Access to nearly 20 years of emails, photos and docs gone in an instant.
It’s been particularly painful because she used Google to log in to everything too, including for health records that she needs.
There is no way of contacting anyone at Google about it and apparently nothing that can be done anyway. It’s absolutely devastating. They’re still charging her for Google One and she can’t even manage the subscription because she can’t log in.
I urge anyone reading this to do a Google Takeout request and make a local backup of all the data they hold.
If not directly through what is offered there, under the DSA (eu citizens and residents) have further ways to appeal their decision, and also Google takeout should be a last option even for banned accounts.
If you have any luck post a followup on HN to guide other users having a similar issue.
“”” Ask us to restore your account
If you own the account, you can request access to it again.
- Sign in to your Google Account on a browser, like Chrome. - Select Start Appeal. - Follow the instructions. “””
C’mon Google, if I could do step 1 then I wouldn’t be on this page.
I will absolutely post a guide if we can figure out a way out of this mess.
Appreciate you trying to help. I’ll do a bit more digging on that page and see if I can find anything.
Otherwise the DSA approach, with whatever that may entail process wise.
Of course there is: you pay your lawyer to send correspondence by registered mail.
Then you have them send followup correspondence a week or so later.
You will absolutely get a response.
What you do is send Google your own correspondence, certified mail, giving them a heads up that you've contacted the attorney general. That usually gets an even quicker response than from a personal lawyer :)
It also gives the attorney general office a heads up if they need to be scrutinizing a company like Google more carefully if they're getting a lot of complaints.
Situations like this are exactly what they're here for.
Flagged as a potential bot, gotta tread really carefully or they'll nuke my "normal" google account too.
(I'm aware domains can be stolen too, but I expect to have some leverage as I'm paying for that in the UK.)
I've been meaning to get back to tinkering with a Immich on a docker container, as a Google Photos competitor I can self-host.
Luckily I use a custom domain so accounts won't need to be updated, just emails exported and DNS changed.