Google shuts down e-mail alerts

[craftLt]

I stopped getting e-mail alerts and found out that google disabled my account, the only thing I was using it for was Vitamin D. Does anyone know how to keep google from doing this, or a free e-mail provider that will not shut down your account?

[ryan]

Hi craftLt,

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble with your email account. I believe a large number of our customers use gmail for alerts, it has always been our primary recommendation. How did google notify you that your account was disabled and what reason did they give?

[craftLt]

They didn't notify my at all, my alerts just stopped working, when I tried to log onto my gmail account it said it had been disabled. The only reason it said was that the cause was possibly because of not meeting the terms of use, I examined the terms of use and the only thing I could think would make sense was a clause that said to only use the login and access interface they allow, maybe using vitamin D to access my account violated that?

[ryan]

Using VDV to send email certainly does not violate any terms of service. Was this a permanent disabling, or a temporary? It's hard to find details on google's limits, though they certainly do exist. For example:https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=22839&topic=1669057&ctx=topic specifies that there is a 500 person per message limit, and a limit on bounced messages. It is easy to extrapolate that they may have a "messages in a day" limit as well, though I am unable to find this. If you were generating an enormous number of emails and this was a temporary disabling it is possible you found this limit? If it was a permanent disabling, or you have a low number of emails per day there is likely some other issue at play.

[craftLt]

It is permanent, On an average day I would recieve 10-15 alerts, mainly from trees swaying and cats running accross my driveway. I have no way of knowing how many total or anything without checking the account. I have been trying to contact google but of course they have not responded. I guess the other possibility is that someone else hijacked the account to spam.

[ryan]

It would definitely be my guess that something else is responsible. 10-15 is a very very low volume of messages. Even if you were sending 1000 a day, unless someone was reporting those messages as spam google would most likely simply start returning the messages to you with a frequency error message, temporarily disable the account, etc... I have used a gmail account for years that regularly sends 200-500 messages a day. Sorry for your troubles. I'd suggest perhaps trying again with a stronger password on the next account?