Comments for Equals Drummond

Comment on Fixing the Google Account problem by Drummond Reed

Drummond Reed — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:04:37 +0000

Alvin, I’ve often wondered exactly the same thing. I know lots of folks and Google and they all avoid that same question. So I honestly don’t know how one brings issues like these to Google’s attention.

Comment on Fixing the Google Account problem by Alvin

Alvin — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:36:32 +0000

Thanks Drummond! If it weren’t for you sharing your insights I’d think I were blazing mad!!! :-S
I’ve posted the same note on the Gmail forum however there wasn’t anything substantive.
I was wondering though – how does one log a issue to the Google engineering team responsible? It amazed me to find that support is on “auto-pilot” i.e.: no humans involved… . You can log issues on the Google Gmail forum but that doesn’t appear to be moderated. So I’m wondering how bugs etc get to the engineering teams.
Thank you for the help!

Comment on Fixing the Google Account problem by Drummond Reed

Drummond Reed — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:12:30 +0000

I think you nailed the analysis, i.e., you had an email account from another provider for which Google automatically created an alias at gmail.com even though you don’t actually have that account. And now they won’t let you turn it into a functional gmail account.

I honestly don’t know whether, if you created a new gmail account under a different address, whether Google would let you set up the other “pseudo-gmail” account as an alias. If you could, that would solve the problem, however when I last tried it, Google will not let any gmail account be an alias for another gmail account. Only non-gmail accounts can be aliases.

So you may be stuck. Hopefully Google will figure out the problem they’ve created and let pseudo-gmail account holders turn that account into a real gmail account. How long that will take, I can’t predict.

Comment on Fixing the Google Account problem by Alvin

Alvin — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:03:18 +0000

I have exactly the same problem as Patricia..
I have a xxx@gmail.com username with no Gmail which when I log into displays my current email account xxx@yahoo.com. Caused I believe when I created a Picasa account using my yahoo account as my email account.
The huge problem… I want to add Gmail however it tells me that my username is already taken. .. which it is … by me .
Any ideas how to unravel this? As I don’t want to have another username for Gmail.. or does the alias feature offer a reasonable workaround?
Thanks!

Comment on Fixing the Google Account problem by Drummond Reed

Drummond Reed — Fri, 10 May 2013 04:46:37 +0000

I wish I could help because I understand the problem and how frustrating it must be. But it sounds like a Google system flaw that, until they fix it, we can’t do anything about. Sorry.

Comment on Fixing the Google Account problem by Drummond Reed

Drummond Reed — Fri, 10 May 2013 04:43:08 +0000

It’s been several years since I wrote the blog post (and yet it still appears high in Google’s search results), so I can’t give you a definitive answer to your question. The fact that you can sign into Google using what looks like a gmail address without it actually being a gmail address baffles me. The only answer that makes sense is that she somehow set up the non-Google email account to have an alias to the gmail address even if the latter was non-functional.

Have you checked to see if she has any alises set up in her Google account? If so, you might try deleting those aliases (but NOT deleting the entire Google account) to see if it frees up that address to become a true gmail address. (Give it 30 minutes or so after you delete the alias to try to register it as a new Gmail address.)

If that doesn’t work, or if she doesn’t have an aliases registered to her existing Google account, I’m stumped.

In either case, I would NOT try deleting the Google account until you’ve figured this out.

Hope this helps.

Comment on Fixing the Google Account problem by Patricia43

Patricia43 — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:31:40 +0000

I have a problem similar but perhaps not the same. I am attempting to help a less technical friend but I am at a loss to get around this.
My friend has a google account created a couple of years ago. She does not have a gmail account yet I can sign onto her google account using xxx@gmail.com and it comes up with a google account with her primary email (non-gmail) address.
It will not allow me to use her (non-existant) gmail address since it claims it already exists.
Is it possible to resolve this? I’d be happy to delete the google account if that would work but it is not clear from this thread that it would help.

Comment on T.Rob Wyatt Explains the Respect Trust Framework (and May Not Even Know It) by Drummond Reed

Drummond Reed — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 06:22:33 +0000

T.Rob, I deeply agree with you — the atoms-to-bits transition is going to radically alter things so much it may redefine what we call privacy today. So the brighter the light you shine, the better we’ll all see how to fix it.

Comment on T.Rob Wyatt Explains the Respect Trust Framework (and May Not Even Know It) by T.Rob

T.Rob — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:56:58 +0000

Ya know, I’d read that paragraph from the Respect Trust Framework but didn’t have it in mind when I wrote my post. I’m kinda surprised they are as close as they are. I was actually coming at this from having the Atoms Vs. Bits discussion several times recently. The premise is that when you deal with atoms, things like surveillance are naturally limited by physics. The legislative and legal frameworks which emerged at a time when the cost of surveillance was based on atoms contain an implicit assumption that pervasive surveillance is impossible. The invention of digital surveillance and web trackers breaks those underlying assumptions.

We will break them in new and different ways as Internet of Things begins to scale up because the current legal and policy frameworks contain implicit dependencies as to numbers of unique nodes, porosity of the network, degree of hostility on the network, the granularity of authentication and authorization, and more. The scary thing is that we largely do not recognize or acknowledge the underlying assumptions, let alone understand the ways in which the new architectures break them. But once you spot them, it’s kinda tough to un-see them. My mission is to shine as bright a light as possible on them so our new systems don’t embed faulty assumptions and emerge broken at birth.

Comment on Please Send Wicked Simple Email by T.Rob Wyatt Explains the Respect Trust Framework (and May Not Even Know It) | Equals Drummond

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:06:17 +0000

[...] ← Please Send Wicked Simple Email [...]