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Gmail Cracks Down on Third-Party Notifiers

Posted by timothy on from the their-sandbox-their-rules dept.

crtfdgk writes "Recently, Google's gmail service has attempted to change login protocols to block third-party gmail notifiers that alert you to new email. Google has now taken it one step further and created a word-identification script filter as part of the login process. Personally, I find Google's gmail notifier annoying since it sits in my taskbar and doesn't have popup notification, unlike many other worthy Firefox or Mozilla plugins that feature gmail notification. Shouldn't I be free to use whatever third party software to check my email? Will we be seeing controls on browsers that can view gmail next?"

9 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I notice no word verification... I like the google gmail notifier it does do pop ups. :) plus you can choose "tell me again" to see the pop up again if you missed it.

  2. This is a rather stupid story. by Radioactive+Zorm · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Google has now taken it one step further and created a word-identification script filter as part of the login process." In fact if you go there now you won't see this. This is part of Gmail's anti bruteforcing stuff. If you get a password wrong so many times it starts requiring you to enter a word to try and stop an automated bruteforcing script. GMAIL ISN'T BLOCKING YOUR 3RD PARTY MAIL NOTIFIER JUST YOU FOR BEING STUPID!

  3. Re:It will get better, not worse by Lord+Jester · · Score: 4, Informative

    Instant Messenger services change their protocols occasionally but they don't block 3rd party apps

    Bullshit! Yahoo just did this very thing. They changed thier protocol in their new releasd that broke 3rd party apps. Yahoo, like others, do not publish protcol documentation or supply APIs, it is up to 3rd party programmers to reverse engineer it to get the 3rd party apps to work.

  4. Re:It will get better, not worse by gordyf · · Score: 5, Informative

    IM services have tried repeatedly to block third-party apps. Both AIM and Yahoo have tried to block third-party clients.

    Yahoo blocking

    AIM blocking

    "AOL made changes to their proprietary protocol (called OSCAR) that would ferret out anyone who wasn't using the official client."

  5. Re:Well... by tylernt · · Score: 4, Informative

    The 3rd party scenario is relatively CPU and network intensive. You have to handshake a TCP connection, then poll the server, then close the connection again. And you have to do it every X minutes (and most users will set X to as small a number as they can).

    Google can set it up so that the client establishes a TCP connection and then using periodic keepalives, keeps it up. Then instead of the client polling every X minutes, the server can simply send the client notification (one little packet) when there is new mail. By eliminating polling and TCP handshake overheads, it's a little more server-friendly. It might require a little more RAM to keep track of all those TCP connections, but RAM is cheap and each connection only consumes a few bytes.

    --
    DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
  6. Re:Well... by darc · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to Gmail's feature wishlist : (you can get this by going to help and hitting send feedback)

    done! Address book import
    we'll try Opera support
    we'll try Ability to send messages with HTML formatting
    we'll try POP3 access
    working on it Plain HTML version of Gmail
    working on it Ability to save a draft

    So this is not entirely out of the question.

    --
    Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
  7. Re:Well... by no+soup+for+you · · Score: 4, Informative
    Your call : does your Bill of Rights define all of the rights which you have?

    Article IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

    --
    If you blog it...
  8. Re:Why would google do this? by MrNonchalant · · Score: 5, Informative

    About a week back I downloaded GMail Notifier the official alternative. Then I fired up Ethereal. There is indeed a backdoor protocol. Though from what I can tell from the HTTP GET string it's protected to high hell. GMail notifier sends an HTTP GET query to the GMail server, the GMail server sends back the number (and almost only the number) of messages. Here's the dump:

    GET /gmail?ui=pb&q=label%3A%5Ei%20label%3A%5Eu HTTP/1.1
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; GNotify 1.0.21.0)
    Host: gmail.google.com
    Cache-Control: no-cache
    Cookie: en_US; GV=fea7b8d648-b9be26d2425258708508713e52327ed1; GMAIL_AT=6d9cba730be1a490-fea7ca187f; SID=AV8H4FYfeDJ-4lwENnL9kzcyiSJshVSKK2xixnjpjWgHsf 5ZeIhRBn0aSXNXqg9mNrvBpyrfx0ImAGmONYgxv0w=; PREF=ID=446f57901cff551a:TM=1093681541:LM=10937355 79:TB=2:S=QbSoqBBCOK7nKj0f; S=gmail=NK86NtM1S-k:gmproxy=rYXDOT5E60U

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Set-Cookie: SID=AfvmInwaGVRkESW3REmGuiyongiyNzyqguZePHuQUyJ9sf 5ZeIhRBn0aSXNXqg9mNtCkJwBg2BEl1DvtQ6bT250=;Domain= .google.com;Path=/;Expires=Tue, 26-Aug-2014 23:45:55 GMT
    Cache-control: no-cache
    Pragma: no-cache
    Content-Type: application/octet-stream
    Transfer-Encoding: chunked
    Server: GFE/1.3
    Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 23:45:55 GMT

    4

    0

    I however absolutely hate the color scheme involved with Notifier, so I will NOT be using it until they improve that. GTray (http://torrez.us/gtray), my app of choice, still works just fine as of about 10 minutes ago. If Google really does close it off at some point, I think we should petition them to open up a version like Google API with similar restrictions.

  9. What a stupid question... by Moofie · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Shouldn't I be free to use whatever third party software to check my email?"

    Sure. You're free to use any software you want. And Google is free to not allow you to use any software with their service that you don't want. And since you're not paying them anything, you don't have much leverage to get them to change their policy, do you?

    It's a free service. Take it or leave it.

    --
    Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!