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My account is sending spam emails

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Re: My account is sending spam emails

#111

Post by jlgaddis »

sethvargo wrote: post #108

Hi all, Seth Vargo here from Google. Thank you all for taking the time to report the issue, and thank you for your patience as we fix it. Our engineering teams are aware of this issue and they are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. You should no longer see new spam messages appear in your sent box, and existing spam messages will be automatically removed over the next few days.

Perhaps you could encourage them (on our behalf) to write up a blog post afterwards? I know that many folks here would be curious to hear how they "resolve" this particular instance -- which effectively depends on a third-party with a misconfigured SPF record -- short of switching to "p=reject".

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#112

Post by [deleted] »

appleiigs wrote: post #110
sethvargo wrote: post #108

Hi all, Seth Vargo here from Google. Thank you all for taking the time to report the issue, and thank you for your patience as we fix it. Our engineering teams are aware of this issue and they are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. You should no longer see new spam messages appear in your sent box, and existing spam messages will be automatically removed over the next few days.

Can you comment on what the issue actually is? Is the issue with gmail or telus or both?

[deleted]

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#113

Post by lione »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #100

So who is Telus, and why are they special? Is it Google who has a relationship with Telus -- because I'm pretty sure I don't. Can Google prevent Telus from doing whatever they're doing? Or is Telus just the victim/conduit of the real spammers?

Telus is a phone company. They presumably deal with text/email stuff through their phone services, and they presumably have some sort of interactions with Gmail as a result. This isn't Telus doing it, it's just spammers utilizing the ability for Telus to send emails to customers. From someone else in the thread: "it looks like telus.com has set up SPF records allowing people to send mail as @gmail.com via Telus' servers. That's fine. These messages are being sent with a "reply@telus.com" return address (the "envelope from")". Telus is just being maliciously used for something it rightfully offers to customers.

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#114

Post by sethvargo »

jlgaddis wrote: post #111
sethvargo wrote: post #108

Hi all, Seth Vargo here from Google. Thank you all for taking the time to report the issue, and thank you for your patience as we fix it. Our engineering teams are aware of this issue and they are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. You should no longer see new spam messages appear in your sent box, and existing spam messages will be automatically removed over the next few days.

Perhaps you could encourage them (on our behalf) to write up a blog post afterwards? I know that many folks here would be curious to hear how they "resolve" this particular instance -- which effectively depends on a third-party with a misconfigured SPF record -- short of switching to "p=reject".

This is all the information I can provide at this time. Part of the Google SRE practice is to engage is post mortems, but they are usually internal-only. I’ll do some investigation to see if there’s more information we can share later, but unfortunately I can’t make any promises.

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#115

Post by sethvargo »

appleiigs wrote: post #110
sethvargo wrote: post #108

Hi all, Seth Vargo here from Google. Thank you all for taking the time to report the issue, and thank you for your patience as we fix it. Our engineering teams are aware of this issue and they are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. You should no longer see new spam messages appear in your sent box, and existing spam messages will be automatically removed over the next few days.

Can you comment on what the issue actually is? Is the issue with gmail or telus or both?

We will share more information as it becomes available and relevant.

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#116

Post by lione »

Keverw wrote: post #8

I got 2 of these a hour ago. "This may be a spoofed message" Google says, I clicked spam even though it's from myself. It was to me and a bunch of other emails. Wasn't in my sent folder though and no one else has accessed my account. "Sexy Girls Asian Girls Looking for US Men" is the subject and says it's sent from "----------------- via telus.com" Really odd, seems to be some ISP in Canada and I live in the USA... W…

Telus is a phone/ISP company, they're pretty much uninvolved other then the ability to send emails from a @gmail.com address for their customers needs. Spammers are just utilizing that for malicious purposes with spoofed headers. As for how they got your email, the spammers could very well be working from the US too, Telus is just a tool. But then again on the internet boundaries matter less and they could be halfway across the world and got your email from a random online leaked list.

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#117

Post by appleiigs »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #100

So who is Telus, and why are they special? Is it Google who has a relationship with Telus -- because I'm pretty sure I don't. Can Google prevent Telus from doing whatever they're doing? Or is Telus just the victim/conduit of the real spammers?

Telus is a big telecom company in Canada: landline, mobile, ISP, TV. Other big companies comparable are Roger’s and Bell. Telus has a wikipedia page.

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#118

Post by jlgaddis »

appleiigs wrote: post #110
sethvargo wrote: post #108

Hi all, Seth Vargo here from Google. Thank you all for taking the time to report the issue, and thank you for your patience as we fix it. Our engineering teams are aware of this issue and they are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. You should no longer see new spam messages appear in your sent box, and existing spam messages will be automatically removed over the next few days.

Can you comment on what the issue actually is? Is the issue with gmail or telus or both?

A little bit of both, really.

If Telus didn't have a misconfigured SPF record that caused host_check() to inadvertently (always?) return "pass", Gmail likely would have classified the messages as spam and the spammers probably would've quickly gave up.

On the other hand, one could reasonably argue that Gmail -- with all of their advanced algorithms and such -- should have been able to easily determine that these messages were "forged" (the absence of a valid DKIM-Signature: should have been a giant red flag, for example) and reject them, ideally, at SMTP time or, at minimum, immediately dump them into a user's folder. Likewise, a more restrictive DMARC policy (i.e., "p=reject") than what Gmail currently has ("p=none") would also have caused these messages to be rejected (although DMARC can potentially introduce other issues or unintended side effects).

Alternatively, you could blame it on the spammers.

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#119

Post by hedora »

tomkwong wrote: post #102
dawnerd wrote: post #58

Just wanted to say, the top response on the google forum is exactly why google needs real support and not community members copy-pasting “solutions”.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/50200?hl=en

I think that link was pasted in sarcastically - Microsoft “support” style, where someone is paid to keyword-match your question without bothering to understand your question.

Re: My account is sending spam emails

#120

Post by ebikelaw »

some1else wrote: post #86

Most people don't realize some services you "Logged into with Google" can also send emails in your name. I didn't come across anyone checking authorized apps in that thread. While this appears to be a spoofing issue, I suggest pruning the list of authorized apps frequently: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3466521?hl=en

Most people "don't realize" that because it's totally false. Only holders of specific OAuth scopes can use the Gmail API. The "basic account info" access that login with Google grants is not sufficient.
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