It’s like something out of Kafka. C. awoke one morning to find that after 15 years, all of his Google accounts were locked. He’d been accused of violating the terms of service. What violation? They wouldn’t tell him. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong but since the charges were secret, how could he know? All he knew what that all of his data was unavailable. The link above has other, similar stories.
It’s not like these people haven’t been warned. There’s story after story about people having their accounts locked for some unspecified transgression. Sometimes, if they make enough noise, Google will admit that, oops, there was a mistake. They’re sorry. The account has been restored. Usually, the victims just lose their data.
I’ve stopped feeling sorry for these people. The warnings were there, screaming from all sides as Pink Floyd put it, but they chose to ignore them and believe that since they weren’t doing anything wrong, everything would be okay. Until it wasn’t.
I’m a fan of Uses This, a series of short interviews that ask various nerdy people what they do and what hardware and software they use. In interview after interview I see people proudly proclaim that they have their whole life in Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, and the rest of it. I cringe every time. These people have a tiger by the tail but believe this is fine.
Let me say it again. Do not commit your data to any system you don’t control. Keep a copy of everything that matters on a machine you physically control and make sure it’s not in a proprietary format. As you all know by now, I live an almost exclusively digital life but have no trouble keeping a copy of everything important on my laptop. You can too. You just have to abandon your belief that Google or whoever will always be there for you and take control of your own life. Because that’s what all that data represents: your life.