A user suddenly had debts of 15,000 euros to Google overnight. He had activated a warning feature, which, however, did not work as he had hoped. Google refunded his money, yet the user is dissatisfied.
A user reports on Reddit that he received a high bill from Google Cloud overnight. Google Cloud is a service provider that offers databases, data analysis, and artificial intelligence (AI) as a service.
Venturaxi explained that he had set up a budget function that was supposed to warn him when costs would explode. He set this warning to 10 Australian dollars (AUD). However, while he was sleeping, the problem occurred:
While I was sleeping, about 60,000 unauthorized API requests were made through my account using a key I cannot identify.
The next day, he received a bill from Google for 25,672.86 Australian dollars. This is approximately 15,000 euros.
The problem seems to have been that the budget function in Google Cloud only warns but does not automatically throttle or stop, while at the same time, an unknown API key leads to massive, unwanted expenses.
Google identified a so-called API key as the cause, but this key allegedly did not appear in the user’s project at all.
Google reimburses the user, yet he is dissatisfied
What happened next? The user contacted Google support. The provider, according to the user, has agreed to waive the high debts and refund his money:
I received confirmation today that the amount of 25,672.86 $ has been waived and the 9,800 $ that Google had split across five consecutive payment attempts has been credited back.
Nevertheless, he is dissatisfied with the situation: Because the user’s actual frustration is not only the high amount but also that he could not clearly trace the cause and that the system did not effectively protect him from damage. The story could repeat itself at any time if someone taps into the API.
In the end, the user’s story is also a warning: A budget alert does not replace a cost throttle, and if a service or key is compromised, the bill can explode very quickly without anyone noticing.
A similar situation happened to another user who also wanted to compute records through the cloud. However, it was not an external error, but rather he miscalculated the costs. He had ChatGPT estimate the costs, which turned out to be an expensive mistake: User wants to analyze data, lets ChatGPT underestimate the costs, soon receives a bill for 50,000 euros
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!