Gmail Users Get Owned?

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Rich Tate

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jun 9, 2005
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It appears that someone may have thrown a wrench into Google’s popular e-mail service, as numerous people have reported losing the entire contents of their accounts.

Starting as early as Dec. 17, some subscribers of the internet search giant's Gmail offering have found that their messages and accounts were wiped out, according to some accounts.
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That would be horrible....I stand to lose over 7500 spam messages.....I better start looking for a back-up solution....
 
But if you use an email client, like Thunderbird, messages are downloaded to your computer, so if your Gmail account was wiped on their servers, you'd still have the messages.

Right?
 
GJSNeptune said:
But if you use an email client, like Thunderbird, messages are downloaded to your computer, so if your Gmail account was wiped on their servers, you'd still have the messages.

Right?
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<EEK> Hopefully!
 
Yes, unfortunatley mine is still there with all 20,000+ spam emails in tact. Worst spam filter ever. They say it's from me signing up for things, yet I never sign up for anything that would send me spam, so...I blame google. I'll never use gmail again. The spam just showed up one day, at first it was 2 or 3 email...easily added to the block list, but it quickly became 100+ a day. Ludicrous.

Also impossible to block them all since each address was slightly different.
 
I use 2 gmail accounts. I don't have a problem at all with spam.
4-6 spam a week.


You must have slipped up some where to get that much spam.
 
Gmails spam sucks, I signed up and gave noone my email address at all. The next day I logged in to 50 spam messages, granted, they are in the spam folder but still. What the heck, I have 1000 in there now and I get only around 10-15 actual messages a month that are to me.

No, I do not have malware so they did not get it there either. They almost all go into my spam filter and only 1-2 a month hit my inbox but I have a hotmail account that I have had for over 6 years and I get no spam in it at all.

Oh, and back on topic - my account has had no issues.
 
I get 4 or 5 spams on my gmail a week. That's it. I wonder though....are the people who get so many using hte standard gmail addressing scheme of [email protected]?

As for the article itself...

Pronk noted that prior to the crash, he had repeatedly received a notification from his web browser that more than 100 scripts, or web-based programs, were running slowly. Scripts are sometimes used by malicious attackers to spread viruses. Several of the people who posted messages, including Pronk, said they used the Firefox 2 web browser.
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That almost doesn't sound like a gmail issue.
 
I must be the luckiest person on the planet. I have 100% success with gmails spam filter. I have -never- seen a single spam message in my folders, except of course, for the 'spam' folder.

Of course, I have tons of "special" emails from places I buy from, such as frys.com, but that, technically, doesnt' constitute spam, since I've given them, personally, my email address.

gmail.jpg



That's my mail since christmas day.

I consider ALL that mail to be legit.
 
dblagent said:
Gmails spam sucks, I signed up and gave noone my email address at all. The next day I logged in to 50 spam messages, granted, they are in the spam folder but still. What the heck, I have 1000 in there now and I get only around 10-15 actual messages a month that are to me.

No, I do not have malware so they did not get it there either. They almost all go into my spam filter and only 1-2 a month hit my inbox but I have a hotmail account that I have had for over 6 years and I get no spam in it at all.

Oh, and back on topic - my account has had no issues.
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Gmail doesn't delete ANY spam, as far as I know. It sorts it to the spam filter. That means it's doing it's job. How many emails have been just DELETED by other services, that might have been legit. I can go to my gmail spam filter and quick scan. Gmails method of spam handling is "we're not going to actually DELETE anything, we'll just sort it" .. I like that method MUCH better.

FWIW, on my pop email clients [for the 36 email addresses I have], I receive (I run my own filters in my "local" mail program, I receive on average of 400 spam messages a day. My filter DOESN'T catch about.. 10 a day.

Gmail is doing far better than me. I get maybe 10-15 emails a day sent to my gmail spam folder, but NONE go to my inbox.
 
From what I read earlier it was suspected to be a cross site scripting exploit.

Don't remember if it was FireFox or IE but you needed to have visited a malicious site which would then steal your authentication and log into your gmail account.
 
Spectre said:
I get 4 or 5 spams on my gmail a week. That's it. I wonder though....are the people who get so many using hte standard gmail addressing scheme of [email protected]?

As for the article itself...



That almost doesn't sound like a gmail issue.
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Doesn't sound like a gmail issue at all. I've used gmail for a long while and have never seen a single spam message in my inbox. The people saying "no I don't have malware", your friends could have a virus that picks their contacts, it could have been randomly generated like with hotmail by spammers off of common words/names, etc., or you do have malware or have signed up to a message board that isn't legit with the gmail and now are being spammed after having been sold to a spam database. Practice some basic security and common sense!
 
Aww here it is
http://www.thestreet.com/_more/newsanalysis/technet/10330198.html


For those complaining about SPAM in the SPAM folder WTF? That is what the folder is for.. If messages marked as SPAM where deleted instead, there is a good chance that once in a while those important emails you are waiting for would be miss tagged and deleted.. At least with the SPAM folder you have 30 days to check of false positives.
 
Lazybones said:
From what I read earlier it was suspected to be a cross site scripting exploit.

Don't remember if it was FireFox or IE but you needed to have visited a malicious site which would then steal your authentication and log into your gmail account.
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Ahhh, as was thought, a USER security issue, not a gmail issue.
 
Rich Tate said:
Me too Spec, if that. I also do not have rich.tate@gmail tho.
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Yeah I don't use the standard name scheme either.....and my anecdotal questioning of gmail users seems to be that those that don't use the standard scheme get less spam (even in their spam folders) as you indicated.
 
And thats why i use outlook...as soona s it sync's with gmail; it deletes them from gmail anyway!
 
I don't get it, I've been using gmail since the beginning and I get maybe....maybe 1 spam message a month. Yes a month. The rest find their way to the spam folder as it should be. I don't have problems with forum signups, or login info being sent to spam like I do on other services. So far *knock on wood* it has been the perfect email service.

And once again it looks like this problem was user error caused.
 
gr!m said:
They say it's from me signing up for things, yet I never sign up for anything that would send me spam, so...I blame google.
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This is the rough equivalent of saying "I smoked marijuana, but I didn't inhale. It's just silly to make such a statement since if you've got an email address you'll get spam. You can go create an email address right now, a brand new one, at Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc... hell, go create one at your own ISP and never ever EVER give it out to anyone, or any website, never make mention of it to any service anywhere, with the most ridiculously anonymous or random looking account name you can dream up...

And I promise you, within a week of creating it you'll have spam, period.

There is no protection from it anymore, really. I've used Gmail since about a week after it went "live" and I have never seen any spam reach my actual Inbox, amazingly. The one or two pieces of stuff that I thought were spam were just emails from friends I hadn't spoken with in years and they responded from email accounts I didn't recognize yet.

Gmail works fine... this is primarily another example of F.U.D. at work. If people lost emails in a mishap, that's a problem, but if not, then it's nothing to worry about.

Nothing is perfect in the computer world, and I've seen multiple redundant RAID 5 (meaning more than one RAID 5 setup covering the same data) as well as offline and remote backups go bad, almost all at the same time.

Shit happens... so deal with it.
 
gr!m said:
They say it's from me signing up for things, yet I never sign up for anything that would send me spam, so...I blame google.
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This is the rough equivalent of saying "I smoked marijuana, but I didn't inhale." It's just silly to make such a statement since if you've got an email address you'll get spam. You can go create an email address right now, a brand new one, at Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc... hell, go create one at your own ISP and never ever EVER give it out to anyone, or any website, never make mention of it to any service anywhere, with the most ridiculously anonymous or random looking account name you can dream up...

And I promise you, within a week of creating it you'll have spam, period.

There is no protection from it anymore, really. I've used Gmail since about a week after it went "live" and I have never seen any spam reach my actual Inbox, amazingly. The one or two pieces of stuff that I thought were spam were just emails from friends I hadn't spoken with in years and they responded from email accounts I didn't recognize yet.

Gmail works fine... this is primarily another example of F.U.D. at work. If people lost emails in a mishap, that's a problem, but if not, then it's nothing to worry about.

Nothing is perfect in the computer world, and I've seen multiple redundant RAID 5 (meaning more than one RAID 5 setup covering the same data) as well as offline and remote backups go bad, almost all at the same time.

Shit happens... so deal with it.[/QUOTE]
 
gr!m said:
Yes, unfortunatley mine is still there with all 20,000+ spam emails in tact. Worst spam filter ever. They say it's from me signing up for things, yet I never sign up for anything that would send me spam, so...I blame google. I'll never use gmail again. The spam just showed up one day, at first it was 2 or 3 email...easily added to the block list, but it quickly became 100+ a day. Ludicrous.

Also impossible to block them all since each address was slightly different.
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Funny thing you're having such problems with spam. I have 3 gmail accounts since the early days and very little spam gets through. I use one for purchases; one for personal emails; and one for web forums and other types of sites. I get the most spam from my personal usage (people need to learn how to forward email properly). The most I get in a week is one or two.

I certainly don't know what you do while surfing the web or emailing, but from my friends and family, we've all been very happy with Gmail's spam filter, very happy.
 
ive had gmail for a few months now, 48 spam messages in the spam folder, ZERO spam messages in my inbox, and ZERO actual emails mis-sorted into my spam folder. For a free service, gmail doesnt have flashing banner ads, and it seems to know the difference beween "V1AGRA$1.50! C1ALIS PRINTER CHEESE IRON" and emails from paypal or my ISPs billing service.

No lost messages, no internets getting tangled up for 5 days... Not bad for a free service.
 
Maybe I'm confused, maybe I'm just stupid.. but..

beta.jpg


Hasn't that word been come to mean "Expect things to get screwed up from time to time" ?


Like I said, maybe it's just me.........
 
I checked my Gmail everyday even before the story came out and Im still getting my email and none of my older emails have gotten deleted. Besides its in Beta and it might be attributed to user error so who knows. Any spam? Whats that? Haven't gotten spam in my in box but sure filled up my junk mail box.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Doesn't sound like a gmail issue at all. I've used gmail for a long while and have never seen a single spam message in my inbox. The people saying "no I don't have malware", your friends could have a virus that picks their contacts, it could have been randomly generated like with hotmail by spammers off of common words/names, etc., or you do have malware or have signed up to a message board that isn't legit with the gmail and now are being spammed after having been sold to a spam database. Practice some basic security and common sense!
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HA - I have never emailed a friend from this account - I email noone ever, and I remove malware daily on peoples copmuters as that is my job so I actually know I have none because I do know what I'm talking about here. I'm extremely security aware, I do absolutely noting even remotely "unsecure" on my computers. I assume it could have been gotten from Intel, Microsoft or AMD or someone being unsecure, but in my case I started getting spam in my filter literally the day after I singed up and noone had it at all yet. No big deal but I wish it was better.
 
dblagent said:
HA - I have never emailed a friend from this account - I email noone ever, and I remove malware daily on peoples copmuters as that is my job so I actually know I have none because I do know what I'm talking about here. I'm extremely security aware, I do absolutely noting even remotely "unsecure" on my computers. I assume it could have been gotten from Intel, Microsoft or AMD or someone being unsecure, but in my case I started getting spam in my filter literally the day after I singed up and noone had it at all yet. No big deal but I wish it was better.
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Sucks to be you. I got 5 spamzors a week. Straight to the spam folder.

Gmail must like me better or something.
 
CyberDeus-RagDoll said:
Maybe I'm confused, maybe I'm just stupid.. but..

<snip>

Hasn't that word been come to mean "Expect things to get screwed up from time to time" ?


Like I said, maybe it's just me.........
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And, that is why they will never remove "Beta" from their gmail service. I haven't had any problems with gmail and I have been a member since it started. Like stated earlier, probably just a user issue.
 
Crosshairs said:
That would be horrible....I stand to lose over 7500 spam messages.....I better start looking for a back-up solution....
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F'ing classic!!!
 
CyberDeus-RagDoll said:
I must be the luckiest person on the planet. I have 100% success with gmails spam filter. I have -never- seen a single spam message in my folders, except of course, for the 'spam' folder.

Of course, I have tons of "special" emails from places I buy from, such as frys.com, but that, technically, doesnt' constitute spam, since I've given them, personally, my email address.

gmail.jpg



That's my mail since christmas day.

I consider ALL that mail to be legit.
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Dude like...his dad owns a dealership.
 
I have had 3 gmail accounts for since the start of the email service and have nearly 50,000 emails in 2 of them and still only get maybe 2 or 3 spams in my inbox every 2 or 3 weeks.
I also download all my gmail onto my computer so I have no worry of my internet account being wiped.

Cheers
 
I have had Gmail since day one..and no problems. I am an average user, I should consider my self lucky. I think it depends on where you go on the Net. I have friends who get killed with spam but they go to Web sites that only Sailors go to..:)
 
gr!m said:
Yes, unfortunatley mine is still there with all 20,000+ spam emails in tact. Worst spam filter ever. They say it's from me signing up for things, yet I never sign up for anything that would send me spam, so...I blame google. I'll never use gmail again. The spam just showed up one day, at first it was 2 or 3 email...easily added to the block list, but it quickly became 100+ a day. Ludicrous.

Also impossible to block them all since each address was slightly different.
Click to expand...

You might be on to something...
http://www.homeentertainment.engadg...il-bug-exposes-your-mail-account-to-spammers/
 
The exploit on that site still works, BTW.

Either way, it's obviously not massively exploited because I have my gmail open 90% of the time and I still only have a few spam emails.
 
G-Mail's SPAM filter is great IMO. I get about 10 a day but they all go straight to the spam folder. The only thing I have been having trouble with is e-mails that all have the word "Momma" in the subject line. I have marked about 150 of them as SPAM but they keep coming back into my inbox because they all come from different addresses...
 
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