'Dumped! by Google' and making a good fist of it

BANGALORE, INDIA: A San Francisco-based writer's painful experience on how her Google account was disabled, before she could manage to regain access, has set the blogosphere on fire going viral.

Tienlon Ho took to The Last Word On Nothing, a science blog, on Monday and narrated her ordeal in detail after agonizing detail, which, in no time, became the most visited entry ever on the science blog.

"One recent Thursday morning, I logged into my email and made an alarming discovery. Instead of opening my inbox, Google directed me to a notice:

Account has been disabled . . . . In most cases, accounts are disabled if we believe you have violated either the Google Terms of Service, product-specific Terms of Service . . . . or product-specific policies . . . . it might be possible to regain access to your account."

Thus started her woes, which she explains under the title, Dumped! By Google.

"It was like I'd gotten dumped, via text message, by someone en route to Cabo. The vagaries left me reeling. I read the terms and policies, but they offered few clues. There were no numbers to call, no tickets to request help. I had a real problem with how things ended, so I filled out a form and sent it into the ether. What exactly had I done wrong? Had I missed the warning signs? Did Google want me or not?"

Ho goes on to admit that she then realized that, like most of us, she had grown so dependent on Google that she couldn't finish work or taxes, because her notes and expenses were stored on Google Drive, and that she didn't know what else she should work on as her Google calendar had disappeared.

"I couldn't publicly gripe about what I was going through, because my Blogger no longer existed. My Picasa albums were gone. I'd lost my contacts and calling plan through Google Voice; otherwise I would have called friends to cry."

Another realization also dawned upon her during the tough phase, which made no bones about the fact that Google exercises its own discretion, when it comes to disabling accounts or the like.

"In the same notice informing me that it had disabled my account, Google told me for the first time that it reserves the right to 'terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice'. In its Terms of Service, Google limits its total liability for stolen data, lost data, anything, 'TO THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US TO USE THE SERVICES' (yes, in all caps), which could mean as much as the $2.49 per month you shelled out for 25GB more storage or in my case, nothing."

Ho, however, got back access to her Google account after six days of 'Google-less existence'. "By Monday, a Googler filed the right internal escalation paperwork on my behalf and on Tuesday morning, six days after I lost access to my account, relayed that it had been restored."

And this is how she lost it in the first place: "My data was intact save for the last thing I'd worked on-a spreadsheet containing a client's account numbers and passwords. It seems that Google's engineers determined this single document violated policy and locked down my entire account. My request to get that document back is still pending."

Ho's narrative account has led to several questions on the forum by other users on how safe personal documents are on Google's cloud platform, Drive and whether data security is compromised in any way, so that they can look at alternative options.