So, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the poster's account was compromised and being used to send spam. Would that change your analysis? Why or why not?
My suspicion is that your immediate response will be to change the subject, most likely along the lines of "The problem isn't the temporary freeze on the account, it's the lack of communication." So I'd like to preemptively point out that you didn't make that case in your original argument.
I can only speak for myself here, but let me state unequivocally that the lack of communication and path for recourse is the problem.
PR-wise it might be a tough sell, but I think a perfectly acceptable answer is a pay-per-incident support line that connects to someone who can actually fix my problem.
I would like to see Google create a marketplace for support. They allow people to buy some access to their internal systems, who then sell support service. There would need to be careful vetting and monitoring of the people who buy the access, but if that could be made to work, end users get access to support, and Google wouldn't have to staff it.
Of course, they would have to provide support to the support providers, but that would be a much smaller, more knowledgeable population.
I badly want this particular solution. But the only way to create this startup would be to have good contacts with people in Google who have the authority to experiment with such a setup (because clearly Google WOULD need to experiment to find out whether it worked). I really DO think that someone ELSE, with a corporate structure that better supported the skillset of providing excellent customer support, could make an excellent living providing "customer service" for Google. 90% of issues could be handled just by hand-holding the customers without bothering Google at all. And the other 10% could be bundled up nicely (here's a repeatable bug report; I have 20 lockouts that appear to pass the first screening; etc.). But there would HAVE to be some way for people INSIDE Google to receive these nicely bundled reports and to respond to them.
Let's say for the sake of argument that his account was compromised.
Why lock him out? Wouldn't it make the most sense to let him get in and change his password?
If your answer is 'because the spammer/bot might change his password', realize it would be impossible to detect a spammer/bot before they start spamming, so once the bot has your password, it can login and change your password before it starts spamming. But most bots don't seem to do that.
Or lock the account such that no new email can be sent, but email can be received. At least then you aren't locked out of your archive for the last X years of your life.
Because I'm still left without a service that I may be using for something important. Maybe I've got a deadline coming up and I need to access my emails, who knows.
The problem, IMHO, is not that the account was locked. I'm perfectly cool with that, if thats what it takes to rectify whatever the problem was. The problem is that there is no way to contact Google about it. So lets say it was important to me to access my emails for whatever reason and I find my account locked because it was compromised. I now have no way of fixing this. No way of getting at my data. No way of even knowing why it was locked. If I could call Google up on the phone and they told me "oh, your account was compromised" at least I'd know whats going on. They then could work with me to at least provide me with access to my data while I wait for them to fix the problem and get my account restored. Or they can tell me to change my passwords or whatever it is I should be doing.
Right now all you get is "we locked your account, good luck, mwuahahaha".
How is it a flame? The guy asked how things were going to change to prevent this from happening. That's a legitimate question that EVERY user should be demanding an answer to.
My suspicion is that your immediate response will be to change the subject, most likely along the lines of "The problem isn't the temporary freeze on the account, it's the lack of communication." So I'd like to preemptively point out that you didn't make that case in your original argument.
These flames get really tiresome.