What!? You’re stilling using Google services? Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve told you? I’m sorry but I’m over being polite. If you’re still using Gmail, Google Docs, or Google Photos, then you’re being naively foolish and deserve whatever bad thing happens to you as a result.
Google, apparently not content with simply arbitrarily closing users’ accounts and seizing their data when one of their automating scanning tools finds something they disapprove of, have started reporting them to the police. Read this post from Cory Doctorow on how Google closed a user’s account and reported him to the police for child abuse and even after he was cleared of wrong doing refused to restore his data.
The TL;DR is that the user’s son had swollen genitals and when the parents consulted his doctor, the doctor asked them to take a picture of the boys genitals and send them to him because he wasn’t seeing patients in person due to COVID. Since the photo was automatically synced to Google Photos, it was scanned and Google, clutching their pearls, was sure a crime had been committed and notified the police giving them access to all of the user’s files.
The police soon realized that there was no crime or dubious behavior but Google is still refusing to admit they were wrong and won’t restore the data. Other than the loss of data—and other problems described in the post—you could, I guess, say the story had a happy ending but it’s not at all hard to imagine that it might not have.
If you deal with Google you’re putting yourself at risk of not just losing your data but of serious legal difficulties. Stop being stupid. There are plenty of good alternatives.