141–150 of 242 posts
I wonder if this has to do with the massive number of google calendar invites I’ve been getting as payment/billing notifications lately. I’ve not been reporting them because I already know they aren’t valid and do not google’s work for them
I thought they fixed that spam method a while ago
Google suspend email accounts that get lots of spam reports. It happens a couple of times a year for salespeople in my company who use Gmass (a bulk email sending tool). I mention it only as a useful data point, and in the absence of anyone else on the thread mentioning that Google have robust email abuse monitoring.
I think in this case and all the others. They're not sending emails directly from their gmail address. But they are adding victim emails to other Google services and then Google themselves send them invitations emails. And if you name your service like "Google helpdesk - password reset" or something like that. Invitation email from Google will look very official, but URL in the email will be controlled by the attacke…
In recent months I'm seeing instances where random personal mail accounts on a server I run would receive a barrage of mail in a short amount of time.
Mail seems to be bounced via Google Groups - they are sent from Google's IPs and have headers like X-Google-Group-Id, List-*, etc. all pointing to Google Groups. The actual group ID changes after each individual instance of this. However when I actually check e.g. the List-Archive URL, the group appears to be already been deleted.
The content of mail looks like it originates from various (legit-looking) random public web services, support requests, issue trackers, web contact forms etc. For example, a common reoccurring one is Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (as in something like "thank you for filing a document #123 with us").
No apparent phishing links, no attached malware, no short advertisements snuck into a text field etc. Just automated replies from "noreply@"-type addresses.
It does not seem to be the case of trying to hide another attack (as discussed here for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47609882) - over many instances I've not seen any other malicious activity. And this mail is filtered out easily enough based on Google's headers.
It all looks like there is some bot that a) creates a Google group and subscribes (one or more) random email addresses to a Google group and then b) enters the group's mail address into a bunch of random web forms that then send their automated responses to the group.
What could be the motivation for this? After the fact it's filtered pretty easily based on headers. It's not nearly enough volume to DoS the server. But why would someone go through the trouble of setting this up?
Send DMCA takedown, that's only thing big companies seem to react. Without checking validity of it of course
gmail, outlook and salesforce create about 90% of the spam that gets through blacklists. Salesforce is simple to fix: I just block anything from salesforce from our network, as it just seems to be 100% used by spammers. Gmail and outlook are the major problem, as there is no way of addressing their spam issue.
In my experience, everyone got their act together except Google. I also used to receive massive amounts of spam from Azure and Sendgrid but this eventually stopped. Now 80% of the spam I receive is from the Google network, mainly Google Cloud.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems to be a laughable claim? I don't get anything but spam from Mailchimp.
I don't think your definition of spam matches the one that I understand it to mean. Spam is random email from someone you have not had contact with before firing messages to every address they can find anywhere on the web, the dark web, etc. Or if you ask not to be added to a mailing list and are added anyway. They often use fraudulent tricks to try to get the email through filters, such as fake from addresses. Spam…
Yes it is. Using a dark pattern to trick me into signing up doesn't make it not spam. It's still spam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone’s marketing emails are someone else’s spam. Mailchimp is specifically made for mass email emission, for marketing a newsletter and whatnot. So yeah, a lot of people will consider them spammers.
Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk email. Marketing is only spam when it isn't previous customers, or people who have specifically opted in.
There's some delusion in the marketing world that just because someone places an order or creates an account they should be spammed.
I got a human being at Google to look into my problem and take action after sending a police report to Google‘s legal department certified mail return receipt along with a letter describing how someone was impersonating me and my business using a Gmail address in an attempt to commit fraud. Yes, it was a pain to take all of these steps and it probably took about 3 hours but it was absolutely necessary considering the…
Oh that's a good idea! I got locked out of my YouTube premium account and they kept charging me. Couldn't get in contact with anyone at YouTube because the YT premium support line is behind the YT login. So I had to change my credit card number. Somehow they still kept billing the card, so the credit card company said they'd have to close my account entirely to get Google to stop billing me for a service they wouldn'…
I gave up on trying to report abuse to Google, Amazon or Microsoft. It seems reports simply get ignored and the big providers do nothing. I hope the FSF with its weight and media presence can finally do something. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are my major sources of spam. These days, this is where spam comes from. At this point, they are also too big to block. We allowed this to happen, through neglect and laziness.…