A Silly Undreamt-of Adventure

Let me first remind you (whoever you are) that my secondary Gmail account is still disabled and there has been no response from Google, even though I had filled in their contact form days ago.

So, just to make myself a bit secure, I created a Yahoo! account as a backup. Some of you will understand what I mean. Now, after creating this account, there was a link on the left side of the window asking ‘will you marry in 2008?’. I don’t know why I clicked on it. But there is more. I created a profile on the page that came up. Yes, a Shaadi.com page. So, I actually did something as silly as creating a profile on Shaadi.com! Even if I didn’t put much information (or misinformation) there.

What came over me? Nothing, it’s just that my sense of humor is gaining breadth.

Anyway, since the deed is done, I thought may be I will let the profile remain there for some time and see what happens.

After having a reasonably good time at the research conference (IJCNLP), may be it’s time to have a silly undreamt-of adventure. Why not?

As always, I am thinking that things can’t get any worse.

I know. They can.

Back to Notwork as Usual

The wireless network had been working well for sometime. Now there is major conference at the institute in which I am involved in several things (very unusual). Tomorrow I have to give a demo. Today I had to setup the system for that demo.

I should have known. The network is back to being the notwork with a perfect timing. Period. Either no one else is affected, or no one else cares.

Life is beautiful.
Hope springs eternal.
Human being are social animals.
All of us are good people.
Great are the wonders of civilization.
What a wonderful world.

Deja vu.
Which means snafu.

By the way, the Gmail account is still disabled.

Summary execution Google style.

Gmail Account Disabled (2)

It’s official now. Actually it has been for some time, I just didn’t know about it. A large number of genuine Gmail accounts being used without any abuse are being disabled. Some accounts seem to be up again, but only some. Mine isn’t either, although it’s much more than 24 hours (the expected response time). And, yes, I had filled the required contact form quite early.

As the Economic Times (India) article says, “The Internet giant Google Inc reportedly disabled a few Gmail accounts in an overzealous [attempt?] to combat spammers”. Except that ‘few’ here refers to a very large number, judging from the lists of complaints I have seen while searching with the query ‘gmail account disabled’.

It is being suggested that only the new accounts are affected by this, but my account is not really a new one. If I am not mistaken, it’s more than an year old. That’s old enough for Gmail.

The funny thing is that the spate of spam mails (I was the recipient, not the sender, in case someone is mistaken) after which my account was disabled asked the recipients to furnish information about their Gmail accounts and threatened that if such information was not sent within the specified period, the account will be disabled. And the account was actually disabled, even before that deadline. Most of the people who saw that mail (it was sent multiple times to my account and many people commented about it) immediately thought that it was another of those fake mails which are a regular feature of the email world. But given this funny situation, I can’t help wondering whether the mail was actually an official Google mail. Of course, it was not, but an absurd situation anyway.

I am still waiting for my account to be enabled again. And I hope the primary account is not disabled in the ‘overzealous attempt to combat spammers’. As I said earlier, I oppose spam but I don’t support anti-spam fanaticism.

I had once mentioned that my homepage had suddenly disappeared from the Google index. It has since come back on the index. I hope Google doesn’t become comparable with the official censors (of anything anywhere).

What if WordPress suddenly, ‘with or without any notice’ (as the Gmail Terms of Use say) disables my blog? Sounds sinister and utterly unethical to me. Even if I am using the free version of WordPress. Google may be providing the email service for free, but they are putting ads on the side, aren’t they? That’s the Internet business model. It’s not the same as the old world economic model. If the user accepts ads being put on their pages, they are actually paying in an online sort of way. So, you get what you pay for argument is not really valid. The (‘free’) service may be theirs, but the content is ours.

The least acceptable could be this: give me back my content and I will look for another ‘free’ service provider, or I will get a ‘non-free’ provider if I can afford it. I want access to my content, and in the case of emails, I want access to them immediately, as soon as the account is blocked. You may have the right to disable my account, but you don’t have the right to take away my content. This, of course, applies to all service providers, not just to Google.

Gmail Account Disabled

I just tried to login to my secondary Gmail account found that my account has been disabled. What happened? Well, during the last two days, there were many spam (actually phishing) mails sent to my account. These mails asked the recipients to submit Gmail account information ‘otherwise the account will be disabled’. Several people commented about this to the others on the To: list. I responded to one of those mails (just a small retort to a stupid racist remark, which had a denial attached in advance, by one of the people who responded).

I thought I was the victim of a phishing attack, though I realized it was a case of phishing so I didn’t do what was suggested in the fake mail. I mean I was not the perpetrator of the attack or anything similar.

Does Google punish the perpetrators of such attacks or the victims? Nice New Year’s gift.

A few days ago when I tried to login to my primary account, I got the message that my account has been locked as ‘some unusual activity has been detected’. Unusual? Yes, I do a lot of unusual things, but certainly not on my Gmail account. There I am as usual as you can get. Fortunately, I succeeded in logging in on my third attempt.

While I am on this topic, I might as well write about one suggestion for improvement in all email systems. Whenever you log into your account, you should be shown if there is some other session open for the same account. This will help in ensuring that one has not accidentally left one’s account open somewhere. And, in a worst case scenario, one would also be able to check whether someone else has somehow got access to one’s account, by stealing password or by hacking.

One lesson learnt from this story: It is not so good to rely on one email provider alone, even if it’s Google. I will have to do something about this.

Small comfort to find that I am not alone: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].

There is one more thing I should say here. I am against spam like most people, but I don’t think heavens would fall if one gets a few useless mails on some particular day. I don’t support anti-spam fanaticism either.