Google, Bloody Google - And Sinister?

[spyderspyder]

Good morning all.

I have not been receiving email notifications from the new board, so I went to my gmail account to investigate.
I got this:

Account temporarily disabled
To immediately restore access to your account, enter your mobile phone number below, and we'll send you a text message with a verification code.

But I don't have a mobile phone, so that was useful.
(In fact I don't have any kind of iTwitterPodFaceRaspberryPhonePilot - and never will!)

Also, maybe I'm being paranoid, but why should I give Google my telephone number?

That was 24 hours ago; I sent various messages to Google, via the divers help and "contact us" pages, but the account is still disabled.

Time to move away from the ever-expanding tentacles of the "Big G"?

s.

[DrJackson]

Well, that is the reason to NEVER give your true personal data to any GOOGLE, TWITER, FACEBOOK or any other sites like all these.
I read yesterday an article about FACEBOOK - witch was saying about how this site use any kind of personal data that you must provide when you made an account - makes you wonder if something is worth.
I agree, if you want to use "socialization" as a virtual thing, (instead of - what really means socializasion), then you have to give all those data.
But I don't agree what they are doing with those data - without any of us permission!(how many users start to receive tones of unnecessary and unwanted mails (spam) after they opened an account?)

[alex28]

There was an interesting chart about Facebook privacy over the years (waiting for hb to post picture, i can't find it)

Anyway... Google is all over the internet. It knows what you search for (easy to make a profile of you just using that), knows what your thoughts are (blogspot), knows what videos you like (youtube), knows your location (Google Maps mobile), knows your bank account info (Google Checkout), has access to your documents (Google docs), knows what you're browsing ( Chrome) and the list can go on.

Were you doing anything illegal on that account? Was there any reason you could have been disabled?
And don`t contact google.. they'll rarely answer. I'm starting to think there's no support hired.

Thing is... it's almost impossible to avoid it. You'll bump into them sooner or later.

("safest" way is to buy a domain and have your own email address + server)

(btw, when you first turn on a mobile device that runs Windows Mobile you are asked if you agree with sending periodic location data to Google.. they don't say a reason for it tho - or if they do... it's somewhere in that long TOS)

[spyderspyder]

Good morning.

I don't have or subscribe to any weird services, devices or things - just the PC.

Illegal activity - the account was only used for forwarding messages from Sub-Talk and Addic7ed;
however, I might have brassed them off by constantly saying "No" to all the whistles and bells, like Chat, Webcam, Mic., Google Earth, Google Shop, Google Alarm Clock and Toaster...etc.
Maybe, in their eyes, that made me one of the undesirables.

s.