Monday October 27
 
00:36
 
Google Power

From Millionaire Mommy Next Door:

The unthinkable happened. My entire Google account was disabled. This means my blog, my email account, my calendar… the whole shebang… are gone.

I have followed all of the available instructions, filled out all of the forms… and all I get back from Google is this automated message: “Thank you for your report. The account in question is disabled, and we can’t provide you with access to it.” I have no idea why. I haven’t violated any of the terms of agreements, so I’m guessing that someone hacked into my account.

A similar thing happened to me a few months ago. I set up pop access on my gmail account and set my mail app to download all my gmail by pop – the idea being to backup everything.

A few hours later Google blocked my account and I couldnt get access to it for several days. There was no warning and they didn’t respond to any support. I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t do – they provided pop access and all I was doing was using it.

When you come to rely on the services that Google provide, it’s very frustrating when access gets blocked, and even more frustrating when you realise that there is nothing that you can do about it.

I learnt from that experience. I’m still using Gmail – but I now have the email automatically backed up to a second account and calendar sync’d with iCal, which I export to a file periodically. My blogs – all on my own domain – automatically backup to my Mac every night.