total.pardo

Can’t Access Your Google Account? Tough Luck

fta:

“A company really shows its true colors when things go wrong, or when users need help,” he writes. “Google has shown that it simply doesn’t care.”

Some details from the Mibbit blog:

On Friday 31st October, I woke up, went to check my gmail, and couldn’t login. It just said “Account has been disabled”. No reason, nothing. I went through their ‘contact us’ form. It replies with an auto-responder stock e-mail listing irrelevant reasons. I e-mailed back, more auto-responders. I’ve since called their adwords support number, who keep saying “We’re looking into it”. 6 days is long enough to reinstate an account.

According to his own evidence gathering, somebody apparently gained access to Axod’s Google account and caused it to get disabled, all just for fun. Even if that’s all it was, a simple prank, Axod has his entire life wrapped up in that Google account — Gmail, a personal blog, AdWords and AdSense accounts, a calendar he shared with his wife. He has to reboot his online life and start over from scratch, which he is in the process of doing.

ol’pardo wised up, when will you?  have your whole life wrapped up in a “free” google account?  good luck to you.

stallman said it right – doing this is worse than stupidity. defense in depth is impossible when all your eggs are in one basket.  think about what a hacker has when they get into your google account:  email, chat and chat history, bookmarks, web history, search history, greader feeds, calendar, google docs – the list only gets worse.  this is all obtained with one password.  one.  feeling great about your choices now?

encryption and nonstandard is the way to go.  there are many paid services out there which support SSL and have other features like one time passwords which can be used to keep your account secure.  running an email server in a CoLo or on your own may be a good option for the very paranoid.

i’d rather pay for an account that can be recovered than go at it for free or ad supported with absolutely ZERO support.

once again, gmail users…best of luck to you.  keep following the wisdom of the cloud and you will be pwned.  eventually. guaranteed.