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Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

1049 pointsby dfabulichabout 4 years ago

50 comments

CGamesPlayabout 4 years ago
I&#x27;d extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. Some examples:<p>- Every product&#x2F;project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.<p>- Nothing tied to your consumer accounts should be used for anything business related.<p>- Your Amazon shopping account and your AWS account should definitely not be the same account.<p>- Don&#x27;t use services where you&#x27;re required to mix accounts like this.<p>Some examples:<p>- If the issue in this thread is actually an automatic ban, account siloing very likely would have avoided the issue. ([edit] likely, it would not have been possible to silo accounts in this case, as a child comment points out)<p>- Facebook apparently lacks the willingness to block an account from Marketplace, but they will block an account from all Facebook properties.<p>- Paypal has banned businesses because the account was created years ago by someone who at the time the account was created was 17.<p>The point of this isn&#x27;t that it&#x27;s impossible to connect the dots that you are the same person. The point is to make it difficult for an automated system to deal too much damage to you, and make it difficult for someone looking at a single account&#x27;s history from accumulating too many &quot;strikes&quot; against that account.
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BMoreartyabout 4 years ago
Four months ago a friend of mine had his Google account suspended with a vague message about a terms of service violation. He escalated and appealed it with my help. It was no use. He lost everything. Files. Photos. Email. Calendar. Even his business domain registrations. He was paying for Google services like YouTube and storage. He couldn’t even get a download of his data.<p>This is why I never used Google Cloud. I’ve heard these stories for years. You can lose everything and have no recourse. It’s not worth it.
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jeroenhdabout 4 years ago
With the way the system is designed, it&#x27;s trivial to game the system in such a way that your ad-supported competitors get purged from the play store. Just extract the AdMob ID and submit it to click farms all around the world, and within a few days your competitor should be dropped from AdSense forever.<p>Like any Google product, partnering with them is a major risk for your business continuity. I&#x27;d never combine Google Ads and Google Play, just like I wouldn&#x27;t combine a Google-hosted email domain with a Play account. Hell, even a Youtube account that&#x27;s shared with your personal email is a data risk.<p>I do wonder what happened to get the app flagged. Maybe someone found a way to use the app to automate their ad fraud (it&#x27;s an IDE after all), and Google determined this app to be the culprit? Maybe one of the app&#x27;s dependencies had a piece of malware added? Who knows at this point. Google&#x27;s lack of transparency makes it impossible to build any sort of business on their products. I don&#x27;t get why people still try to do so.
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j_barbossaabout 4 years ago
Imagine this would be the case for physical stores and only 2 companies in the world could decide what products you are allowed to sell. You start a coffee shop and 1 day later a representative of company X walks in and shuts down your entire store because you &quot;violated our conditions but we won&#x27;t tell you which one. You can beg us to reopen your store but first you have to tell us why you didn&#x27;t violate our policies&quot;.<p>This sounds like a dystopia. And yet it&#x27;s already reality in the app world.
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jaimex2about 4 years ago
If there&#x27;s a good alternative never use Google anything. The sole fact that there is no appeal system to account shutdowns and the way they just kill services at random should be enough reason for anyone.
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malikNFabout 4 years ago
How on earth does google manage to still be one of the most valuable (in $$$) companies in the world with this kind of behavior. I just can&#x27;t imagine treating my customers half as bad as the way google does and still continue to be in business.<p>Abruptly dropping support for products[1], violating their user&#x27;s privacy [2] , working with organizations accused of human rights violations. Each passing year it seems google is trying to unlock all the badges under the &quot;be as evil as possible&quot; campaign mode.<p>Funny bit is how you can replace the words &quot;ads&quot; and &quot;android app&quot; in the title with any two other names of google products and this same situation would still apply.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;security&#x2F;google-sued-u-s-tracking-users-private-internet-browsing-n1222676" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;security&#x2F;google-sued-u-s-tracki...</a>
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nkozyraabout 4 years ago
It really does feel like there&#x27;s a day of reckoning coming for services that can boot you with one fell swoop. And unfortunately it&#x27;s unlikely to come from the source or from a general public appeal, but from government intervention.<p>My adsense account was banned years ago. No details, no receptiveness to appeals. It&#x27;s the kind of thing that&#x27;s kept me from some personal&#x2F;professional pursuits because I know there&#x27;s a big barrier to monetization should it gain traction.<p>Google (or Apple) purgatory really doesn&#x27;t seem like a sustainable business model. Someday they&#x27;ll tick off the wrong person and it will turn into a big deal involving the government
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GuB-42about 4 years ago
I winder if stories like that will ultimately be Google and other tech giants downfall.<p>The idea is that you can get banned, you will never know why, there is no way to appeal, they won&#x27;t give you a chance to fix things, and the only contact you will have will be robots, or if you are lucky, people completely dehumanized by the corporate structure.<p>So simply, they are unreliable. Just like files stored in a hard drive. With the hard drive, you can lose data because of a power surge or a random bug, with Google, you can lose data because you ticked the algorithm the wrong way. The solution: backups.<p>But that&#x27;s the problem. These tech giants value proposition is that they do everything for you, including keeping your things safe, and they charge a premium for it. But if they can kill your account any moment, they are no better than your unreliable hard drive, so why pay the premium?<p>If they don&#x27;t change, I can see them slowly losing market share, companies start to understand that putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. They may be attacked by smaller companies that, while also unreliable, are cheaper and more agile because of their size. Or companies that offer you real, competent people you can talk to.<p>By tech giants, I mostly mean Amazon, Google and Facebook, I think (without being sure) that Microsoft knows better, and Apple is mostly a hardware company.
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GoOnThenDoTellabout 4 years ago
Google needs a general support line that doesn’t involve a Medium post making the HN front page
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dkarrasabout 4 years ago
I have a very old app in iOS that serves AdMob ads. I don&#x27;t even have it installed in my devices. So I myself never launch it, and it hasn&#x27;t been updated in years. On the computers I use, I have ad blockers. I don&#x27;t think I have clicked on an actual ad in a decade. This is a small time app that manages to send around $20 every 3 months or so (through ads).<p>Still, about every 2 weeks, Google sends me an e-mail saying &quot;my ad serving is limited&quot; due to &quot;suspicious activity&quot;. I do nothing. After a couple weeks, Google notifies me that my ad serving is &quot;restored&quot;. Then after a couple weeks, again, I am informed that my ad serving is limited due to suspicious activity. Then they restore it back themselves. This goes in a loop. Whatever they are using to detect this stuff, I believe it is (intentionally or not) broken.
Digit-Alabout 4 years ago
I just don&#x27;t see how this can be legal. How can they be allowed to completely destroy a business with no evidence and no appeal process? This surely must class as abuse of a monopoly position.<p>I guess the fact that they haven&#x27;t been sued yet must be evidence that their terms are fairly tight but it feels like I&#x27;ve seen something that states that terms are only enforceable if they can be shown to be &quot;reasonable&quot; and it sure can&#x27;t be &quot;reasonable&quot; to say &quot;we think you have committed fraud but we will show you no evidence that you have done so and will give you no way to appeal your innocence&quot;.<p>Right now it seems like they literally have the power to completely destroy any business hosted on their platform at a whim.
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Tepixabout 4 years ago
Everyone is bashing Google, and rightfully so. I avoid using their services.<p>However, I&#x27;ve also experienced the other side. I&#x27;ve run an online gaming business and we had to ban players that created multiple accounts to cheat. I remember an infamous player whom we kicked out after he created a bunch of accounts and used them to brazenly cheat.<p>He created yet another account and posted on our forums complaining about his locked main account. It contained a statement, written in all caps &quot;<i>ICH BIN MIR KEINER MANIPULATION BEWUSST</i>&quot; (&quot;I&#x27;m not aware of any manipulation&quot;) that turned into a meme in our company because it was so brazen.<p>Google has no interest in locking out its users and customers. I&#x27;m sure there are many accounts that got locked erroneously and it&#x27;s appaling that it&#x27;s almost impossible to reach a human to appeal the decision. But i&#x27;m convinced that there are far more accounts that were rightfully locked.
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moooo99about 4 years ago
I&#x27;ve been thinking about how to monetize the game I&#x27;m building and AdMob seemed like the obvious candidate. I checked a bunch of sources including Youtube videos, blog articles and reddit posts, and stumbled across a whole bunch of apps that got their ad serving limited because of &quot;suspected click fraud&quot;. Most of those apps have in common that they are relatively new and had massive download spikes thanks to ad campaigns.<p>Obviously that was a massive red flag for me, but the search for alternatives gave me a good impression on how massive Google actually is. Many developers don&#x27;t even seem to consider any alternatives for AdMob&#x2F;AdSense.<p>So far the best alternative I was able to find seems to be MoPub and to use their mediation capabilities. I really don&#x27;t want to go all in on Google, but especially when working on mobile, it often seems like there are not too many choices.
correct_horseabout 4 years ago
This article suggests a weird anti-synnergy between Google products. If android app makers knew that an adsense&#x2F;admob ban led to a play store ban, they would use some other advertising platform on Android, which would lose Google money.
franga2000about 4 years ago
I keep reading about all of these people who got their Google accounts nuked, both business and personal, and keep wondering how there hasn&#x27;t been a class-action lawsuit yet.<p>Their marketing says &quot;your data in the cloud, safe&quot;, but then uploading a single copyrighted movie to GDrive (even if you don&#x27;t share it) can result in not only losing access to all your other unrelated files, but also emails, app purchases, etc. And if you&#x27;re really unlucky and administer a company&#x27;s GApps, the entire company might get dragged down alongs with your personal account, despite there being no other connection than &quot;administered by the same person&quot;.<p>This is so unreasonable that even if it&#x27;s in their ToS, that wouldn&#x27;t be enough in court, and surely there&#x27;s some law that&#x27;s breaking somewhere...
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TrianguloYabout 4 years ago
I&#x27;ll repeat what I said in the other discussion:<p>What I find interesting is the little information they give you after a ban. Apparently if they explained the reasons of the banning then other people could use that information to find flaws and &#x27;game the system&#x27;.<p>This means that, if you deliberately made something against the rules and were banned, you can then &#x27;explain your mistake and the measures to not do it again&#x27;. But if you don&#x27;t do anything unusual and simply break one of the crazy rules they have by mistake, it&#x27;s game over.<p>P.S. If you have a blog and practically all of your visits come from a single source (perhaps a link in something popular) don&#x27;t EVER use admob on that blog. You will be banned too.
monkeybuttonabout 4 years ago
So Google can manage hundreds of feature&#x2F;experiment flags on accounts to control which shade of blue you see in an A&#x2F;B test, but silo-ing which products an account has access to just isn&#x27;t possible?
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mathrawkaabout 4 years ago
Google&#x27;s support has really taken a turn for the worse.<p>We had our Google Pay (not Play, Pay) account suspended following the instructions that Google Play Support gave us to add our new bank account.<p>Long story, still dealing with it, but here is a summary: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26918013" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26918013</a>
ulrikrasmussenabout 4 years ago
&gt; Google will never tell you why they banned you from AdSense&#x2F;AdMob. (Honestly, it sort of makes sense that they share no evidence, because Google doesn’t want people to learn how Google detects click fraud.)<p>No, I don&#x27;t think that makes sense. Google is not sharing this information because they want to protect their own business, but in doing so, they are shifting all risk to the app developers. If you have a business model that only works because your process for removing bad actors is kept secure by obscurity, then maybe you should rethink whether your business model is sound?
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smsm42about 4 years ago
Reading the email exchanges there, I got a clear understanding that Google process is built in a way that makes impossible for a common person (without side channels to somebody important at Google or ability to cause massive bad press to them) to get any resolution. Moreover, support people (if those are people and not scripts?) don&#x27;t even know what it is about, they just repeat &quot;you violated policy X, see document Y, okthxbye&quot; until you give up. They don&#x27;t know how one violates policy X or what can be done about it, they just see some record &quot;violated policy X&quot; and have to compose (likely copy-paste) email to the complainer about it, so they shut up and go away.<p>I am still amazed people invest so much time and effort into Android apps that can be squashed like a bug for no reason at all, just because nobody cares enough to fix the utterly broken syustem.
squarediskabout 4 years ago
Richard Stallman was right. Richard Stallman was right. Richard Stallman was hell right.
baxuzabout 4 years ago
The biggest issue isn&#x27;t Google ads. It&#x27;s these automated App Store monopolies. Not only App stores, but services provided by any of these FAANG mega-corps.<p>You, as a customer, should have a right to speak with an actual person, to find out what the issue is, and to appeal. If you suffered damages due to a mistake on their end, they should be found liable.<p>This shit shouldn&#x27;t even be legal in the EU.
tdrpabout 4 years ago
We removed ads from our app a few years ago after having read a similar story.<p>In our case we were worried that any script kiddie or bad actor could very easily sabotage us and cause us to go bankrupt without any recourse.
MattGaiserabout 4 years ago
Is there a reason Google doesn’t offer a premium support tier for stuff like this?<p>There are millions of dollars flowing through Android to some companies. Paying $100 a month to always get to deal with a human seems like something that would be in demand.<p>I get that moderation can’t scale on the cheap, but with the dollar values involved, it doesn’t need to for the high paying customers.
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inullabout 4 years ago
Google is a joke! Title should of said, NEVER use Gogle at all. They will ban you from AdSense even for menu or search design&#x2F;style not looking how they like it. There automated system is horrible, they make money and don&#x27;t care about there customers. So don&#x27;t use google at all everyone!
12ian34about 4 years ago
I find it strange that it&#x27;s so normalised to consider something as invasive and manipulative as advertising as the standard method of monetisation. How about trying to make a product so good that it has some intrinsic value that a user wants to pay for?
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sliabout 4 years ago
I got banned from Google Ads at age 16 because Google was convinced I was doing this. I&#x27;m 35 now. Never figured out how that happened, but it doesn&#x27;t matter because I wouldn&#x27;t choose Google&#x27;s ads anymore, anyway.
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kwdcabout 4 years ago
I dread doing business with these mega-companies. Its like dealing with a fickle god of chaos. Completely dystopian even if you follow the rules. Even worse if one of the daemons decides you broke a commandment and pits you into purgatory or hell with no hope of a meaningful appeal.
aviparsabout 4 years ago
As a small-time indie app developer, enabling ads was more trouble than it&#x27;s worth...<p>Because I have so little traffic, I&#x27;m exposed to more ad-fraud and false clicks from competitors.<p>I shut off all ads on my apps for now, and my goal changed form making money to acquiring users
threatofrainabout 4 years ago
The endgame is a credibility company that keeps a permanent history on everyone. Then once you have bad credit, no companies will want to give you a loan. Landlords will not want to give you space.
cwkossabout 4 years ago
What sort of legislation could be put into place that would effectively prevent these sorts of situations without having horrible side effects?
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Trias11about 4 years ago
I&#x27;d say - use any platform for what it&#x27;s good at. Extract value from platform. Benefit from it, monetise it, let it help you to gather users or following.<p>But NEVER rely on any propriately platform for your business. You&#x27;re NOT in control.<p>Make sure you have a contingency plan. Have backup (whatever it is for your business).<p>Make sure you have direct, alternative contacts with your users if platform goes nuts.
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bitrealityabout 4 years ago
Another example on how tech giants control the livelihoods of millions of people. They can press one button and put thousands of people out of a job at any time. Workers rights? How about an automated reply and no specific reason for the death of your company&#x2F;application&#x2F;income.<p>These companies need to be regulated ASAP. Especially when it comes to terminating users.
atum47about 4 years ago
Well, I know someone who wrote a bot to play his game and watch the ad at the end. This person made about 4 dollars in one or two nights letting the bot run. When pay day came, Google marked half of the revenue as invalid, and only paid 1,75 dollars.<p>This person knew the risks of being caught and let it go. My point is, I think Google warns you first about doing that.
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StreamBrightabout 4 years ago
I have a better suggestion. Never use Google.
Rastonburyabout 4 years ago
If anyone doesn&#x27;t think Google and FB are advertising monopolies imagine getting both or either of your ad account banned. Say you have a small Shopify store selling a niche product and competitor reported your ads, no one will answer your support tickets. This actually happens
jraphabout 4 years ago
Also teach people to use and prefer F-Droid over Google Play when possible, and make your open source app available on it:<p>- no obscure ban for application vendors<p>- no mandatory account for installing apps and from which you can be banned<p>- no user tracking<p>If you don&#x27;t like vendor lock-ins and its consequences, push for the alternatives.
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donatjabout 4 years ago
What’s a good Adsense alternative? They’ve temporarily disabled my Adsense a couple times in the previous year for “invalid traffic” and this is making it sound like a huge liability.
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advait1911about 4 years ago
Is it possible to create a decentralised ad exchange on ethereum?
Nwilabout 4 years ago
I sympathize with the developers. Is it possible for a judicial review of the problem, for the &quot;strong&quot; side to present evidence of manipulation of the ad network?
SideburnsOfDoomabout 4 years ago
I would assume that part of the testing process (or part of the checklist after going live) would involve clicking user interface elements, including ads?<p>You want to know that it works.
kevincoxabout 4 years ago
To be more clear: Google can ban your Android app for <i>any reason</i>. One of the many reasons for this is if they think you&#x27;ve clicked on your own ads.
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fincherdavidabout 4 years ago
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SergeAxabout 4 years ago
There is an ongoing meme series with that guy with stone face who mocks stupid social media lifehacks. Let me be that guy for a moment:<p>Always create new Google account for your new project. Use that account for related Google Cloud, GMail, Google Play and all the SSOs into third-party services like Github&#x2F;Gitlab, cloud CI&#x2F;CD, hosting and so on. Just add your personal account as a collaborator to those services for convenience.<p>It will take one minute and protect you from a ton of problems later.<p>Compartmentalize, people, compartmentalize!
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renewiltordabout 4 years ago
Ah interesting. That is actually actionable advice. Using non-Google ads with Android devices seems safer. Good tip.
umrashrfabout 4 years ago
Apple&#x2F;Google has too much power over these app stores. They need to be decentralized.
ElectricMindabout 4 years ago
You create a monster (Google, Facebook etc..) then you cry for help when it comes bite your own hand? This one is on America and &quot;American dream&quot; Sorry I meant &quot;American greed&quot;. Maybe both are same? Unfortunately whole world suffer as always -_-
villgaxabout 4 years ago
Opens up unnecessary issues which can be easily decoupled.
varispeedabout 4 years ago
If they know you clicked your own ads, then why can&#x27;t they simply filter these signals out? To me it seems like they are trying to find every avenue to wiggle themselves out of paying. Such a nasty company.
busymom0about 4 years ago
&gt; Google will never tell you why they banned you from AdSense&#x2F;AdMob. (Honestly, it sort of makes sense that they share no evidence, because Google doesn’t want people to learn how Google detects click fraud.)<p>I disagree with this as I mentioned on a prior post about DroidScript. If a justice system doesn&#x27;t tell people what crime they committed, what proof they have of such crimes etc, then such systems are exploitative and a lot of innocent people get hurt.
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