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This is a public service announcement to never ever use Oracle
After realizing that my servers were offline since the 25th of January 2025, I've been in contact with Oracle support in a multitude of ways trying to figure out why this happened and how we can recover both the account and data.
I wasn't told that my account was disabled. I didn't receive an E-Mail or anything. When logging in, I was simply told that my username or password was incorrect. After (successfully) resetting my password twice, I realized it wasn't about the password. Oracle had just deleted my account without any notice.
Both through calls and text, always with the same service request (SR) number, I contacted support. Initially, support told me that my account was flagged “Inactive” and hence disabled. They also verified that they saw me login almost daily and that I never missed a payment or anything. Even if an account was inactive, that's never a reason to disable it, especially without any warning E-Mail or an E-Mail letting me know that my account was disabled in the first place.
This chat was the result of all of that, where the highest team I've yet been elevated to told me that there's nothing they can do about it, there's no reason they can tell me for why this happened, and there's no one else I could ask.
@ErikUden@mastodon.deI also love how I ask “Is there anything I can do to avoid this happening in the future?” and they respond with “Oh, don't worry. You don't have a future at Oracle. This will not happen to you again, as we don't allow for you to make another account.”
The tech person at Oracle at least lets me know that they'd feel similarly betrayed and dislike this handling of user data too 
Don't worry: I have backups of all of this. It's just kafkaesque what is happening here.
Interestingly, two days before Oracle deleted my account and all servers associated with it, I publicly criticized Oracle's CEO in a viral post for promising dystopian AI surveillance technology to his investors.
https://mastodon.de/@ErikUden/113879369270806353
What a weird coincidence.
@ErikUden What the hell? Not even an explanation? I mean, I've worked with Oracle for a couple of clients before and know that they are utterly incompetent as a company but this is the worst treatment I've ever heard of. I'm so sorry!
@indyradio Hyperbole of course but not far from.
@thanius @ErikUden
Well, that's the standard nowadays, for international big tech, especially if you are not a big paying customer.
Bluntly, you as a single customer who uses mostly the free layer of the product, do not bring in enough cash individually to risk any form of legal entanglement. Giving you even a one word explanation why, might limit them how they defend themselves, should the customer decide to sue them.
@ErikUden@mastodon.de if you're looking for a new host I can personally recommend royalehosting.net, customer support there is fantastic
@ErikUden can't you do a gdrp data request, and see whether that turns anything up?
@4censord Will do. The reason parts of the chat are cut out (you can see a ~10 minute gap if you look at the time) was me trying to convince him that as an EU citizen they can't do that to me or at least have to give me insight into my own data, which includes the cloud servers I currently still pay for.
@ErikUden ah, then also check how far into the future they already charged you
@4censord I was just charged for the month of January and the value looks similar to other months, hence it's not like the last week (since the 25th, ever since I couldn't access / it was "deleted”) was not charged.
@ErikUden It's so unfortunate to hear that.
I hope you get everything in order and aren't too hurt by these series of events.
@ErikUden Not long ago I would have considered it paranoid to draw a connection here…
@ErikUden
Oh. Teh. Lulz.
Edit: found the GDPR thread below.
Also, isn't GDPR applicable here? (I had also a account deleted with the reason of “we can't tell you” (and it happened while I was asking for help with the registration) and the help desk ignored my questions for data. But I had other problems and did not get very far.)
@dzwiedziu You're absolutely right. I've sent a GDPR request immediately. The EU stands against kafkaesque practices.
@ErikUden @dzwiedziu It would be interesting to see how that played out. Please share - if possible.
@Hammerwell @dzwiedziu I will keep everyone updated. Do not worry.
Welcome to the oligarchy!
"Interestingly, two days before Oracle deleted my account and all servers associated with it, I publicly criticized Oracle's CEO in a viral post for promising dystopian AI surveillance technology to his investors."
"What a weird coincidence."
@ErikUden oh. I was already wondering whether you had annoyed NSA, Trump or someone of his friends. ...
@chbmeyer a post I recently made was reposted and only through a friend of mine seeing it I realized it had 3.8 million views on Reddit. To this day I'm being sent Instagram posts by other accounts reposting that daily through friends or because these accounts tag me.
It's easy (and even appreciated by me) when my posts leave this platform. I don't think I've angered anyone, I'm way too irrelevant. However, when arbitration is the norm, a small act like this can easily be pushed under the rug.
I guess the problem rather is that it may as well be true. Since we're given no explanation, or rather a refusal to explain what happened here by Oracle, we must come up with what sounds like a conspiracy.
Do I believe there's really a connection here? 99.9% sure there isn't. Is it possible for any AI to scan the internet for criticics and make their life harder? Sure is. Is it most likely Oracle's arbitrary practices? Yeah.
This could've happened to anyone, a critic, fan, or someone who's indifferent to Oracle. That's almost worse than it only happening to someone critical of their CEO.
张殿李
@ErikUden @chbmeyer maybe it's completely unrelated to your free speech criticism of the CEO but rather a technical issue at their end. For instance, your account is corrupted and embarrassingly they have no way to restore it or fix it. Or maybe you were accidentally deleted when in fact it should have been someone else... but they can't restore. So, u get... as we say in the UK... Thrown under the bus! Just a theory mind, I can't imagine criticising a CEO of a mega corp is gonna get you booted.
@ErikUden it's amazing just how fragile, bitter, vindictive and thin skinned these right wing free speech absolutist capitalists are.
@ivor just to be clear, what I'm saying is a baseless accusation. I'm 99.99% sure that they didn't deliberately do this to mess with me. Although it'd be funny if they did. Even worse: maybe Oracle treats everyone like this, criticics and supporters alike.
@afink Will do!
@afink
I think that needs to happen Monday along with some massive lawsuits against Elon because he has no business with any of my personal information...
These people are criminals, they are not intelligent.
@ErikUden Honestly? I think we should throw out the whole 'don't attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance' tenet. It's very useful when dealing with people who have little power and responsibility, but for people who do, choosing to act on ignorance or incompetence IS an act of malice.
@ivor
@TheNovemberMan @ivor @ErikUden Only punch?
@zdl @ivor @ErikUden Oh please, take it as far as you're comfortable. #EatTheRich
@ErikUden don't you want to have a chat with a lawyer about this? I think @wbs_legal would be very interested in looking at this.
@Arsimael I have a legal protection insurance and will talk to the people there. More importantly we also have Cyber insurance for various things, if anything is lost that'd also be covered by them.
I'll look into it, for now I'll just make sure that I'm understanding the situation correctly because at the moment I feel like I'm missing something or I did something terribly wrong. Like, I ignored some E-Mails warning me about the termination or something, but there's just nothing. I'll figure this out and see where it goes...
@ErikUden Wish you the best. And I hope this was just an unfortunate mistake on oracle's side. (And there are backups ;-) )
@ErikUden
But how… did they… make the connection?
@musevg my real name here and “erik.uden1@gmail.com” on their platform? To be fair, I also think it's a stretch. It's most likely arbitrary actions by Oracle which make zero sense.
@ErikUden It's nice to know your voice is heard. I get these disturbing reminders, and sometimes visibly IRL, which is the reason why Vernon Jarrett used to secretly carry a pistol.
Now think about Hunter Thompson as someone who was not a clown, but knew what was happening around him.
huh... Ellison has never been known for being controlling or vindictive... :D
⁂@ErikUden deletion absolutelly not related with your previous post, for sure*end of sarcasm mode
@ErikUden You violated obviously the big tech bros mantra: FREE SPEECH – as this means clearly: Free speech for all the fascist leaders and their clans – but not for the people.
@ErikUden what does one do with an Oracle account
@annika rent cloud servers. I had one with a Nextcloud instance on it!
@ErikUden Really, really weird …
„We cannot tell you why your account was deleted, because if we did we would admit that we censor everything that speaks against our boss.“
"Coincidence".
Any US technology provider is suspect from now on. Larry Ellison kissed the Imperial ring.
Sorry about your misadventure.
@ErikUden sounds like someone was not on their best behaviour…