Google Plus, Suspension & Real Names | Open Letter To Google

Dear Google, I’m forever explaining my name so didn’t take it personally when on August 20th 2011 you gave me notice that my Google+ account will be suspended due to the breach of the real names policy.

I clicked the ‘challenge this decision’ button and hoped some human would click through to the bio link in my profile and confirm my pedigree (like when Facebook suspended me for the same reason but after a brief email exchange let me carry on my merry way).

A week or so later after no response and with a suspended account I went back in to qualify it further—you can see below how many links were given to back up my identity.:

Over a month has passed and still nothing.

I’m really confused as the rules you’ve laid down state:

“The Names Policy requires that you use the name that you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile.”

So that’s DK, my name which:

• is adopted fully under common law
• has been used to be academically published and awarded under
• I’ve been using for over a decade (even my bank manager calls me it)

Now I’ve resisted the urge to make up a name just to get back in there because that would be rude plus I thought there’s enough evidence illustrating the name I’m most commonly referred by.

One thing I need to add is how much I frickin’ love your range of online services:

• I’ve probably steered tens of thousands of users to you guys through my MediaSnackers work: from CEOs, youth workers, large and small charities, brands, plus all my social media training participants sign up and use Blogger (even UNICEF and Gates Foundation—most of whom had never used it before)
• I wrote a book and run a business using your Docs
• Gmail rocks
• in June I even visited your campus as a guest of one of your employees (who has raised my suspension internally but has had no response) and bought tshirts from your campus shop
• plus, I’ve been utilising Reader as far back as I remember (luckily had a backup of my rss subscriptions and now using it through another account)

I’m a big fan.

So as a last ditch attempt I’m writing this open letter/blog post as there seems to be no humans in your system responding to my queries and qualifications about my name.

Please Google:

if I can’t use my name and you don’t want me to play then tell me why, then show me how to shut down my account and reinstate the use of the other Google services please*

* this would be so sad as would love to explore it further to see what uses my clients and employers could get out of it plus the teachers we work with could benefit from.

Looking forward to hearing from you and thanks in advance for your time.

Yours faithfully

DK

UPDATE 24.11.11: The lack of response after explorations into contacting Google direct plus so many retweets of this story left me no other choice…

“You’ve successfully deleted Google+ and associated social content.”

UPDATE 27.11.11: seems like when you delete your account it actually remains (although very happy to have my Reader access back):