things. For example, albeit on iOS, I have to authenticate with google in order to access remote control of an AmpliFi home router, they simply did not code any other authentication methods into it. If you leverage yourself to the be authority on single-sign-on, then blacklisti
Re: (Score:2)
You are presuming that they actually violated the terms of service. Since Google declined to state HOW they did so, I tend to doubt that they actually did.
Re: This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer (Score:2)
It really doesnt matter. There are certain rights you cannot sign away, no matter what term of service you agree to. The more suspension gets to the point you cannot even pay bills, or conduct business, the more these companies need to have their freedoms stolen from them commensurate to what they did. Lock their back accounts. All of them. Lets see how google does when all their accounts are locked down for 75 days. Lets see them make payroll. Lets see how well their employees defend their dictators when t
Re: (Score:2)
"There are certain rights you cannot sign away, no matter what term of service you agree to."
Yes, there are. But if you aren't paying for the service, then any kind of denial of that service aren't among them. You can't sign yourself into slavery, but arbitrary denial of access for something you aren't paying for? Yeah, they can do that.
Re: (Score:3)
and when you cannot login to something that IS NOT Google? Like your home router, or your online shopping, or any other service specifically NOT google, that uses google authentication instead of maintaining their own user database? What happens when your bank decides to use Facebook authentication and 2FA to log into your bank account? You show up in person and they tell you "I'm sorry but unless you can get another Facebook account, or get Facebook to reinstate you, we cannot help you", what happens then?
Re: (Score:2)
So, I have to ask, is there anybody providing a service for a fee that is locking themselves into Google or Facebook or the like for authentication without providing any other way to authenticate? Everyone I've ever seen may give you a Google or Facebook login you can use if you want, but they all provide their own login/password mechanism as well. Can you name a bank that is actually locking its clients into using Facebook? I am willing to admit that if someone has, it's not impossible that I just would
Re: This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer (Score:2)
My only remote access into my Amplifi router off net is using google, there was no other option. My only access on my kids chromebooks is using google. Authenticator apps for 2FA (which banks DO use) are bound to your mobile device. If they delete everything google, there goes your phone and everything 2FA. Even the MS authenticator app to access your office365 is bound to your phone for 2FA. Losing your phone or access to your phone is like stealing someones horse in the 1800s. It deprives them of practica
Re: (Score:1)
I was paying $60/year for Vimeo Plus.
My ex-girlfriend hacked into my account via a FB login and uploaded 1 video and Vimeo completely erased my account and gave me no recourse. I woke up to find it all destroyed.
Just becuase you’re paying doesn’t mean they won’t summarily destroy your life’s work without notice or recourse.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer services for anything important. They're almost always operating on terms that make individual users irrelevant to them, and when they do something you have no recourse no matter how egregious their actions. Only depend on something when you have a contract in writing with signatures and everything and you're paying for the service (without payment a court's liable to rule that there wasn't a contract). And read the contract before you sign, because a contract with no enforceable penalties will, when the other party breaks it, leave you getting to keep the pieces.
If Congressional lawmakers cannot even get social media to behave, exactly what makes you think getting an invoice every month, is going to matter? Take a million-dollar Google customer and a dozen lawyers. Against a Too Big To Fail Mega-Corp? You'll still lose. And you know it.
Take the free beer if you want or need to. Just know that they can stop serving anytime, and there's not really a damn thing you can do about it, except #BM (Backups Matter). All that "contract" stuff you spoke of was enforceab
Re:This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a paying customer of Google is not as big of an improvement as you think.
I work for a small company with under 1000 GSuite Enterprise licensed accounts. One of these accounts was suspended without warning a few months ago. Google support, when contacted, said the suspension is the warning, since the account could still be reactivated.
This was one of our main customer service mailboxes, which handles sending and receiving hundreds of customer inquiries daily.
Google support also claimed that it was due to a high number of messages from the account reported as spam. There is no built in admin tool (or API) for viewing how many messages are reported as spam, but they did offer access to an additional reporting tool. We set this up hoping to see the actual number of spam reports so we could monitor. The reports showed the count of reported spam from that email address over the previous 6 months was zero.
We still have no idea why the account was suspended.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is why you don't trust free-as-in-beer services for anything important.
Because of anecdotes? Google has 1.8 billion accounts. Even if there were 100x more people having problems than I've heard of it still makes it overwhelmingly more reliable than what most people can come up with themselves.
I absolutely trust Google for important things. I have a secondary backup as well, but the whole "I know someone who had a problem so they can't be trusted" is just the triumph of an anecdote over data and an acknowledgement that we make utterly stupid choices based on FUD.
Re: (Score:2)
I think moving to payment based services is a good thing, but with respect to "free to use" services, the idea that you are giving them nothing of value because you aren't paying them cash is just wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
You give them something they find valuable, sure. But courts traditionally don't count that as "consideration" when it comes to contracts, and you can't count on the court you're in going against precedent.