[lnsru]

That’s what exactly one marketing guy thought me: never use your real account to launch any ad campaign. Create individual account somewhere for each campaign. Because automated systems are out of control and can ban you anytime without a clear reason. Even for legit food or cosmetics ads it happens sometimes. So it’s time for you to create another account and expect to get control of your old one in the future.

[duxup]

Same goes with being a developer.

I know a guy who developed for a company who over time "became" a little shady. At one point they were simple apps and this dev was working for them on contract so he put out some one time apps, his personal account was associated for a while (bad choice).

Anyway he leaves and joins another company and suddenly that company is banned from the Play Store. Took awhile to figure out that his previous employer (and some mysterious sub companies) were banned at the same time and presumably associated through this guy who again at his new employer had his personal account tied in some way.

And in fairness his new employer very much could have looked like a shadow company created by the first.

Keep that stuff separated.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>Keep that stuff separated.

Which is what sketchy spam companies do...

[duxup]

It is, but also legitimately different companies and employees.

[grajaganDev]

There are many best practices (such as using multifactor authentication) used by both legit and sketchy organizations.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Yeh, but we're not talking about "Hitler drank water, if you drink water you're a Nazi".

We're talking about a practice that is intended to avoid abuse detection. In the case of the non-sketchy parties, they're hoping to avoid false positives, but they're still doing the same thing. I'm not criticizing, I'm pointing out irony. When legitimate users have to do the same things as sketchy users, your abuse detection sucks.

[grajaganDev]

>When legitimate users have to do the same things as sketchy users, your abuse detection sucks.

Great point and I fully agree.

[qbqetell]

Actually I once tried to create a backup account. It was restricted immediately. But If I knew using the ad campaign would have triggered this, I would have avoided it entirely.

[grajaganDev]

I have read so many case of "company XYZ locked me out of my account". In the majority of cases, the activity was not just as an everyday user but also as a developer, advertiser, etc.

There is by necessity far more scrutiny on this activity.

Don't risk your main account by running ads, uploading apps, etc. Get a dedicated account for that.

[ceejayoz]

Brand-new accounts running large ad campaigns get much higher scrutiny, though.