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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.

Erik Uden 🍑

I 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.

mastodon.de/@ErikUden/11387936

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!

@thanius @ErikUden
I don't think they're incompetent.

@thanius @ErikUden I don't like them or trust them, but I don't think they're incompetent.

@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 @4censord
I think 4censord is right: protect your bank account, ASAP.

@book @ErikUden
... like the ex-gf who liked to play board games on the floor

@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.

@ErikUden

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. ...

@ErikUden @chbmeyer I think you're way underestimating the possibility that someone there saw the post (probably on Reddit etc), saw your relatively unusual name, found the account and banned it

@tomw @ErikUden @chbmeyer Keep in mind that the Apartheid Manchild got upset at someone dragging him on Twitter, looked him up, found out he had a Tesla car on order, and CANCELLED THE ORDER.

The billionaire baby's club can get VERY petty and colicy.

@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.

@JaxxAI @ErikUden @chbmeyer

You don't remember how thin-skinned Larry Ellison is...

All his agressuve behaviour in the 1990's and early 2000's that was aimed at Gates and MS.

@ErikUden @chbmeyer there are millions of Oracle users

The chance it happened to you after posting about oracle, without a massive amount of accidentally deleted accounts, is very small.

@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.

@ErikUden @ivor
Might be a coincident, what I - to be honest - don't believe! But be it as it is, either it's real coincident and EU GDPR will show them how to act or Larry is begging to get a place on the list for those to get luigi'd. So keep my fingers crossed it's coincidence! 😜

@ErikUden @ivor @jhamby invoke the GDPR / Data protection rights and ask for all data they have on you. They must reply by law. Otherwise sue them for damages. Thats the language american corporations at least somewhat understand.

@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 @ivor I'd give it the opposite odds. Oracle has always been a far right entity, and now they're going even fuhrer that direction trying to get TikTok.

@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

@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.

@ErikUden

huh... Ellison has never been known for being controlling or vindictive... :D

@ErikUden And there it is, your reason. Well that was rather easy to figure out. Petty bastards though.

@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!

@annika @ErikUden Pay for it. That's the Oracle service guarantee: you will 100% be able to pay them whatever it is they decide you owe them every month. If you can do anything else at all, that's gravy.

@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.“

@ErikUden

"Coincidence".

Any US technology provider is suspect from now on. Larry Ellison kissed the Imperial ring.

Sorry about your misadventure.

@ErikUden @stux gotta make room for stargate and TikTok rite?

@ErikUden sounds like someone was not on their best behaviour…