Google account deleted after 2 hours of Aurora

https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/13td3iq/google_account_deleted_after_2_hours_of_aurora/

by t0bia_s • 3 years ago

146 110 3 years ago

old.reddit.com

tshanmu• 3 years ago

What is aurora?

sashk• 3 years ago

From the reddit thread:

A frontend to google play store

aftbit• 3 years ago

An alternative to Google Play Store for Android users who want to access the normal app ecosystem without running Google Play Services or other Google binaries on their phones. It violates Google's TOS.

madeofpalk5• 3 years ago

I presume it requires you to log in with your Google username and password, and not via oauth?

karmasimida• 3 years ago

Then why it requires you to login Google

GeekyBear2• 3 years ago

A way to install Android apps without giving Google a massive amount of control over your device.

iLoveOncall• 3 years ago

Your device running Android, the OS created by Google, right?

2h4• 3 years ago

If it helps I have a tool for downloading apps. It downloads directly from Google Play:

https://github.com/4cq2/googleplay

jeroenhd• 3 years ago

Risky, putting an @gmail.com address in the README for a tool violating the Google ToS.

Have you ever had to deal with bans because of this tool?

fpgaminer• 3 years ago

It's not their real address. They rotate through a list of their enemy's gmail addresses to get them all banned. /s

2h4• 3 years ago

thank you for the valuable feedback.

madeofpalk5• 3 years ago

How do you commit with those messages? Does your IDE automatically commit on each file change?

2h4• 3 years ago

just laziness - I usually do `git commit -v`

Z7YCx5ieof4Std• 3 years ago

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never store important things like your email/passwords/passkeys on google

CharlesW• 3 years ago

Also, do not use your main Google account to violate Google's Terms of Service.

ocdtrekkie3• 3 years ago

You are assuming a lot if you think Google won't action "related" or "nearby" Google accounts.

labster• 3 years ago

This is why I will never pay for YouTube Premium. Imagine having a recurring charge that you can’t terminate because your account was deleted for some unrelated service, and you have no phone number or office to contact.

Limit your interactions with Google to only the services you most need, and you will probably be safe. It’s too dangerous to go all-in on Google, because you could lose your entire digital footprint from an AI bot with no recourse other than HN and Twitter.

CydeWeys2• 3 years ago

I don't think your hypothetical scenario is possible.

madeofpalk5• 3 years ago

Imagine having a recurring charge that you can’t terminate because your account was deleted for some unrelated service

Has this actually happened - does Youtube Premium still charge for accounts that have been terminated? Or is this just FUD?

suddenclarity2• 3 years ago

You can always block your card. Takes a few days to get a new one and might be a bit of a hassle to update PayPal and other services where you have it stored. Not ideal but I don't think anyone should lose sleep over it.

filleduchaos4• 3 years ago

Do you not have a bank? Why would you be unable to terminate a recurring charge on any payment method you actually own?

Obscurity4340• 3 years ago

Also there's several apps on various platforms that are more private and free

crazygringo2• 3 years ago

No, ladies and gentlement, that has nothing to do with that.

The post is about a "disposable" Google account created two hours prior and all it did was break Google TOS. This is totally predictable protection from account abuse. Pretty much any major consumer company will ban brand-new accounts that immediately proceed to break TOS.

I don't know what Google does with a longstanding account that breaks TOS in this way, but this is not that. Also you should be using Google Takeout to backup your account data regularly anyways -- that's what it's there for.

esperent2• 3 years ago

Let's not make excuses for Google here. A few months ago I created a Gmail account for a new business - since I hadn't registered the domain yet, I planned on using the Gmail account for a while then switching over to the real email. Over the next few days I signed up for a bunch of other stuff with the account: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. I also registered the real, verifiable business address on Google Maps and requested a postcard verification to that address (which never arrived).

That's literally all I did with the account over a span of two or three days. Then I took a long weekend hiking trip. Came back, the account is permanently locked. No way to contact support. Just a tiny comment box where I could plead my case, which I never got a response to.

I was able to get back control of the FB, IG, Twitter accounts quite easily. It took me weeks of wrangling with Google support to get back control of the Google Maps location, and I was never able to unlock the original account. I had to do this whole messy process (as directed by them) of registering the business on Maps a second time then declaring the old one as a duplicate, then waiting two weeks for Google to process (ignore) that so I could escalate it to real human, then they fixed it but mangled the name which took another week or two to fix.

So yeah, don't use Gmail for anything you care about is my advice.

I can see why my actions on that account could falsely trigger the account to lock, that's not the issue. The issue is that there was literally no way to ever unlock the account once the false trigger happened. All they had to do was require a phone call with a real human in this case. But no, it's Google.

hedora5• 3 years ago

Is there a service that will import google takeout backups and produce a working account with minimal data loss?

29083011397778• 3 years ago

I don't know what Google does with a longstanding account that breaks TOS in this way

Pretty much nothing. I've had my main account for... 15 years or so? I moved away from Google several years ago [0], and use the account almost exclusively for the Aurora store now. It's been fine, and has been for somewhere between months and years.

[0] If I'm wrong, or Google becomes more aggressive, then nothing major is lost. I've gone through Takeout, stopped adding photos/email/passwords/etc years ago, and completely migrated away. No need to tell me "But what if the account gets banned?", because nothing of value will be lost.

tjoff• 3 years ago

Breaks TOS how? (I don't know what aurora is more than it appears to be an app store)

replygirl2• 3 years ago

This was predicted in the issues and probably should have gone straight into the readme and website: https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore/-/issues/912#note_1...

smnrg• 3 years ago

It may help to just use Obtainium to download/track from APKPure and APKMirror. It’s open source and can also get binaries straight from sources like GitHub and GitLab—or even F-Droid, IzzyOnDroid, Mullvad, Signal, Steam, Telegram, VLC, Neutron.

https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium

2h4• 3 years ago

only works for Open-Source Apps

commoner2• 3 years ago

Not quite, Obtainium supports APKMirror (update tracking only) and APKPure, both of which primarily host proprietary apps.

adhesive_wombat2• 3 years ago

In general, how trustworthy are APK sites like ApkPure?

j16sdiz• 3 years ago

ApkMirror have a very good track record. They depends on user upload and verify the signatures with the official version.

dingledork692• 3 years ago

I've grabbed them in the past for decompiling games and never encountered anything odd. The ads on the website are horrendous though, which I figured was their main source of revenue.

ForestCritter• 3 years ago

I haven't had a google acount for a few years now and I have needed apps for my work. I have been able to find them on APKpure and run them on my phone without google play services. some of them will warn you that they may not run correctly but they always have for me with the exception of Workday which loads but won't let me sign in without play services.

EscapeFromNY3• 3 years ago

I've always been skeptical of those APK sites. I'm not sure if this exists, but it would be useful if someone were keeping track of sha256 hashes of the official APK downloads from Google Play. I'd feel a lot safer if I could verify the files weren't tampered with.

Andrex• 3 years ago

From the most recent comments, it seems like this is resolved and it also had nothing to do with Google?

FridayoLeary• 3 years ago

They are weaponising their Account service to protect profits from playstore and Android. Does this not run afoul of any laws?

solarkraft• 3 years ago

This is why I'd rather use third party APK websites (apkmirror appears to be affiliated with xda) than log into Aurora with my account.

flas9sd• 3 years ago

Android APK security model is pretty apt for using mirrors - what you need is a trusted directory of known-good mapping of appid to signing developer key fingerprint to cover for trust on first use when installing - plus handling key revocation.

Mirrors publish the fingerprints, but it's unclear what verification they applied. Looking at history won't cover revocation, but it's already something. Certificate transparency logs could handle apks instead of domains too.

I understand the appeal of Aurora and similar - you let Google handle search, malware takedown and download traffic, but then you're also up to be cut off at no notice.

adhesive_wombat2• 3 years ago

Man, I so need to get my email changed over to a custom domain so I'm not vulnerable to an account deletion.

yawnxyz• 3 years ago

For those who don't want to host their own email, but want need a non-Google (and non-Hotmail ahem) account for password recovery and problems like getting perma-banned from Google: what should we use? Happy to pay a small amount.

I heard Fastmail is good?

replygirl2• 3 years ago

all my friends off google swear by proton

barbazoo• 3 years ago

Fastmail is solid.

EscapeFromNY3• 3 years ago

Happy Fastmail customer here.

californical• 3 years ago

I’ve been using Fastmail and it’s fantastic. Their customer support is top quality if you need help, but I basically never think about it. I use Fastmail and it just works with no effort, so I love it.

asimops• 3 years ago

Personally i am really happy with mailbox.org German provider that tries to be a gsuite replacement. I cannot know challenges that come from non eu payments, but it is a prepaid model.

Semaphor• 3 years ago

I'll also agree with fastmail. In addition to great support (which I only needed once in many years), their interface is also much much faster than "how about 5gb of badly written JS"-gmail (yes, a bit of hyperbole, but Gmail is slow compared to fastmail)

Lexarius• 3 years ago

I've got protonmail connected to a personal domain (in case I ever want to switch providers and keep my address), works fairly well.

cssanchez• 3 years ago

Zoho has a great free tier email hosting with custom domain and the cheapest paying tier I’ve found. Been using it for years without a problem. The first paying tier allows for IMAP/POP, while the free tier only allows webmail access.

teetertater• 3 years ago

Have you found a way to create a new zoho mail without "seeding" it with a third party email at the start?

My workflow for any new project is to create an outlook account and use it to open a zoho one, then never touch the outlook again

voussoir• 3 years ago

I've been using purelymail.com since July 2021 with no problems. My monthly cost is around $0.40.

hedora5• 3 years ago

Fastmail is great (I use them), but there are a dozen other options for simple use cases.

Apple might be good for root ID management for non-experts, since you can generally walk into a store and ask a knowledgeable human for help in person.

I’m not sure how often they incorrectly permaban users or initiate uncancellable credit card transactions though. I haven’t heard of any cases where that happened (unlike google).

qingcharles• 3 years ago

Been using Fastmail for almost 20 years I think. One of the best companies on the Internet. I never have to stress about my account with them and their support has always been great to me.

i2cmaster• 3 years ago

I managed to log into the mail account I had when I set up gmail.

Their AI arbitrarily decided that still wasn't good enough and that was the end of the gmail account I had since I was 13 (yes, I got one of the early invites.) I'm absolutely never doing anything important on a Google service ever again. It doesn't matter if you set stuff like that up.

IG_Semmelweiss• 3 years ago

I used originally migrated to paid protonmail personal, for a while. Then i upgraded to enterprise to try out/demo out my usecase. Big mistake. I couldnt undo it. Finally waa able to.migrate to fastmail.

Proton drawbacks: - NO autofwd emails - expensive - customer support is below avg

Fastmaul drawbacks: - NO multidimensional hierarchy (NO folders+ labels allowed)

badrabbit2• 3 years ago

You know whom I don't have to fight tooth and nail with? Apple. Yeah, shit, but not openly hostile against me.

It feels like breaking up with an abusive ex when I discarded all things google.so much hostility and drama.

My iPhone is good enough to use the 3 apps I want without any drama. With Google they always do some shady shit and I was like "oh well, this is the best I can do".

Can't wait till i stop using smartphones entirely.

fjkccbkkj• 3 years ago

They way all consumer OSes are moving.... Do you think the next thing will be any better?!?

pierat• 3 years ago

Most linuxes (minus Ubuntu) are already user friendly.

The only time I had to fight with my Linux computer was de-SNAP-ing it cause it would do forced updates and unstoppable growls. And fuck emulating Windows.

badrabbit2• 3 years ago

I have no idea but at least I have good hardware/software for now. My opinion is, vendor locked in architectures like android or iOS are like the proprietary Unixes of the 80s and 90s and need to die.

api• 3 years ago

Apple seems to have entered a phase where they are mostly just quietly decent. They have some bad things like iCloud and some good things like their hardware (mostly), but agree that they are not hostile to their users and don’t seem to be breaking their stuff too badly.

Hopefully they won’t go more into advertising. Anything the advertising industry touches turns into toxic garbage. Ad revenue is poisonous to any other focus for a business.

lvass• 3 years ago

Last time I checked, even transfering photos from an iphone to another device was complicated.

fragmede• 3 years ago

What mechanism would you find acceptable? I open Google Photos on my iPhone which sends my pictures up into the cloud and then they are easily retrievable via a link that devices on the Internet can go to.

earthling8118• 3 years ago

Last time I checked you can't install apps on their devices from other sources. You don't have to fight them tooth and nail because they've already declawed and muzzled you. There's no point to.

friend_and_foe2• 3 years ago

Well, theres apkpure, apkmirror and aptoide. Guess that's what I'm working with from now on.

Does anyone have any idea what I should do about banking apps? Do banks keep downloadable APKs on their websites or something like that?

londgine• 3 years ago

how can you verify that the app is genuine?

friend_and_foe2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure. Check app signatures? But I've got signture spoofing allowed, and also what canonical record can you reference ebaides google play? It's a conundrum for sure.

Google account deleted after 2 hours of Aurora

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