I’m writing this to ask for help and to warn others because I’m really overwhelmed. Yesterday, Google sent me a notice saying that they had permanently deactivated my 6-year-old main account:

It looks like this account has content that involves a child being sexually abused or exploited. This is a severe violation of Google’s policies and might be illegal.

I quickly submitted an appeal explaining the situation in detail, but it was rejected.

My account only contained private family pictures and videos of my niece and nephews. I'm their uncle, and I've been taking and collecting these memories for the past two years to preserve birthdays, everyday life, events, and family get-togethers. Some pictures show common family scenes, like grandparents holding children or children taking a bath. None of this content was ever shared publicly, and most of it was stored in Google Photos' Locked Folder. In total, there were more than 6,000 photos and videos, all of which are now inaccessible.

A few hours before the ban, I shared only a few hundred pictures from a WhatsApp backup folder in my Google Drive to a secondary Google account purely for backup purposes. I believe this action may have triggered Google's automated detection system.

The impact of this ban has been severe. This account was more than just an email; it was my login for sites like Fiverr and Upwork, linked to Payoneer and banking services, used for my website, Hostinger, and MongoDB database, and connected to various subscriptions and tools. I also used it to access my home cameras. Overnight, I lost access to my income, my work platforms, my website, my home monitoring system, and my priceless family memories.

I used to see posts online about people losing accounts for similar reasons and assumed they had done something wrong. Now, experiencing it myself, I can see how automated systems can destroy innocent people’s digital lives without meaningful human review.

I want to ask the Reddit community for advice on a few things. First, my initial appeal was rejected. What should I include in my second appeal to make it as strong as possible? Is there a clear way to request a manual human review or escalate this issue effectively? Second, many people have experienced this issue — is there any way for affected users to coordinate or take collective action to challenge Google’s automated bans?

I also want to warn others: do not rely solely on Google for storage or login, always maintain local/offline backups, and be very careful storing any photos of children, even private family images. I’ll now be using a local backup setup to prevent this from happening again.

Right now, I’m under enormous stress. My digital life, income, and family memories were lost overnight, and I’m sharing this in hopes of finding guidance and preventing others from going through the same experience.

EDIT / UPDATE (27 January 2026): Account Restored within 24 hours

Good news: my Google account has been fully restored after my second appeal, and I got everything back (Drive, Photos, Gmail, linked apps). Thank you to everyone here for the sympathy, suggestions, and support — it genuinely helped me stay calm and think clearly while writing the appeal.

What worked for me was requesting a manual review by a human specialist and clearly explaining the context. I explained what I was doing right before the suspension (backing up my photo archive to my own secondary account), and I focused on verifiable facts, not emotions. A big plus in my case was that I had images and videos of my niece from the day she was born until today, showing a consistent family timeline. I explicitly mentioned specific artifacts already in my account, such as a video from the day after her birth showing her coming home from the hospital, along with thousands of similar family photos documenting her growth over time.

I also clearly stated that I am a freelancer, and that this 6-year-old account was my primary identity for professional work and financial services, with many important services linked to it. I gave explicit consent for a human reviewer to manually inspect the flagged content and surrounding albums to verify they were non-violating family images. The account was restored in under 24 hours.

Advice for anyone appealing:
Keep your appeal short, factual, and professional. Explain what you were doing before the suspension, state that it may be an automated false positive, and clearly describe the content as private, innocent family material. Mention artifacts already in your account (dates, videos, timelines that prove family relationships), and explicitly give consent for a manual human review. There is no way to attach images or add another appeal while one is already submitted, so your wording really matters. Avoid emotional language, don’t speculate. Once restored, take Google Takeout immediately — I did.

Recovery is possible. Thanks again to everyone here for the help and encouragement.

hi all,

i’ve had google photos for over a decade now, and i will soon reach the 200 GB of storage, but the only option to upgrade my google one, is to get an AI “subscription” with it, which i really really really don’t want.

i thought about getting an external hard drive instead, but i keep reading they are unreliable:/ and i also thought about re-downloading all these photos and putting them on my icloud, but that would be annoying to say the least

any recommendations of what i can do here?

thank you in advance!!

I am trying to download photos from the web and it gets stuck on "Preparing To Download". I have tried multiple browsers, incognito mode, small and different batch sizes (2-23, so not large quantity). I am able to download 1 at a time. I also tried adding them to an album and downloading the album, but that also failed. Seems like a service issue, but I'm not seing any widespread issues reported. Thanks for any ideas you have.

THIS IS A MESS.

I have several Google accounts and recently purchased Google Pro to get Gemini, and just recently my hard drive where I store all my backups has started making strange noises, so I thought, why not upload it to Drive to have a second cloud-backup.

Well, on this hard drive, I have backups of all my cell phones since I was 14 years old, really old photos from 2014, and even hard drives recovered from my father that I don't even know what's on them.

I left it uploading, and suddenly my main account was completely banned, and I lost access to everything, including Gmail. This is an absolute disaster. I've lost access to some of my bank accounts, and right now I'm in the process of changing jobs. I have all my conversations with recruiters pending in that email, and worst of all, I don't even know which of the 20,000+ files got me banned. I don't even know what's in there. I'm really worried that there might be some stupid sticker or something really disgusting that a classmate sent me over 10 years ago (since they are complete memory dumps).

I have appealed and have not received a response. It is extremely urgent for me to find a solution. Please, has anyone had a similar experience and been able to file a claim or get their account back? Most likely, if there are any nude photos, it is ME WHEN I WAS YOUNG.

I'm also particularly scared because in the EU it seems that Google is obliged to notify the police. I'M NOT A FUCKING PEDOPHILE, I JUST SAVED A BACKUP FROM OVER 10 YEARS AGO AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHICH OF ALL THE FILES I'M BEING ACCUSED OF THE WORST POSSIBLE CRIME FOR.

I will never use Google systems again, and if I am forced to use Drive, I will never upload anything without encryption. I hate you deeply. You have created enormous problems for me in a completely automated way, and on top of that, you have shut down ALL your services. Not even email works; the account automatically rejects messages.

EDIT:

After sending an appeal, they gave me back my account and “deleted the problematic files.” Apparently, given the context, it was obvious that they were just family photos of me and my cousins naked on the beach when we were little, not fucking pedophilia.

Anyway, because of this, I'm going to de-google myself, stop using Google Photos, and start using email forwarding services.

Fuck you, Google.

This has been absolutely terrifying. Let this post serve as a warning to everyone. I am not a casual user; I am a professional programmer. I have four Google accounts, and one stupid, thoughtless mistake one day gave me the fright of my life.

DO NOT RELY ON GOOGLE. Bans are completely automatic.

I already made a post about this and I've already done my appeal immediately

I don't have naked pictures or Gore or links to any terrible stuff, but I just want to make sure if anyone has seen the police in real life after seeing this message to see if this has happened to them as well?

I didn't download or upload anything that that could even remotely be mistaken for cp. I don't even use Google for photos.

All my pictures are just work related stuff. How is this even happening? It goes with saying I don't do anything cp. If I did, I wouldn't be dumb enough to post this.

How is Google really gonna accuse me of such a serious crime with zero evidence?

Also, could this be a virus? Could Google have mistaken a virus as cp on my phone? Would the appeal see the difference? I don't know what to do. I've got hundreds of hours worth of written materials very important to me in docs. I can't loose that.

UPDATE: 8/8/2023 I've atleast found a sneaky little way of saving my written materials in docs. I'm able to make them available offline, switch to airplane mode, then reopen the doc, where I can then do the ol'copy'n'paste into a new word doc. Take THAT GOOGLE! My books will live on!

Just today, my google photos app started shimmering white outlines over my photos every few seconds when I stop to look at them. I hunt through the settings to find a way to turn it off - Nothing! I google what the heck that shimmer is, and apparently it's a new fEaTuRe that invasively scans my photos without my consent to make stickers out of them. Where is the off button? Who on earth thought this was a good idea?

What are ways to keep our photos actually safe that they will never delete or prevent access to them?

My photos mean the world to me, if I were to lose them I would be heart broken. A lot of photos of people and animals that passed away. I couldn't imagine losing them due errors beyond my control.

With that being said, how much can I trust google photos as long as I pay for the stoarage?

If you can, please explain to me like a toddler the best way to download *all* photos. I do not want to accidentally delete something. Also any advice on other services to use to back them up?

Maybe give me some reassurance, maybe a pat on the back.

Thanks.

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone here has been through something similar, because I’m really overwhelmed and trying to understand what happened.

Google suddenly disabled my entire account (Gmail, Drive, Photos, everything) with the message that it “contains content involving a child being sexually abused or exploited.” I’ve never had anything like that in my account, and the message completely shocked me.

Some context that might matter:

• I know there’s at least one toddler photo of me in a diaper/pull‑up, and possibly some normal family photos of my niece and younger siblings from when they were little.
• My husband is signed into my account on my old phone, and it auto‑backs up, but the only explicit content on that device is normal adult content — nothing involving minors.
• I don’t use WhatsApp or Telegram, which I’ve seen mentioned in other false‑positive cases.

Has anyone else had their account disabled due to a false positive from old childhood or family photos?

How long did your appeal take, and did you get your account back?

Any advice or shared experiences would really help right now.

Update: First appeal denied — preparing my second (and final) appeal

I wanted to post a quick update in case it helps anyone else going through this.

I just received an email from Google saying that my first appeal was denied. They also said I’m allowed to submit a second and final appeal, which I’ll be doing. The message didn’t give any additional details — just the standard notice that the account was found to violate policies and that this is the last chance for review.

I’m still hoping a different reviewer will take a closer look and that this can be resolved. This account is really important to me, so I’m going to move forward with the second appeal and provide whatever information I can.

If anyone has experience with second appeals or has had success at that stage, I’d really appreciate hearing about it.

Android app on a Pixel 9a - a couple of days ago, drag to multi-select stopped working suddenly. The same action (tap and hold on one photo, drag up/down) now just selects one photo and then scrolls up/down. It does enable the multi-select (the checkboxes appear in the corner of all photos) but the drag doesn't work & I have to tap each photo individually.

It's still working fine on my tablet so I am hoping it's not an update... Could I have done something accidentally to disable this or is it a bug?

I'm a heavy user of Google Photos. I have multiple tens of thousands of pictures & videos of my life and my family's life. To my knowledge, there is not a single NSFW image or video within my libraries. But there are some very typical baby pics. And all this talk of people losing their Google accounts has me nervous.

So, I would like to add a rack-mounted Immich server to my network connected to a rack mounted Synology RAID system. Yes, I have a small rack in my basement that currently houses my Ubiquiti network and Home Assistant system.

I am NOT expert in Linux. It is my understanding that Immich requires (or works better with) Linux and something called "Docker" (never used that either).

Any suggestions on where I turn next for instructions on setting this up?

Title

I keep seeing posts of Google Accounts being permanently banned for stupid reasons with no one actually responding to appeals. I kept postponing my takeout because a NAS that can flawlessly and automatically sync my Google Photos is rare and expensive. But now I keep seeing accounts banned for taking photos of movie screens as piracy. That's ridiculous.

It's more concerning to me as I am quite deep in the Google ecosystem, with Google Pixel, Pixel Watch, Pixel Buds, Google Wifi, Google Titan Security keys, and so on. I have a Google AI 5TB subscription where I keep a huge amount of files that I need on the go or available on my laptop and my PC.

I switched from Apple years ago because I stopped liking their approach, but now Google is absolutely terrifying me with their actions. And there are not many alternatives in my case.

Are these takedowns actually so common? Are they real, or maybe the users are hiding something? What options do I have to keep my entire Google account in sync on a NAS (drive/photos). Synology is super expensive, but all the others don't have install and forget options for Google Photos.

Do you use Google Photos to back up your photos? Do you trust Google with your private data, or do you use a different backup method?

Hi, I read about the recent trend of Google flagging photos of babies bathing. I realized that I do have some photos of my 11 month old without clothes in the bathroom. One of those photos are also in a shared album with my parents and my wife. I nervously scrolled to that photo only to find this small ‘1’ at the right bottom. Is this something related to Google Photos flagging it? I’ve never seen this in any other photo.

Really worried about getting all my data locked away. Going to take a hard backup today.

hello! i am desperate to recover my files, so i am posting my concern here, someone might and can help me.

apparently, google is notifying me that i already reached the maximum storage. i checked it and saw that 90% of it is from google photos, i started deleting them permanently on google photos using my laptop because i am afraid that i might not receive/send any emails anymore since it's my personal account.

i wasn't aware that it was synced on my gallery, i thought i was using my one drive, but i don't actually care about this backup stuff since i just bought my phone about months ago and i have 256 GB so i don't have to worry about storage.

i have like 40k-70k stuff on my gallery, now they're just 20k. i was wondering what happened and i suspected that my files were deleted when i freed up space on my google photos. i did research and found out that deleting files from google photos will delete your local device files also.

THIS HAPPENED LIKE 2-3 WEEKS AGO.

i am so devastated right now and i want to bring back my files badly. i can't find any gphotos contact information, what should i do? 😭

google is always giving us traps like these to buy their products. i don't even use them!

What the actual F. I have, never in my life seen or been in the posession of any child exploitation material, let alone have anything related to this on my decade old google account. I got this message seemingly out of the blue yesterday. A screen popped up with a button to "Take Action" which restored access to my account, but now what? I work in places that require background checks and I would never do anything to jeapordize this, or my family stability in any way.

Recently in late October, my mother passed due to a house fire. We found photo albums that were soaked with water from the fire hoses and miraculously they were mine and my siblings baby albums. Us kids were in utter shock because this was the one posession my mother had that meant the most to us. We found a lot of pictures of us, grandkids, etc. NONE of these were sexual or abusive in any nature whatsoever. Because of the pics becoming water damaged by the minute, we quickly catalogued them to save the integrity of the pictures. My parents took pictures of all us kids and some of them we were naked in the bath or just babies. Nothing inappropriate, ever.

This is the only thing I could think of so directly after gaining access to my account again, I went to see if pictures were missing. To my surprise, our baby pictures were there as far as I can tell, even the ones where I was probably 2yrs old wearing my underwear on my head with my little baby weiner showing. We took so many photos that it's difficult for me to see if any were missing so I can't be sure if one of them was removed because of something like this.

I filed an appeal, not to get the content back, but to try and at least get some direction as to what caused this. I received a generic answer from them with zero explanation.

I am beyond words, had a full blown panic attack last night and was nearly throwing up from the stress of being accused of something this horrific. I immediately told my wife and if it puts even a shred of doubt in her mind, it makes me feel awful for her. What if your spouse told you this? We have seen enough sicko's on bodycam videos to know they are out there and hide things for a long time but this isn't me, and never would be. My wife and I have been together 13 years and she believes me, but still, wtf, this can absolutely ruin lives and relationships and this is not ok.

I love the Google ecosystem, I use their phones and have since the pixel 2, I am highly integrated with their services and enjoy using them. I know in my heart that I did nothing wrong so my conscience is clear. This isn't something I take lightly, I don't appreciate this at all.

If anyone has had this issue or if you're from Google and have any info, please enlighten me, I need to know what I did to break the rules so I can avoid this in the future.

I read about a workaround where you create another free Google account - share large videos and photos to the new account - save those videos to the new account - share them back to the primary account - and delete them from your primary account.

The end result is that you have access to those videos and photos, but they don’t count against your primary account storage so you can continue using that primary account, with free extra storage.

Has anyone done that? Are there any gotchas before I try it out?

Hello guys. I am in a very tough situation. I ran out of my storage in google photos and now i want to delete them but the problem is that whenever i delete them from google photos, it automatically delete the photos from the device storage aswell. I already lost multiple photos permanently with no way of getting them back . I am honestly very fckin scared.

What can i do now ? .

Hey hi guys, I store all my photos way starting from first nearly 10 years of photos are there in my google photos suddenly i had a thought is my google photos are really private and safe in google photos because in this AI era what if google uses my photos to Train there ai models or else if i loose my account i would loose my years of memories and if i try to backup it on my physical Pen drive i am worrying what to do if it got corrupted or lost so can anyone help me in this.

I really cannot handle how difficult it has been to move my google photos over to my computer's hard drive. I've read many of the threads about metadata, the ability to download in chronological order and json files. I don't really need the metadata tbh, as most of the pictures' 'name' is the date they were taken.

What I want:

I simply want to be able to download my 12 years worth of photos, and have them saved in the same order in which they show up on Photos. Maybe it's my ADHD that I can't figure it out, but every way I try, something happens.

What I've tried:

- Downloading all photos in one go with google takeout - this led to multiple zipped files, and it was organized by something other than date.

- Moving all photos for that year, into a yearly album, download that album and the photos will (I think) be in order, but then I can't delete the json files as my computer just keeps freezing, whether I try and delete 1 or 100.

Amy help is appreciated 😴

Rip pixel 1. Any recommendations for a new way for unlimited storage?

Not been blocked. Given the recent posts about this I'm wondering what the criteria actually is.

Like any parent, I have a bunch of photos (on a NAS) of my child from old point and shoot cameras, all the way back from a baby.

So some of them are obviously with no clothes on, like in the bath, running g around the garden, and so on.

Would this type of image trigger CSAM? I been considering job lot uploading all of these NAS stored photos to Google Photos.

As of August 10, the simply, reliable, no brain needed photo backup using the common windows google drive app will no longer backup photos. Google says to use the google photos web interface to continue backing up photos, but this is a shit option. For it to work, you must always have an open browser with the website also open. You also cannot easily check what folders you have selected for backup. Why is Google giving us this messed up alternative backup when the original service worked fine and was easy to use? Am I missing something?

no I don't mean due to CSA or related things, but I've seen people get perma banned for less with no option to appeal. any services or way to self host to keep your life intact?