Loren Baker is an editor with the Search Engine Journal and he is miffed with Google. Baker’s Google account has been disabled for no reason and as a result he is neither able to login into his Gmail account nor access his Google Docs. His entire business runs on the free services on Google and I can understand the pain he is currently experiencing as a result of this unexplained action from Google. Baker has written an open letter to Google asking why his account was disabled and for what reason. He also writes about how he has been an advocate for Google and its wonderful products. He says he was a “loyal user and evangelist of Google Accounts and GMail up until this point”. I should add that I was also a loyal user up to this point, but after reading Baker’s story and the negative effects it is having on his business I am strongly contemplating if I should continue to use GMail for anything else other than just casual email communications with friends and family.
How To Backup Your Gmail Account?
You can follow one of the following for regular backups of your Gmail.
- Follow Gina Trapani’s tutorial on how to back up Gmail using Fetchmail. The tutorial lists detailed steps on how to setup an automated nightly Gmail backup.
- Follow this Google Help document to learn how you can use Thunderbird to backup your Gmail.
- You can also backup Gmail using Outlook 2003. Microsoft also has a help document detailing steps to backup Gmail using Outlook 2003, here.
- For lovers of Apple’s Mac operating system, you can use Apple Mail to backup your Gmail.
- Use GetMail to fetch your email from different mail servers, including Gmail servers, and back them up on your computer or another location. GetMail is written in Python and Google’s Matt Cutts has a well written tutorial on how to get GetMail working.
- The most simple way to backup your Gmail account would be by forwarding every email in your account to another email account from a different provider. To do this, go to Settings->Forwarding and Pop page and enter the email address where you would like to forward your email. Make sure you select the option to also keep Gmail’s copy in your Gmail inbox. Peter Jalbert uses this forwarding feature in Gmail to explain how to back up your Gmail account to a Google Groups account. Just make sure that your Google group was opened using a Google account different from your Gmail account.
What To Do When Your Google Account Is Disabled?
- As a first step, go to this Google Help webpage to see if you can find a solution to your problem by using the steps described.
- Go to the Official Google Blog, Gmail Known Issues page, Gmail blog to see if something is going on. Sometimes it could be just a temporary outage which may be affecting multiple Google services.
- Check your other email accounts which you may have used to signup for a Google account. You might have received some kind of notification/remedy from Google after your Google account was disabled.
- Sometimes if any abnormal activity on your Gmail account is detected by Google, your account may be disabled automatically. According to Google, “It will take between one minute and 24 hours for access to be reinstated, depending on the behavior detected by our system”. To see what constitutes abnormal or unusual activity, go here.
- There is nothing much you can do if you have tried the above steps. Google is notorious for providing bad customer service and especially in providing reasons for most of its actions. If at all you get any sort of reply from them, the message is either too generic without any real explanation or it is too vague and does not provide any real solution.
Look For Alternatives
If you use your Gmail account and Google Docs for your business, you should consider getting the Google Apps for businesses and the premium Gmail edition. You will be provided with customer support if you are a paid user. Look at other alternatives also before putting all your eggs in one basket. Learn a lesson from Loren Baker’s experience before you also become a victim of Big G’s unexplained actions.
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