Google locked me out of GMail

THIS SCRIBBLER found himself locked out of his GMail account earlier today, receiving a rather cryptic "lockdown in sector four!" error message, vaguely mentioning terms of service and the use of unauthorised software.

I found a bit tragic that Google decided to lock me out of my GMail account without asking first "are you using an unauthorized extension?" In other words, Google's approach seems to be "shoot first, ask questions later". My GMail account has been working with SeaMonkey and Greasemonkey for months, and what I did this morning wasn't different from what I've been doing every day: load the browser and manually type mail.google.com. For the record: I used Mozilla 1.x, then Netscape 7.2, then moved to SeaMonkey and I use SM - currently version 1.1 - almost exclusively, with Firefox running alongside occasionally. The only Greasemonkey based "extension" I have is "secure GMail" which forces the service to use encrypted -https- URLs.

Greasemonkey users beware: Google is trigger happy...

The error message talks about "unusual" use of my account, and that "In order to protect GMail users from potentially harmful use of GMail" -we're doing to protect you, honest-, "this account has been disabled for up to 24 hours" the message continued. Concluding with, "If you are using any third party software that interacts with your GMail account, please disable it or adjust it so that its use complies with the GMail Terms of Use. If you feel that you have been using your GMail account according to the Terms of Use or otherwise normally, please contact us using this form to report this problem."

Now, explain what the --- you were doing with Our System...

I did use the contact form to let them know of the error and impolite way of letting me know, but there was one extra surprise: the contact form contains the following browsers on its drop-down list: "Internet Explorer: v6, 5, 4" -hey Google, IE7 has been out for quite some time-, "Netscape: 7.x, 6.x, 5.x, 4.x" -again, what, no NS8?-, "AOL: 5.x, 4.x" -there are client AOL versions 6.x, 7.x, 8.x and 9.x as far as I know-, "Firefox 0.8+", "Safari 1.x", and "Mozilla .x" -dot x meaning any version I guess-, then "Other". But oh surprise, SeaMonkey is not there. So I grudgingly choose "Mozilla .x" knowing that SeaMonkey is, for all intents and purposes, the same Mozilla suite with new owners and a new name, knowing that if I dared to choose "Other" I'd be probably chastised with a canned reply for "using an unsupported browser".

SeaMonkey, they haven't heard of it...

Until Google clarifies if it's OK to use Greasemonkey and the "Secure GMail" script, I'd advise people to press the company for answers, otherwise you might risk getting the same message I did, and be locked out of your own e-mail. So, what does a user do in this situation?, you fill the form, including another contact e-mail address -obviously not the locked down one - and hope for the best. I'm crossing my fingers as I write this, which makes typing a lot harder. µ

See Also
14 year old finds critical hole in GMail
Google Mail goes mobile
Google ads virus scan to GMail client
SeaMonkey suite can use Firefox extensions, shocker
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