Google+ suspension bricks Android phones.

[supermouse]

Just as a warning, if your Google+ account is suspended, then your google-associated Android phone will no longer display contacts, gmail or calendar.

Edited to change 'will' to 'can'. I've seen several first-hand accounts of people this has happened to after they got snagged for their names, but it's not a guaranteed consequence. Just a non-zero one.

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

Wow. This makes me glad I deleted mine already.

[trouble]

Oh dear. :(

[spikewriter]

This makes me glad I went for an iPhone -- and my calendar and gmail aren't associate with my Google+ account.

[laughingrat]

Isn't that something one has paid for? I wonder if they're getting into bad legal territory...

[supermouse]

You've paid for the phone, but not for the access to Google, so presumably they can.

[laughingrat]

Interesting. Are there alternative services for Android phones? I thought you had to use Google stuff on them. (I have zero knowledge of smartphones, alas.)

[aedifica]

That doesn't fit with what I've been hearing--unless something has recently changed drastically, the G+ suspension only affects things that use the "Google profile," like Buzz etc. There have been a couple unrelated instances of people's entire Google accounts being suspended for other reasons, and that has muddied the waters some, but it's a separate issue.

(And that's not the same thing as "bricking a phone." It'd be a huge nuisance, I grant you, but the phone would still turn on and make calls.)

[supermouse]

Yeah, I should update this and clarify: it's not certain that it will, so I should have said 'can', but I've seen at least three first hand accounts of people who got caught on the name thing and found that their phones were now useless, and one second-hand account which caused me to go searching for the first-hand ones. At the third 'those sods made my phone useless' I basically counted it as a real risk.