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I got an email notifying me that Google will activate the service appenginereporting.googleapis.com on my Google Cloud project, called My Project. Which is a surprise to me because I have never attempted to use Google Cloud. Ever. Also, My Project has a creepy Project ID, secret-air-######. It's so secret I never even told myself about it, apparently.

What is this nonsense, and how do I kill it dead?

Please be specific. I know NOTHING about Google Cloud or its management plane. If I need to open some well hidden control panel, please tell me exactly how to find it step-by-step.

UPDATE: Following the answer below I was able to easily delete the project. The project was owned by an organization called, "No organization", that seems to have gone away after I deleted the project. The resource manager screen is now blank. However, I cannot find a way to close out the entire Google Cloud account.

To me this stinks like something Google 'just did' because I have a gmail account. I've been 'opted-in' without having noticed or having not been given an opportunity to 'opt-out'. Now that it's there I have no control over getting rid of it.

CAB
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  • 1) Have you tried to verify that the email is real since you have never opened an account? 2) Did you go to the Google Cloud website and check your account? 3) The project name is normal, there is nothing benign with that name. 4) Check your credit card statements, have you been billed by Google Cloud? 5) You might have received that email because you are listed as a `member` on the project. Provided that your credit card is not attached to that account, there is nothing to worry about. 6) Update your question once you have more details. – John Hanley Mar 23 '23 at 19:59
  • 7) Unless you are the project owner, you cannot delete the project. – John Hanley Mar 23 '23 at 20:00

1 Answers1

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Assuming the email is legitimate you would need to:

  • Log in to the GCP Console (its web UI) by going here: https://console.cloud.google.com/ and logging in using your Google Account credentials.
  • Once logged in, go to the page where projects can be managed. At time of writing this URL works: https://console.cloud.google.com/cloud-resource-manager but they do like to change their URLs. I got there by going to the Clean Up section of their Getting Started guide (https://cloud.google.com/go/getting-started#clean-up) and clicking the blue Go to Manage resources button.
  • Select the project you want to delete, by checking the check box to the left of its name.
  • Click on Delete near the top of the page, which should have become clickable when you selected a project.
  • A pop-up pane will ask you to type in the Project ID (which it gives you to copy) and then click Shutdown (which might say Shut Down Anyway if the project has activity in it).

As this GCP support answer says:

"Shutting down a project stops all billing and traffic serving, shuts down any Google Cloud Platform App Engine applications, and terminates all Compute Engine instances. All project data associated with Google Cloud and Google APIs services becomes inaccessible.

After a 30-day waiting period, the project and associated data are permanently deleted from the console."

So wait 30 days and then it should be finally deleted. But you should not get billed in the meantime.

One legitimate way to get emails like this would be if someone has added you to their own GCP account. But it might have to be an organization-type account, and you would certainly need to have project deleter permission on the project in question (which is also granted by roles such as project owner).

bosconi
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  • Thank you. The project was owned by an organization called, "No organization". That seems to have gone away after I deleted the project. The resource manager screen is now blank. I'm a bit dismayed there is still a Google Cloud account available in my name. Do you know how to close the whole thing out? – CAB Mar 30 '23 at 18:13