I have (or had as it seems now) a spreadsheet in google docs tracking important business metrics. I was trying to look at it today and got the message:<p>"We're sorry. You can't access this item because it is in violation of our Terms of Service. If you feel this is in error, please request a review. Find out more about this topic at the Google Drive Help Center."<p>If I click the request a review I get:<p>"404. That's an error. Sorry, this item cannot be found or is not available."<p>This spreadsheet simply had metrics and domains. I find it near impossible it was violating any terms of service unless there is a shadow blacklist of domain names which somehow trigger a file being removed. And I'm left with no recourse to even request a review or get my file back?<p>I turned on airplane mode on my phone and was able to get an old cached copy, export was only possible as a PDF. So at least I have a slightly stale version of raw data that way.<p>Even as a paying customer, this is pretty embarrassing and there seems no recourse is possible?
If this is correct, Google is lying about when they look at your data. Google should not be looking at your spreadsheet. They claim they don't.[1]<p><i>You decide what content is shared & with whom</i><p><i>The content you save on Google Docs, Sheets, & Slides is private to you, from others, unless you choose to share it. Learn how to share or stop sharing files in Google Docs, Sheets, & Slides.</i><p><i>Google respects your privacy. We access your private content only when we have your permission or are required to by law. With the Google Transparency Report, we share data about how the policies and actions of governments and corporations affect privacy, security, and access to information.</i><p><i>If you have a work or school account, your organization can review logs of actions taken by Google when accessing content. Learn how to view logs with Access Transparency. Learn how Google protects your organization's security and privacy.</i><p>Start by trying to get a log of accesses to the spreadsheet. Follow up with a California CCPA complaint.<p>[1] <a href="https://support.google.com/docs/answer/10381817?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/docs/answer/10381817?hl=en</a>
Businesses need to consider the risks involved with cloud providers turning hostile against them (especially Google). Case and point: poster has no recourse, had reason to trust Google's availability in hosting their docs, and got caught doing something unknown by an over-zealous, unregulated implementation of AI. Had the poster not had the knowledge or skill to recover the document it would probably be lost entirely.
Update: finally got an email from Google:<p>------------------------------<p>"Your file "<filename>" contains content that violates Google Drive's Phishing policy and hence, some features related to this file may have been restricted. If you think this is an error and would like the Trust & Safety team to review this file, request a review below.<p>---------------------------<p>I got access again. And now it's actually being reviewed. What a terrible experience, it disappears and is inaccessible for an entire work day with no recourse. Not sure if this post caused the review/notification.
>Even as a paying customer, this is pretty embarrassing and there seems no recourse is possible?<p>If you are paying for enterprise support (Google Workspace), you have a support path to address this with. If you don't have Google Workspace, well now you know why companies shell out for the enterprise product instead of playing fast and loose with the consumer tier SaaS services.<p>And before people jump at me for that being unreasonable, I'd counter argue that it's unreasonable to expect a company to pay a human to spend time helping you, when you only pay the company a few dollars, if that, per month.
Always keep regular backups of anything you store “in the cloud” because ultimately it can be gone for an arbitrary reason at any time and with no recourse for you. These services can be hugely convenient, but if YOU don't have it twice, you don’t have it.
For those that want to avoid the same fate:<p>Use rclone to backup your Google Drive documents.<p><a href="https://rclone.org/" rel="nofollow">https://rclone.org/</a><p>Configure it so it will save the documents to disk in MS Office formats instead of just saving a link.
Sorry to hear you lost access to the document, I hope you can regain access.<p>It might be be a good idea to use a tool like Rclone to create a local copy of the data going forward. It allows you to download Google sheets as .xlsx files.
Don't store important data "in the cloud".<p>They can and will delete it, surveil it, or tamper with it and you will have not <i>practical</i> recourse.
Good time to remind people that you should regularly backup your cloud storages using rclone[1].<p>It can both backup them locally and from cloud-to-cloud.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/rclone/rclone" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/rclone/rclone</a>
The cloud does not absolve you from making backups.<p>Backups are there to protect you not only from technical failure, but also from mistakes and random bans from cloud providers.
I had something similar happen with a translations file for a game.
It has a column with keys like "created.at" and a column with human readable translation.
Google Sheets automatically create links to anything that looks like an URL, so "created.at" becomes a link. And if you're not careful to immediately remove those auto created links, some of them can lead to malicious sites, then Google will detect your sheet containing those malicious links. In my case Google blocked sharing, but didn't take the document down.
Still, I believe it's terrible UI/UX, to automatically link to malicious sites and then penalize the sheet owner for this.
I can't help with your current issue, but in the future, you could consider backing up your Google Docs using Insync. It can automatically convert and store your Google Docs as Office or OpenDocument files. Insync has a few quirks, but it usually does the job and is very affordable.<p>(I am not affiliated with Insync.)
Were the metrics related to the company in your profile? It seems legit(and a good idea even!) but I can see how that data might end up looking like spammer/blackhat SEO data to a robot.<p>I think, perhaps, the 404 you got was not for your file, but just a broken link to their review form. Is there some other manner you can find a different review button? This[0] implies you can click Share -> Request a Review, maybe try that?<p>[0] <a href="https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2463328?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2463328?hl=en</a>
Same current issue. Can't login to a Google workspace paid account with the correct username and password because the Algo determines the device can't be trusted (new m1 Macair) byebye account. Only recourse is to cancel it with cs without access.
I hate to break the news, but as soon as people started relying on cloud solutions thinking that they were the same as having a local copy then that is why things like this happen. Always keep and sync backups of documents into a local format.