I will try to avoid turning this post to a rant…
About 5 hours ago i checked my gmail account and everything seemed just fine…
After a while i tried to access it again and i got this spooky message:
Sorry you account has been disabled.
Obviously i have not done anything out of the ordinary with my gmail account the last few days… I read a few stuff online and there are stories like “i took back my account in a few days” to “wtf? they are not giving back my account!!”.
I did what the help pages of google encourage me to do… nothing helped… so i filled the forms in order to report the problem and see what happens…
Has anyone faced anything like that?
Its God Damn spooky to find out that your basic email is not functional….
And AS WE SPEAK i just received this email:
—————————————————————————–
Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at
this time. We’ve disabled access to this account for your security. Please
note that disabling protects your account from further abuse. If you used
orkut with this account, we’ve deleted the orkut profile. At Google we
take the privacy and security of our users very seriously. For this
reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information about this account.
If you have additional information about your account, we encourage you to
visit http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?ara=1 and
submit another report. Be sure to provide as much information as possible
about the account. If you’re not sure about something, provide your best
guess.
Note: if you use AdWords, AdSense, or Google Checkout with your
account, please contact AdWords, AdSense or Checkout support directly
at these URLs:
AdWords:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=45086&topic=7033
AdSense:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?hl=en&ctx=accounts_hc&contact_type=adsense&submit=Continue
Checkout:
http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=29076
—————————————————————————–
WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!
disabling an email account with out even contact me in my secondary mail account?! Seriously WHAT THE FUCK?!
UPDATE
After the first sock i said, what the heck i will complete the “disabled account” form again. And so i did. After a while i received the bellow email:
—————————————————————————–
Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation and we’re
re-enabling your access to this account. We’ve changed the alternate email
address to ******@ecs.soton.ac.uk. To sign in, you’ll need to reset your
password by visiting this link:
https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd
Once you’ve reset your password, please sign in and select a new security
question. (Note: keep in mind that we’ve removed the existing security
question from your account.) To do so, follow these steps:
1. Visit https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount
2. Sign in with your username and newly reset password.
2. Under ‘Personal information,’ click ‘Change security question.’
3. Enter your password, select a new security question and answer, and
click ‘Save.’
For tips on how to create a secure password, please see
http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=32040. For
information on selecting a good security question, see
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=29414
We also suggest you check to make sure that the personal name on your
account is correct. To do so, follow the instructions at
http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=27442
We look forward to having you as a Google Accounts user again.
Regards,
The Google Team
—————————————————————————–
And everything went just fine…
I’vgot my gmail account back and everything works just fine. I don’t know if my first email was ignored or the google stuff that handled my issue was too bored to do something… I don’t know how this stuff work in google… What i know is that i did not received any kind of notification about my “disabled account”. Thanks google for respecting your clients. When i replied to their last email saying that my got my account back i also ask them what was the reason of all that hustle. If the ever reply i will post their response.
oh, yes of course… gmail is still in beta version…
*UPDATE* 25/09/08
The last email i received from google team was this:
Hello,
Thank you for your report.
Google takes abuse situations like this very seriously. We apologize for
what you’ve experienced in this regard.
If you’ve already tried to reset your password, and you’re still unable to
access your Google Account, please report your issue:
https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?contact_type=ara&ctx=accounts
Provide as much information as you can; if you’re not sure about
something, tell us whatever you think might be helpful.
Please note that we don’t need your personal information, and we encourage
you to keep such information closely guarded.
Upon receiving your report, we’ll investigate and report back to you as
soon as possible.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
Lets hope we will find out the reason of this hustle…
Maybe we should reconsider our over-reliance on google and its services.
Just imagine, what if google decided to block your account on docs, gmail and picasa? You would lose all your spreadsheets/documents, e-mails and photos. Simple as that!
saperduper this is the thing, google blocked not just my gmail but my hole account!! so i couldn’t access anything…
i’m only using gmail from google so i wasn’t concerned about other stuff but while i was searching online about the problem that occurred i was reading about people that had practically all their life in their google accounts…
spooky…
this over-reliance sucks indeed… i had never thought about doing a back up in my gmail… never thought that something might go wrong with it…
the last email i received from them said among other stuff :
“Upon receiving your report, we’ll investigate and report back to you as
soon as possible.”
lets see if they will reply….
Their reply will be interesting.
Keep us informed! ;)
Can you backup your gmail?
you can, haven’t looked how yet though!
piece of cake!
just a google search away
The same thing has happened to me. My adsense ads are still running on my sites but I can’t get into my e-mail and have just got the standard e-mail and cannot find a way to get further answers.
I don’t know what I’ve supposed to have done wrong. But this sucks. I have had the account for around 5 years..
I have recently opened a wordpress blog account and will be moving most of my stuff over there. Because I lost my adsense account for no reason two years ago and had it reinstated. So there’s no way I am going to rely on google from now on, as they send little or no information or explanation.
Derek