I got 2 calls and an email from people claiming to be google saying that a legacy request has been made against my account and if I don't do whatever google wants me to do by the end of the day someone who claims I'm deceased will gain access to my accounts. Have any of you heard of this before?
Edit: The number I was called from seems like a real Google phone number
+1 (949) 794-1600
So ... "Google Accused of Pushing 'Free For Life' G Suite Users Onto Paid Plans" is now the last post on Slashdot, and there is also a link to TheRegister (I wouldn't have found it otherwise, I don't know if it ever hit the front page). Not including links because I've been caught in the past by Reddit's anti-whatever that might be, but they're easy to find.
I bet we'll now get a break, again. Until next time ...
I was checking the new price of Google AI Ultra as this was the only plan available to us but just found out Google removed it and no plan are avail on purchase, now they required us to migrate to a paid Google Workspace and it has its own new AI flavour, that is a bummer
Last month I received a notification that my Google Workspace violated their free account policy, and I sent an appeal immediately without making any modifications—no deleting blogs and no deleting accounts. I was certainly rejected.
After seeing recent posts about GDPR data requests from the EU in this subreddit, although I'm not an EU citizen, I sent a similar request through the privacy policy link on my Google account.
https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-privacy
First, go to the link above on your PC, then scroll down to the bottom. There is a 'Show more info' button (sorry, I’m not 100% sure of the wording since my account is not in English).
Then a sidebar will appear; scroll down again, and you will see a 'Provide feedback' button. Now you can fill out the appeal again and ask for the evidence used to determine that your account is commercial.
Actually, I'm not sure if the above action works or if I'm just lucky, but two days later I received an email stating that my appeal was approved. I hope this can help you guys.
Not a lot of action in this sub, but it seems it might be better to be proactive and move out of this licensing scheme? I know some have appealed and it worked, but I suspect long term it won’t last. Major PITA with non technical family members.
This is going to sound crazy, but I’d rather spend my money with Apple, who I have never liked, but it seems like a better deal for the money. Thoughts?
Has anyone actually ponied Up the $7 (ish) per user. I might do that for a couple months if it is seamless.
Hi!,
I've been chucked off the Legacy Free version for supposed commercial use (just 3 family accounts so no idea why) and am trying to understand some things after reading a ton of posts here.
I can migrate email, calendar, docs, photos easily enough.
What I am unsure about is other things connected to the accounts like Youtube, Android (Play, backups) and other non Workspace services.
I read that switching to Cloud Identity Free would let you keep using those services but that only appears possible from paid workspace accounts? Can you switch from Legacy accounts?
Is it possible to keep access to stuff like Youtube without Cloud Identity? What happens when Workspace legacy goes away? Can you still login to Youtube even if you can't set up Cloud Identity Free or do those accounts just vanish?
I'd appreciate any insights!
I had the same commercial use email as everyone else, with a termination date of 21 May.
I appealed and was quickly denied on the basis of commercial use - of which there is none.
Last night I submitted a subject data access request under GDPR regulations at:
https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar?sjid=14241713786173768044-EU
In this I asked for any data that Google holds showing evidence of commercial use and relating to my account.
This morning I get an email saying no commercial use has been found and my appeal has been accepted. So business as usual resumes.
I had already set up MXRoute for my 8 users, but hadn't carried out the migration yet. It has saved me the hassle of completing migration for the family users, most of whom are not in my household and some are elderly. But frustrating as I had already paid for MXRoute.
Until next time they try to close us down .....
For anyone interested. I had posted about my Workspace account being flagged for commercial purposes. I appealed, it was denied, reached out to Google via Twitter, they told me the appeal would stand, and then I decided I would start migrating soon to Fastmail.
You can read my original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/1svhxh5/how_to_migrate/
I didn't do anything more since then, and there is no way to file another appeal. Well, today, I randomly received an email from Google Workspace that my appeal has been approved. May 6 was the last time I received an email that I needed to move to a business subscription. Below is the appeal email I received.
Dear administrator,
We have reviewed your appeal and have not found evidence of commercial activity linked to this subscription. Your appeal has been accepted, and your account can remain on the Google Workspace free edition subscription.
Please note, this subscription may be reviewed again in the future to ensure adherence to this policy.
Thank you,
The Google Workspace Team
We are a large family of 7. Using legacy since the beginning.
Our account is a personal account. I have separate domains for my businesses.
We failed our appeal. Which, of course we were going to do, since as I can read from this forum, they use "signals" data to judge/determine that my account is commercial.
Many of these rumoured reasons appear to be either unreasonable or "entrapment" style issues where by clicking a button, me or my family members have un-knowingly broken their unwritten rules.
Is this the reason? I once filled in a form about my place of work into Google. At the time I just thought this was me telling them some locational/address data. I did not realise that this was me "linking a business" to my personal account. My browser was logged in to my personal account, which was my first and only account with Google at the time.
What about YouTube? When my son was around 14 he started a YouTube channel and he applied for monetization. Never received any money though.
Regardless of what you or Google may think, these actions not necessarily change the definition of my account as being personal to be commercial.
My four sons are all engineer types and have used services at Google. We all develop and enjoy software as a hobby, we run a large family only minecraft server for example. Perhaps we have used services like GCP using our email addresses? This does not make us a business though. I have a 10inch comms rack in my cupboard at home and a business grade network in the house, this does not make me a business either.
Google, please publish what your checks are. At the moment it looks like you are pushing people off a service you don't want to continue. You backtracked on the closing of this a few years ago, but now using this stealth tactic to close it down. I appreciate you might need some enforcement to ensure people are not really businesses but from what I can tell, you are catching out valid personal consumers in your activities
I only have two weeks to migrate but regardless of this, I intend to investigate this activity and look for issues in how this service is being operated in the UK.
Does anyone have material on this please? Are there up to date Terms and Conditions?
Just received this morning a pub about THE solution for migrating our family members accounts (mail, drive, password, VPN, custom domain) to a EU country and GDPR compliant environment. Including migration services from US main cloud actors
Strangely I don’t find any feedback , seems to be a brand new solution.
Any information , thanks in advance, Phil