Many people wonder why Google never provides a reason for cancelling an account like this. The answer is that any reason they provide would also be seen as their opening argument. They're not interested in arguing whether their reasons are valid, so they don't even give a reason.
If you give people a reason, the implication is that there is a deficiency which can be improved, a fault which can perhaps be forgiven, or a set of circumstances which can be seen another way. It gives people a place to begin an argument, and this is clearly a case where people are eager to do so.
Google doesn't want to start a conversation, they want to remove the participant from the program. Not having a reason makes that clear, and providing reasons makes that less clear.
It's the same dynamic when salespeople want to know why you don't want to buy — they're hoping they can persuade you to set aside those concerns and leave you with no rational reason not to make the purchase.
It's also the reason why, if you dump a needy romantic partner, you're better off not providing concrete reasons — the reason is just that you want the relationship to be over! You don't want them running after you screaming, "But I can change!"
In this case with AdSense, sifting out the accounts who "sometimes" break the rules from complete scammers is probably just deemed to be not worth the trouble. Doing things this way also helps establish that they are tough on fraud.
Also, as Google themselves say, they don't want to help give those who are gaming the system to get any more information than necessary about what sets off their alarms or trips the trigger to deactivate an account. But even so, there are good reasons to not give reasons.
I've been temp banned from Google Groups just by opening a bunch of posts in tabs before going through and reading them all. So it isn't just what you do, it's the amount. I've seen ad networks complain when ads just strangely get too many clicks before compared to what their ads usually get. Saw one demand the ad be placed further away from any buttons in the UI due to this, etc..
If Google was more specific, fraudsters could probably figure out how many fake clicks per day per IP are allowed, etc.. While innocent people like the author will get banned once or twice, fraudsters will probably go through tons of accounts, maybe one for each family member, for example. So the fraudsters are going to be picking up data due to experiencing many more bans than innocents.
Heck, if the innocents all blog about it afterwards like this one, they are just acting like an extra data point for the fraudsters anyway, and most of them have so little traffic that banning them or not and telling them details or not will never make a difference to Google. So hiding details from them hides them from fraudsters too, although treating them this way is probably due to the expense of dedicating resources to worthless customers more than that. Let's say you have a million users and 10 customer support reps. Which users are you going to support and tailor your polices to? The ones with appreciable traffic who make most of your money.
Basic rule true, but the guy did it 7 years ago on his first site.
If we are to believe him, he wasn't doing anything against Google rules currently.
As he mentions, it is like being sentenced to life for shoplifting a candy bar when you were a teenager. There is no appeal nothing(unless you can somehow bring attention to public).
I'm not going to defend google on their practices, I also think it's too harsh, but they probably just don't separate accidental offenders with full-time scammers (just like with panda algo, etc.). Luckily for us all, adsense is not the only context ad program, if you have a valuable traffic channel you have the option to move on to competition - it's their loss too.
If you give people a reason, the implication is that there is a deficiency which can be improved, a fault which can perhaps be forgiven, or a set of circumstances which can be seen another way. It gives people a place to begin an argument, and this is clearly a case where people are eager to do so.
Google doesn't want to start a conversation, they want to remove the participant from the program. Not having a reason makes that clear, and providing reasons makes that less clear.
It's the same dynamic when salespeople want to know why you don't want to buy — they're hoping they can persuade you to set aside those concerns and leave you with no rational reason not to make the purchase.
It's also the reason why, if you dump a needy romantic partner, you're better off not providing concrete reasons — the reason is just that you want the relationship to be over! You don't want them running after you screaming, "But I can change!"
In this case with AdSense, sifting out the accounts who "sometimes" break the rules from complete scammers is probably just deemed to be not worth the trouble. Doing things this way also helps establish that they are tough on fraud.
Also, as Google themselves say, they don't want to help give those who are gaming the system to get any more information than necessary about what sets off their alarms or trips the trigger to deactivate an account. But even so, there are good reasons to not give reasons.