I had a google adsense account that was producing a nice amount of income for years. I logged in to another google account that didn't have an adsense account and suddenly I got an email that my adsense account was flagged as a duplicate and I was banned. I tried their "appeal" but of course some robot made a decision to keep the ban. Looking for some help -- any help at all, to try and get my adsense account back. My email address is in my profile. I'm hoping some benevolent googler can help out.
How many more pleas like this will we see on HN? Or, hear from friends, colleagues, and relatives who have been locked out or denied access to an important service, either through no fault of their own or by an innocent action, such as the OP logging into a second Google account that doesn't even use Adsense?<p>No warning.<p>No explanation other than "suspicious activity" or "violation of [vaguely worded] policy."<p>No human to call who can help troubleshoot, other than a tech-savvy friend or relative.<p>No recourse.<p>There needs to be a technology bill of rights, not just for people dealing with Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, but also the myriad other technology operators which can disrupt our lives in an instant with some poorly programmed process or unanticipated edge case. Ultimately, the OP or my non-tech savvy employee or my mother should be able to get real answers and/or help from a human being when wronged by Google, a telco, or the local bank.
This really sounds like some ancient Forbidden City where you had no recourse against the emperor's decrees unless you bribed some court eunuch to get you a hearing.<p>Google et al. are feudalism reborn. Including the pressure to turn surviving yeomen into vassals (see, e.g. e-mail deliverability).
Google should hire someone to fix their automatic account blocking system. It doesn't seem like their current engineers are able to prevent such false positives or create a working system for appeal. They can even use Adsense to advertise for such a position.
I had mine banned after years of revenue; I still do not know why; I just got an email saying ‘suspicious activity’. I emailed with a polite text asking why this was and I received, of course a nice ‘this is final’ email. This ended that startup attempt. People can say ‘do not depend on Google’ but no one pays anywhere close to the same amounts; the income allowed us to grow and build towards a paid SaaS offering while others were paying just enough to maybe buy a coffee every few days. The difference was that big. So we closed that company and moved on.<p>Still no idea why though. At the time people online kept going for all kinds of conspiracy theories. Like there were over 20 people I spoke with who got their account banned for ‘suspicious activity’ when they reached 15k$/mo. Mine was exactly cut off at that point as well. I don’t know; it did teach however me I will never do anything ad based; it was a long time ago and ads weren’t considered evil, although after this I definitely considered them as such.
How many years away are we from GARaaS (google account recovery as a service)? "You pay, we scream on social media to get some googler to respond"
OK I have a startup idea. A matchmaking service between people working for FAANG and people whose accounts have been banned by bots with no recourse. Of course FAANG workers would be anonymous, for obvious reason, and the matter of compensation arrangement would have to be taken offline, because you know... But otherwise it seems to be an area ripe for disruption. Like Uber for bans, you know. Who's with me to apply in the next round of YC startups?
At least they got their account banned after <i>performing</i> some action, I got mine blocked after 3 years of no use, it was just standing there without money or ads.
Get an llc and an Adsense account with that, followed by a big find and replace for your Adsense ID?<p>Seems like google thinks you have another Adsense account, so remove the “you” from the equation if you cannot find which other google account that might be.
Can someone describe what it means to have a "duplicate" adsense account? I would have thought if you had a second account, there would just be two accounts and no problem.
The good news is, all of these false positive bans are diluting Google's ability to sell ad spots to advertisers. It opens the door to disruption by a leaner ad network.