Tell HN: Google Plus doesn't like my name

152 点作者 orp大约 13 年前

I just got an email from Google Plus telling me that I'm in violation of their Naming Policy.Apparently, Google thinks my real name (transliterated from Hebrew) is a nickname. That's also the name, by the way, that appears on my passport.I have no idea why Google thinks 'Or' is that odd of a name (I can't imagine that they took exception to my last name).I've been warned that if I don't appeal the decision within 4 days, my Google Plus account will be suspended. Other than pressing an 'appeal' button of Google Plus, I couldn't find any way to provide 'further information', as requested in their email.Comments: 1. Good work scaring your users, Google. 2. Facebook never had a problem with my name. 3. People at Google really needs to read this : http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ 4. On a further note on 3, Part of my day job is writing software for name identification. Trust me, My name is not all that odd.OrNotes: * Naming policy: http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1228271* Google email:Hello,After reviewing your profile, it appears that the name you entered does not comply with the Google+ Names Policy. Please log in to Google+ and visit your profile to learn more and take action.The Names Policy requires that you use the name you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile. Nicknames, previous names, and so on should be entered in the Other Names section of the profile. Profiles are limited to individuals; use Google+ Pages for businesses and other entities.If you do not edit your name to comply with our Names policy or appeal with additional information within four days of receiving this message, your profile will be suspended. While suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.The Google+ team.

24 条评论

patio11大约 13 年前

Sadly, Goooglers are not unaware of this issue. That's the trouble of problems with Google: at J. Random Megacorp this would be a stupid oversight. Multiple Googlers have brought up internally that this policy would result in them locking accounts of innocent users and they lost the argument. You're quite literally acceptable collateral damage of a core design goal of Google+: for strategic reasons, they want real identity relationships not "Internet identities" which may or may not be pseudonyms. They want Facebook names, not IRC nicks, and they're willing to backstop that with their famous willingness to use individualized customer service. These decisions were internally controversial but supported at the highest levels of the company.

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jgrahamc大约 13 年前

I see things have improved little since the days when I couldn't have a Hotmail account with my real name (because "Cumming" is an offensive term) but I was able to register using the name Ivana Watch-Teenz-Screwing.PS Went into my archives to check on this and discovered two things:1. It was actually Ivana Watch-Teens-Give-Head and here are two screen shots that date back to April 2003 showing the denial of my real name and the acceptance of Ivana.<a href="http://i.imgur.com/2bX2o.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/2bX2o.png</a><a href="http://i.imgur.com/rO8Jp.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/rO8Jp.png</a>2. In the same period Google used to serve pornographic ads against my name.<a href="http://i.imgur.com/Z21O3.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/Z21O3.png</a>

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dhx大约 13 年前

Patrick McKenzie's article mentioned in comment (3) is very important. Most forms and procedures (paper and digital variants) apply unnecessary and incorrect restrictions to field values. The mistakes are carried all the way up into legislation where it is assumed that everyone has a permanent physical address.Some other very common mistakes include assumptions that people:* have a physical address* have one physical address* use a mobile phone* use any sort of telephone* can access the Internet* use email* know their mother's maiden name* have had a pet at some stage* attended a school (and other password recovery question options...)* have an occupation* have one occupation* have a credit card* have a bank account* have 20:20 vision* can read English and understand what is expected of them in a form* know their own date of birth/age* know their own name* know their place of birth* have money to print forms, send letters or make phone callsAnd importantly, assumptions are made that people will will agree to provide information that is not required for the interaction/transaction.Common sense usability is to not ask unnecessary questions or collect unnecessary data.

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etfb大约 13 年前

Welcome to Nymwars. There's a reason Google+ has earned itself nothing but contempt from many quarters. Come back to Facebook; as long as you keep clicking their ads, they don't care what you call yourself.

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egypturnash大约 13 年前

This is why G+ is dead to me. Most of my friends like to use Funny Names On The Internet. And are also early adopters who LEAPT on G+ like starving orphans when it came out, only to find their accounts disabled.So now the people watching me are mostly... dudes in Egypt who friend anything cute that comes up for a search of "Egypt+female". Who think a photo of their penis is an appropriate icon.I went back to the rotting husk of LJ.

willvarfar大约 13 年前

Fun tangent for the curious:Odd is a not-unheard-of name in Norway <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_%28name%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_%28name%29</a>This can make introductions and hand-shaking with visiting English speakers amusing:"Hello, I'm Odd"

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aestetix大约 13 年前

Sadly, there's not much hope. I hear it hasn't improved since my case:<a href="https://plus.google.com/115896012705745653160/posts/Kdg2nPzMB4M" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/115896012705745653160/posts/Kdg2nPzM...</a>

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nsns大约 13 年前

I guess John Doe would work just fine though.Google is very "Anglo-centric" in many of its products.

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wyan大约 13 年前

For this kind of thing (and others related to permissible content) I decided to delete my own Google+ account and Google profile. Now I have an old style account that works with their services (even Reader, although you can't share or comment any more), but without the big brother cr*p.

pm24601大约 13 年前

Reminds me a little of xkcd: <a href="http://xkcd.com/488/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/488/</a>[Use your real or fake name]<pre><code> | | (fake) (Real) \/ \/ </code></pre> [You put your content on [You put your content on google+]your wordpress blog] |<pre><code> \/ \/ [Google G+ flags your account] | | \/ \/ </code></pre> [You create a new fake account] [You spend days desperately trying to get something back]<pre><code> \/ [Google ignores you because you are not well-known.] \/ [You create a new fake account] </code></pre> Violet Blue had her account flagged as not being real.First Name: "Violet" - well my niece is named Violet. Last Name: "Blue" - as in Allen Blue (Co-founder of LinkedIn: <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/ablue" rel="nofollow">http://www.linkedin.com/in/ablue</a> )This is why I refuse to use Google+ the flowchart only leads to account being banned. I am moving more and more content off of google systems simply because Google has this ban policy that puts content at risk.On the other hand if you don't sign up to Google+ then your content hosted is less at risk. However, soon I am sure this will not be an option. Try to sign up for a gmail account now to see what I mean.

rwhitman大约 13 年前

Well, you are in the unfortunate position of having a name that would be easily confused for an attempt at SQL injection.I wonder if folks named "Insert", "And", "Where", "Not" etc would have similar problems...

Random_Person大约 13 年前

My name is Chevee.Google that. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one. I've not been targeted. I don't know how my name could be any less "common" and yet I am ignored?This begs the question on how arbitrary this process is. Do you have to have a certain level of "popularity" before they decide to investigate? Is it just a bot crawling their DB looking for "uncommon" names?

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md2perpe大约 13 年前

In Norway, both Even and Odd are normal names.

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Shank大约 13 年前

The only real routes I can see are:1) Scan passport & send that to Google 2) Change your name to the Hebrew variety and set the transliterated name as your primary yet alternate nameThere are huge privacy implications for the first route, however, and @aestetix has a good point in that post about deletion policies and such.At least they aren't going to kill your Gmail account.

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adib大约 13 年前

Maybe you can just key-in your name with hebrew characters? That'll teach them.

d4v1dv00大约 13 年前

I been through this, how I did was I told Google that I am sensitive to being found for fraud and phishing, then they allow me to use single letter as my last name. LoL

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mmmooo大约 13 年前

Not even that uncommon in their scope:select count() from profiles where first_name='or';+----------+ | count() | +----------+ | 839 | +----------+(out of dataset of ~40mil g+ users).

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joeblau大约 13 年前

Based on my previous experiences trying to get help from Google, you're pretty much screwed. Just make your name a fake name.

MLMcMillion大约 13 年前

Who cares? It's Google Plus.

droithomme大约 13 年前

It's a racist policy. Common white names are accepted. Certain categories of "ethnic" (non-white) names are not. We also know it's intentional. Google has no intention to change. Draw your own conclusions from this. Case closed.

LocalMan大约 13 年前

Tell them your name is Orville Allegheny Smithers the Fifth.

pasbesoin大约 13 年前

Hey, Google: Here's one problem with your "social" program. Your support is anything but.Seriously. Stop and think about that, for a minute.

tonfa大约 13 年前

I don't understand, why are you not appealing?

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ktizo大约 13 年前

Given that aliases are legal and not in and of themselves considered fraudulent in most of the world, the requirement to use a 'real name' for online services seems to have no real legal basis anyway.

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