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FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

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Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#151

Post by sillysaurusx »

ModernMech wrote: post #130
ilamont wrote: post #105

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'…

Switch to Mercury banking. https://mercury.com/

You can create as many virtual cards as you want. And surprisingly, I've rarely encountered a vendor that rejects them. I set one up for pretty much every recurring service charge, just because it's so easy to do.

It costs a few hundred a year for personal banking, but if you register an LLC (which in MO costs ~$10) you can use your EIN to get a business account. Did it a couple times, once for my non-profit and once for my consulting LLC.

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#152

Post by throwaway173738 »

unmole wrote: post #37
darkwater wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they got it by Gmail being a loss leader paid by Google AdSense in the search engine. Now they have AdSense in Gmail directly, so I guess it pays for itself.

So, Google built a superior product that is profitable and we are supposed to be mad about this?

AT&T was once broken up and then after that you could connect a modem to a phone line. The whole public use of the Internet is a consequence of breaking up a “superior product” that became a bloated market incumbent resting on its laurels.

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#153

Post by andrewmcwatters »

tag2103 wrote: post #140

Rhetorical question- but what is it going to take for the IT Community to start treating Gmail and the rest of the "too big to block" as adversarial entities and actually block them for their bad behavior. Pie in the sky I know.

Microsoft refuses to deliver legitimate emails to hotmail.com addresses so I tell clients how it is.

I’m not jumping through hoops when I’m not doing anything wrong. SPF, DMARC, DKIM, IP address not on a blacklist, and I send zero spam. Only human-written client communications 1:1.

So, my clients with hotmail.com addresses don’t get emails from me. I can call them, they can call me.

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#154

Post by silvershell »

avian wrote: post #144

Somewhat related to spam coming from Google servers, maybe someone can shed some light on what could be the motivation behind this activity: 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-*, et…

Yes. I got the same issue… and when someone replies, all users in the mailing list receive it… that’s why I would see a ton of replies saying please remove me from your mailing list. Very annoying. The only solution I found was to create an inbox rule to reject those, as I couldn’t unsubscribe

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#155

Post by [deleted] »

avian wrote: post #144

Somewhat related to spam coming from Google servers, maybe someone can shed some light on what could be the motivation behind this activity: 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-*, et…

[deleted]

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#156

Post by ModernMech »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #149
ModernMech wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Did you try to demand a charge-back every time?

That's an uphill battle, I tried doing that with a gym once who said to cancel, I had to come in only on Tuesday in the morning when the manager was there with a certified notarized cancellation form.

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#157

Post by mixologic »

MisterTea wrote: post #150
jwr wrote: post #88

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.…

This is called a monopoly. I know people who run their own mail servers to be as independent as possible. Ironically, they show up as spam in Gmail all the time because "This message is similar to messages that were identified as spam in the past." Meanwhile, it's a fucking simple one paragraph message to a programming mailing list. They have to wrestle with DMARK or choose not to as they feel DMARK is playing into t…

DMARC isn't really that big of an issue to wrestle with, and I don't see how it gives anybody influence or power.

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#158

Post by ceejayoz »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #149
ModernMech wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Did you try to demand a charge-back every time?

The idea of a chargeback against Google/Apple/Amazon and their response being a permanent ban of all my accounts is a bit terrifying.

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#159

Post by ilamont »

ilamont wrote: post #105

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…

Wasn't expecting this comment to go far. This took place about a month ago. For those who are interested, here is the address I sent the police report and cover letter to:

Google LLC

Attn: Legal Department – Custodian of Records

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway

Mountain View, CA 94043

In the cover letter I outlined the problem and the desired remedy (shut down the gmail account and preserve IP and other information for law enforcement), and attached two other documents: an annotated printout of the email thread from a prospective victim of the scam (who sensed something was fishy and contacted me through my website) and the local police report I filed to document the attempted fraud in my name.

Someone at Google contacted me about a week later and confirmed that the account was shut down. I don't know if they did anything else regarding preserving data or shutting down any other Google services this person was using.

I also made a report to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, although TBH it looks like a black hole that lets the feds say they are "doing something" for ordinary victims.

Re: FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account

#160

Post by pessimizer »

tag2103 wrote: post #140

Rhetorical question- but what is it going to take for the IT Community to start treating Gmail and the rest of the "too big to block" as adversarial entities and actually block them for their bad behavior. Pie in the sky I know.

> IT Community

No such thing. And if you just want to assign anybody who works in IT to it in order to create the concept of such of a thing, a large percentage of this community would work at Google, a company that depends on Google, or a company that has the same attitude as google.

So it's less pie in the sky than nonsense. People don't talk about things changing in the physical world without talking about force, mass and inertia, but when it comes to people, the theory of power just evaporates and we start wishing for things to spontaneously happen because we've declared that they should happen.

With some weird definition of "should" which relies on our personal conception of the world. In the physical world, we say something "should" happen when we expect it to happen based on our theories of how the world works. With people we say things "should" happen when we personally want them hard enough.

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