Project repeatedly suspended

[Henry Harrison]

I have a small hobbyist project, using GCE to run a long series of computations. I have been repeatedly suspended for TOS violations. Apparently Google thinks I am mining cryptocurrency. Every time I send an appeal, saying I am not mining cryptocurrency, and two days later my account is reinstated. And then one week later, I am suspended again. Each time I have double-checked that my account has not been compromised. It has not. So far, this has happened four times. I finally reached out to support and all they could offer was to review the acceptable use policy. I did, and learned nothing.

Obviously something about my usage pattern must suggest cryptocurrency mining. Is there any way I can find out anything more specific? Is there something in my settings that could be a red flag? If it helps, I am using Container-Optimized OS. My startup script pulls the Cloud SQL Proxy image and another image from GCR, and runs both with --restart. My image pulls data from my database in chunks that take 1-2 hours to process, then it will restart and pull another chunk. All indications are that besides the suspension problem, everything is running well.

Even though this is just a hobbyist project, I cannot justify staying on GCP if this keeps happening. I need some guidance here. And if I ever have to set up a business-critical cloud project, it will be hard to justify GCP because the risks of a 2-day shutdown with no notice and for no apparent reason.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Larbi (Google Cloud Support)]

Hello Henry,

Your only option is to contact the Billing and Payments Support team and they can definitely investigate your issue related to suspension and would be able to advise you way forward. you may get an appeal in 48 and your project  suspension will be lifted. they can as well send you the root cause or the link.

[Henry Harrison]

Thanks. My suspension was indeed lifted. Just trying to figure out the cause so it doesn't happen again. I've asked Billing support.

[Sunny J (Google Cloud Support)]

Hello Henry, 

I'm glad to hear that the project was reinstated, however before reaching out to the billing support team, you could also review the "Project Suspension Guidelines" documentation for more information on violations which may lead to suspension. For more information, also see the Policy violations FAQ. 

[S C]

are you in free trial or paying for your project?

[Henry Harrison]

I am paying.

For an update, I had some back-and-forth with billing support. It seems they are not able to provide me with any details about the reasons for the suspension or the reinstatement. But they assured me it will not happen again. We will see.

I have reviewed the documentations, FAQ, and guidelines. There is nothing specific to my scenario. I don't know much about cryptocurrency, so trying to understand why it appears I am mining cryptocurrency, I don't know where to start. I can see in the documentation that it is not allowed to mine cryptocurrency without permission, but it doesn't say anything about how to avoid the appearance of mining cryptocurrency.

[Dharmendra Kumar]

Gcp is on boom and everyone (customer/client) has new expectation from them. So i would suggest to wait for their response and final update on this. My few request has been rejected saying not possible.

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[Paul Nash]

Hi Henry,

We've been discussing and investigating your case internally, and I wanted to let you know that one of our colleagues from Support will be reaching out to you directly to continue that investigation. We want to make sure we understand exactly what is happening with this case so we can address it properly. Sorry for the difficulty you've been having, I hope we can resolve it soon.

-Paul Nash

Group Product Manager, Compute Engine

[Justin Reiners]

Can paying customers get shut off?

I run a business, and keep things clean, paying $10,000/mo+, I've never had my project suspended. Is this something that Google does regularly? I see posts here regularly and assumed it was free trials getting suspended.

 I'm wondering why Google would go through such extremes.

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Justin Reiners

[Paul Nash]

Hi Justin, thanks for your question, I'll do what I can to address it.

First of all, as you rightly mention, a suspension is an extreme measure, reserved for use when all other efforts have failed (including warning mails, grace periods and more, depending on an account's relationship with us). Of the vast number of total customers using GCP, the number of people posting here is a very small sample size, and I would not draw too many conclusions from it. As you surmise (and as we've commented in the past) a suspension is more likely for new accounts, in large part because most policy violations happen with new accounts (and many are intentional fraud or abuse) or billing problems (e.g., never intended to pay). There are also numerous edge cases such as legal compliance issues and account hijack scenarios that make it hard to say "never."

Paying customers that are not violating our policy have little to worry about. In particular at the level of spend you're talking about, you definitely qualify as a customer that we have an ongoing relationship with, and we hold ourselves to an even higher bar in that case. In fact at that level of spend and because you're running a business, it's fairly likely that you are paying by invoice vs. a credit card. We have made even stronger statements about suspensions for customers paying via invoice (via the blog post linked below). If you are not, I would suggest that you look into it. While we sometimes encounter customers that are optimizing to receive rewards (points, miles) by using their credit cards in this manner, many people have posted elsewhere about the fact that credit cards are not necessarily the most reliable way to transact large payments for critical business services.

In June of this year there was a widely discussed incident involving a business customer who regrettably was suspended due to some handling errors on our part. What's worse, we incorrectly sent a notice saying the account would be unrecoverable after 3 days (instead of the reality, which is 30). We took that incident and the broad feedback it generated very seriously, and have thoroughly reviewed and improved (and continue to improve) our notice, account handling procedures and review processes. We outlined those commitments shortly afterwards in a blog post you can read here, and I'd also suggest reviewing our guidelines about suspensions.

Also, and mostly for future readers of this post, I want to reiterate perhaps the most important thing: if you are suspended, your first line of support is NOT posting here on an immortal "centithread." While several Googlers monitor this forum, responses are not guaranteed, and there is no SLA on the time lag. Instead follow the guidance in the notices you received, which should outline the nature of the problem and provide corrective options (such as appealing, contacting us to resolve the issue, etc.). Failing that or perhaps in parallel, any customer experiencing issues with their account can contact Billing Support to receive help (no paid support plan is necessary, however if you do have a support plan - also a good idea for a serious business - you should file a case through your support portal since it will ensure that all appropriate information is tied to that case).

In closing, I want to state that while Google is often characterized otherwise, I can assure you that there are many real, living and breathing humans behind these services and our support procedures, and we care very deeply about serving our customers well. Suspensions receive human review. That said, we're human, and we sadly make mistakes. Sometimes the checks we've put in place to try and catch these mistakes also fail. In the spirit of our SRE philosophy of "blameless postmortems" we do everything we can to analyze those mistakes, listen to feedback, and make improvements.

I hope this helps clarify things some. Thanks again for your question, and for being a Google customer!

-Paul

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