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Gmail Bug Sends Thousands of Emails To One Man

Posted by Soulskill on from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.

An anonymous reader writes "TechCrunch is reporting on an interesting Gmail bug. Apparently, if you run a Google search for Gmail while logged in and click one of the top (and correct) results, it brings up a Compose window with an email address already filled in: the Hotmail account of a Fresno, CA man. He says he's been receiving hundreds every hour, most of which are blank, since yesterday. The article says the bug is related to the Gmail outage from earlier this afternoon."

113 comments

  1. Bigness destroys companies by hessian · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Google was great when it was small and had shared vision.

    Now we're seeing the company both have many more screwups, and be more manipulative, basically by trying to force us all to use GoogleBook (or G+ as they call it).

    I don't think they're bad people. I think human organizations, when they get too large, become unstable because shared vision is lost and people start treating it as "just a job."

    Obviously, no amount of free soft drinks and stock options can remedy that.

    --
    Futurist Traditionalism
    1. Re:Bigness destroys companies by hawguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Google was great when it was small and had shared vision.

      Now we're seeing the company both have many more screwups, and be more manipulative, basically by trying to force us all to use GoogleBook (or G+ as they call it).

      I don't think they're bad people. I think human organizations, when they get too large, become unstable because shared vision is lost and people start treating it as "just a job."

      Obviously, no amount of free soft drinks and stock options can remedy that.

      I don't think they've lost their shared vision, they seem pretty focused on getting as many people to use Google+ as possible. It seems most like now what they see in their vision is monetizing their users.

    2. Re:Bigness destroys companies by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 2

      Big is just what is needed to topple the corrupt telecommunications oligopoly. If Google can get 1 gb/s fiber here and there and spread it, we're either gonna get 1 gb/s fiber eventually, or the telecommunications oligopolies will be forced to compete and stop deliberately keeping us in the dark ages.

      --
      God spoke to me
    3. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Kenja · · Score: 1

      Hipster gMail user had an account before it was mainstream.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    4. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Bengie · · Score: 0

      I got invited, as that or the lottery were the only way to get in. I can't even remember what I used as an email address before then, other than what I got from my University.

    5. Re:Bigness destroys companies by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Google was great when it was small and had shared vision.

      Now we're seeing the company both have many more screwups, and be more manipulative, basically by trying to force us all to use GoogleBook (or G+ as they call it).

      I don't think they're bad people. I think human organizations, when they get too large, become unstable because shared vision is lost and people start treating it as "just a job."

      Obviously, no amount of free soft drinks and stock options can remedy that.

      I don't think they've lost their shared vision, they seem pretty focused on getting as many people to use Google+ as possible. It seems most like now what they see in their vision is monetizing their users.

      This. At the expense of quality. Somewhere in the definition of doing no evil there must be some clause related to actually testing your junk before releasing updates or not putting in annoying little stupid bits (like the fade on drop-down lists.)

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    6. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Google was great when it was small and had shared vision.

      ...

      They still have a shared vision.

      Monetize your privacy.

      You're not their customer - you're their PRODUCT.

    7. Re:Bigness destroys companies by ShaunC · · Score: 2, Funny

      actually testing your junk before releasing updates

      Everything Google puts out is "beta." Forever. They used to actually label it as such; this isn't the case anymore but I'm not sure that Google has ever released a product that they considered production-ready.

      --
      Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
    8. Re:Bigness destroys companies by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Big is just what is needed to topple the corrupt telecommunications oligopoly. If Google can get 1 gb/s fiber here and there and spread it, we're either gonna get 1 gb/s fiber eventually, or the telecommunications oligopolies will be forced to compete and stop deliberately keeping us in the dark ages.

      At least, until Google owns enough of the infrastructure to join the 'big boys' in their little club. Then it'll just be more of the same, but with 1 extra player.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    9. Re:Bigness destroys companies by ElBeano · · Score: 1

      At least, until Google owns enough of the infrastructure to join the 'big boys' in their little club. Then it'll just be more of the same, but with 1 extra player.

      This would be just huge as a switch completely to the dark side for Google. I might even be looking for my pitch fork.

    10. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 1

      This would be just huge as a switch completely to the dark side for Google. I might even be looking for my pitch fork.

      Did Googling for it show 0 results?

    11. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 1

      I got invited by one of the devs -- and sent out invites to myself when the invite mechanism was turned on (wow! I got *3* invite vouchers!). Now I wish I'd created more addresses back then :D

    12. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What I find most surprising about Google is they were the company that came up with the best search engine UI ever, but every UI they've come up with since is completely incomprehensible crap. Microsoft usually did a bad UI, but at least I was able to tell what they were TRYING to do and be able to make it work. With Google, I can't even tell what they are trying to do, their UIs all seem to be entries in some kind of obfuscation contest.

    13. Re:Bigness destroys companies by qpqp · · Score: 1

      there must be some clause related to actually testing your junk before releasing updates

      Yeah, the clause is called feature flags. That guy was the randomly selected tester. ; )

    14. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      It's not Google+, it's Google in general. Ie, I use Google+ but nothing else from google, but I still see them trying to link entirely unrelated things to it, picasa, gmail, youtube. Got too creepy when a basic google search brought up targetted results related to some random youtube video I had seen a week before. Found that there's no way to unlink them from each other, and it even created a youtube "account" for me which was weird.

      I use G+ and like it, best feature is that it is NOT facebook, it's certainly not dominant or some cash cow for google. People keep dumping on it like the bad boy when in reality google is not treating it more special than any other application that they half-heartedly support, they just want to combine it all into one network of applications to support their advertising revenue.

    15. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      It's the Google culture. Creating new stuff is cool, and what all the kiddies at Google love to do. But since they lack adults (at least at the management level) there's no interest in finishing up or maintaining the old projects.

    16. Re: Bigness destroys companies by PC_THE_GREAT · · Score: 1

      Their ui is pretty clean abd easy ti go around compared to too much information being exposed by the likes of yahoo or microsoft's stuffs.

    17. Re: Bigness destroys companies by PC_THE_GREAT · · Score: 1

      s/abd easy ti/and easy to/g

    18. Re:Bigness destroys companies by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Why is this modded offtopic? Seems about as ontopic as one can get and something many of us here have been talking about. Google USED to be this cool "throw cool shit at the wall and see what sticks" kind of company but in the last couple of years...they have started getting nasty. The nasty changes in the TOS, the nasty ways of trying to force you to use G+ whether you want it or not... its gotten so bad I now have a "YouTube browser" just to keep from getting that damned popup trying to get me to tie my real name to G+ and YouTube and had to make a throwaway account for my android phone.

      I'm sorry guys but Google just ain't the cool fun nerdy company they was, ever since the IPO and G+ its been about squeezing every last penny out of the users to drum up the stock price, not about just making money off doing cool stuff. How much you wanna bet its gonna turn out to be tied to the "exciting new feature" of tying G+ circle crap into Gmail they recently rolled out?

      I swear Brin has a bigger chubby for that crappy G+ than Ballmer has for Metro and in both cases its a giant DO NOT WANT but sadly its not about the users in both cases, its about "gotta beat the FB and make teh monies!" for one and "gotta beat the iPad and make teh monies!" for the other.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    19. Re:Bigness destroys companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      'Do No Evil' is just a corporate mission statement created to fool the rubes.

    20. Re:Bigness destroys companies by buchner.johannes · · Score: 1

      actually testing your junk before releasing updates

      Everything Google puts out is "beta."

      These are not Googles products. Googles product is advertisement. And that is not beta. All the "products" you think about (Search, Gmail, Google+, Wave, Newspaper/feed reader, etc.) are just helpers for Googles main product, ads. If they seize their purpose -- reaching many people -- they are dropped.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    21. Re:Bigness destroys companies by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      Thats how capitalism works. And If / when Google rests on their laurels for too long, another competitor may appear. Granted that doesnt tend to happen terribly quickly with something like internet service (with all the barriers and whatnot), but this would be an odd time to complain about the status quo what with Google shaking things up and what not.

      but with 1 extra player.

      Dont underestimate that, it can be all the difference in the world.

    22. Re:Bigness destroys companies by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      I guess this is all that this great technology is going to amount to? A shuddering, messy orgasm of advertisements shot into our faces from every angle and service. All the great minds of the world and the engines of wealth creation are focused on displaying shitty ads to everyone; following them around like little digital cookie stalkers. My fucking god this is getting old. Has anyone else stopped to think about the market cap on targeted ads? Is there enough room for Pintrest, GoatBook, FaceBrick, and everyone else to provide the wonderful service of delivering targeted ads? I don't know about you but I do not find any of this exciting. The great scifi minds of our age and ages past forgot to include the dominance and great feat of plastering ads in everyone's face before the downfall. I don't really like FaceBook, at all, but I would pay to not see a single ad on the damned abyssal social cathulu.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    23. Re:Bigness destroys companies by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      I think it was +0 results.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  2. "Gmail" Bug? by lagartoflojo · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is hardly a "Gmail bug", but rather Google indexing a direct link to Gmail with the To: field filled out with some random email address. The linkbait-y title of this post made me think that some of my private emails were getting sent to the wrong person.

    1. Re:"Gmail" Bug? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It wasn't random, it was a perfectly directed attack performed through advanced SEO techniques. This Fresno bastard was being a dick online and deserved to be spammed with thousands of junk messages.

    2. Re:"Gmail" Bug? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would you think so? These headlines are now the norm.

    3. Re:"Gmail" Bug? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      This is hardly a "Gmail bug", but rather Google indexing a direct link to Gmail with the To: field filled out with some random email address.

      It doesn't look like an indexing issue (if it were, wouldn't that be a bug in their indexing algorithm?). Apparently there were other people who were getting emails as well.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Only today? by Carewolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What, he doesn't already receive thousands of emails everyday that is not for him? Lucky man.

    1. Re:Only today? by perryizgr8 · · Score: 1

      umm...no? hotmail spam filters are as good as they come nowadays.

      --
      Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
  4. gmail bug by DocSavage64109 · · Score: 0

    We've converted to gmail where I work and for the last two weeks chrome consistently throws up page not responding errors when in gmail. This has been happening for multiple users, and I'm rather tired of hearing their complaints. Right now I just advise them to using Internet Explorer to access gmail.

    1. Re:gmail bug by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I ran into that eariler this week. The only thing that solved it was to delete all of my cache and cookies. Hasn't happened again.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    2. Re:gmail bug by Jakeula · · Score: 1

      My company has been having similar errors, I believe its less a Gmail error and more of a Chrome error. When I try to google anything from the nav bar directly I get an insane load time that usually ends in a failure page with the t-rex on it. However if I visit google.com directly in chrome it works just fine. Yet in Firefox I can search anything I want at the top and get speedy results. I find it odd that Googles products don't interact well with one another, yet 3rd parties are able to interface with their services just fine. Somewhere down the line of development people aren't testing and simply aren't worried about consistency of their products. Google could let stuff like that happen a few years back, but they are pushing harder and harder to become an enterprise level service provider and with outages like today, and really inconsistent services they aren't selling themselves well. I personally love Google, I have been to the HQ many times, and interviewed there once before, but I cannot defend the poorly tested and developed stuff they keep pumping out.

    3. Re:gmail bug by edibobb · · Score: 1

      Egads! Google is becoming Microsoft!!

    4. Re:gmail bug by Fnord666 · · Score: 2

      Yeah, I ran into that eariler this week. The only thing that solved it was to delete all of my cache and cookies. Hasn't happened again.

      Clear the browser's cache and cookies. It's the web 2.0 version of "Have you tried rebooting it?". If you haven't tried it yet, don't even call me.

      --
      'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
    5. Re:gmail bug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      God, that's so true!

  5. Google searches while logged in to Gmail? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do people like having Google keep a record of what they are searching for?

    This is creepy.

    1. Re:Google searches while logged in to Gmail? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      Do people like having Google keep a record of what they are searching for?

      This is creepy.

      Since I can't download a copy of the internet to my computer so I can search it privately, there doesn't seem to be much choice - even if I trust Duckduckgo or other search engine to not log my searches, I still end up using Google for most of my searches because it works so much better than Duckduckgo. I tried it for a month, and by the end of the month, I was almost always adding "!g" to my searches to run them on Google. So whether or not I *like* Google tracking my search history is not really relevant -- I'm willing to trade that privacy for the use of their search engine. Just as I may not *like* paying the oil industry $4/gallon for gas, but I don't have much of a reasonable choice.

    2. Re: Google searches while logged in to Gmail? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did they like it when AOL did it. No, so fucking stop it already.

    3. Re:Google searches while logged in to Gmail? by lgw · · Score: 1

      So stop using gmail. When it was new it was special - clean simple webmail. Those days are long past. Outlook.com doesn't suck. Some people like Yahoo mail. Neither company does the ubiquitous tracking and analysis that Google does.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    4. Re:Google searches while logged in to Gmail? by hawguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So stop using gmail. When it was new it was special - clean simple webmail. Those days are long past. Outlook.com doesn't suck. Some people like Yahoo mail. Neither company does the ubiquitous tracking and analysis that Google does.

      Why do you think that if I don't use Gmail that Google can't track my searches?

      Neither company *admits* they do the ubiquitous tracking and analysis that Google does, but I've seen nothing in the Terms of Use and Privacy Policies for either vendor that precludes them from doing so, and both have popular ad networks (well, it looks like Yahoo is using Bing for search and ads), so it seems highly unlikely that they'd cede a competitive advantage to Google by not using customer data to their advantage.

    5. Re:Google searches while logged in to Gmail? by lgw · · Score: 1

      I don't care at all if Google "tracks my searches," since they're tracking most of my web habits anyhow via all their cleverness and ad networks. There's no escaping that. But I don't need to hand them a real-world identity to connect all that stuff to, or an easy way to connect me-on-one-machine with me-on-another.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re:Google searches while logged in to Gmail? by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 1

      I don't care at all if Google "tracks my searches," since they're tracking most of my web habits anyhow via all their cleverness and ad networks. There's no escaping that. But I don't need to hand them a real-world identity to connect all that stuff to, or an easy way to connect me-on-one-machine with me-on-another.

      You do realize that they don't need you to have a Google account to get your real-world identity and link it to multiple machines, right? They just need a few people you know to have Google accounts. The rest is statistics (unless you keep your site browsing siloed between computers).

    7. Re:Google searches while logged in to Gmail? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Neither company does the ubiquitous tracking and analysis that Google does.

      I wonder what these jobs are for then?
      Data Scientist - Ads - 858668 Job
      Data Scientist - Marketing - Data and Analytics - 849750 Job

      Yahoo was doing user & ad analytics before Google existed.

      And remember everyone, only one company was on the original PRISM slide, so the NSA definitely can't get to you at Microsoft(2007) Yahoo(2008) or Apple(2012). Since it isn't listed, DuckDuckGo will be impervious to NSA attacks; with all of its employees you can be sure at least one of them works on security and can outsmart the NSA's ability to install hardware backdoors and hack air-gapped computers.

  6. How do you know you're having a shitty day? by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

    When you are being DDoSed by motherfucking Google .

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by DocSavage64109 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I like how the article suggests that he is manually deleting the bad emails. I'd think if they were all blank, he could set up a filter to do that for him.

    2. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by Capt.DrumkenBum · · Score: 2

      OK, everyone send him an email with some random text, and an attachment. :)
      Lets see how long the hotmail servers can cope. :)

      --
      If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
    3. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think Google should send someone over and do that for him.

      As well as other general levels of groveling.

      This guy has a real case against Google in the court of public opinion. He doesn't have to go legal. The simple PR value here is enough for Google to make a giant public act of contrition and gift the guy with something large, to make up for the troubles they caused him.

      Hey... here's an idea: send over a high level Google engineer as this guy's personal lowly tech support guy for a month.

      Heck, that sounds like it could be a sitcom, a Youtube web series.

      Google: you can turn lemons into lemonade here, make it happen.

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    4. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's going to a hotmail account, not gmail.

    5. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by whisper_jeff · · Score: 1

      That sounds like a great day. I'm not a lawyer but I suspect a lawyer would LOVE to get their hands on this situation with an eye on a big payday.

    6. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by Chelloveck · · Score: 1

      Why would anyone tech-savvy enough to know how to set up a mail filter still be using hotmail?

      --
      Chelloveck
      I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
    7. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Been there done that. Had a client onboard over the weekend, only to discover they were highly related to a google doodle topic the following Monday. And nobody was in the office because of the weather. #FML

    8. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think Google should send someone over and do that for him.

      But that would mean that someone at Google would have access to all his emails!

      Oh, wait...

    9. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Worse though. Just as you're trying to resolve the problem, Techcrunch goes and creates a story about you being spammed, includes your address so that even more people can spam you, and then Slashdot spreads the story far and wide.

    10. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey... here's an idea: send over a high level Google engineer as this guy's personal lowly tech support guy for a month.

      Heck, that sounds like it could be a sitcom, a Youtube web series

      That is actually a good idea. A sitcom for the people running our stuff. No friends required. I'd watch it.

    11. Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He should ask for a refund pro-rated for the amount of downtime.

  7. Sigh. useless links. by rueger · · Score: 1

    Ok, I could just Google the damned thing, but if you're going to reference "Gmail outage from earlier this afternoon," can you at least link to page giving details of the outage instead of a generic Google Apps status page?

    Grumble grumble....

    --
    Three Squirrels
    1. Re:Sigh. useless links. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please don't Google it. You may inadvertantly send an e-mail to the Hotmail account of a Fresno, CA man.

    2. Re:Sigh. useless links. by Cramer · · Score: 1

      Click one of the orange dots. It'll give you just about as much not-information. "It's down", and "It's back" is all Google(tm) has said about it.

    3. Re:Sigh. useless links. by murdocj · · Score: 1

      One of the statuses has a link to a blog post describing a bit of what happened (bug in config generation program that generated a bad config that was then deployed) and what Google is planning to do about it. They listed a couple of changes they are planning on (fix this bug in configuration program, check configs more carefully, etc), but interestingly enough, nothing like "deploy config in a test environment before deploying to production".

    4. Re:Sigh. useless links. by Cramer · · Score: 1

      Hah. We are the Google Test Environment(TM)

  8. Sucks to be that guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hardly convinces you that Gmail is a better alternative to Hotmail, too.

  9. Re:Does he work as an analyst for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nice try. His email address is noreply@gmail.com. What did he expect?

  10. Lawsuit by Animats · · Score: 1

    Well, now he can sue Google. He's not bound by Google's EULA; he's signed up with Microsoft's Hotmail.

  11. I wonder. by ndsbriand · · Score: 1

    Now that this has been posted on slashdot, I wonder how his email will increase as slashdotters try this out.

    1. Re:I wonder. by DocSavage64109 · · Score: 1

      Luckily it's friday afternoon and we're all going home for an evening of gaming!

    2. Re:I wonder. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Luckily it's friday afternoon and we're all going home for an evening of gaming!

      you mean to say dos'ing a guys email account isn't gaming?

  12. Re:doing evil one step at a time by nurb432 · · Score: 2

    I think its less 'not doing evil' as much as its 'not staying competent'.

    But sloppiness kills..

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  13. Interesting to see this in action. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It was interesting to see this in action earlier. I could log into gmail, and it would show me my inbox contents, but it wouldn't show contacts, and messages were not retrievable.

    I can't speak to the search results compose situation mentioned. I am wondering however, why indexed site links would have anything to do with a email compose function, if that was indeed what was happening.

    After seeing this in action, I'm starting to consider not using gmail for my primary contact email. I know this is knee-jerk, because, how often does any major email service glitch like this? Seldom.

  14. Grrr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Thanks Obama! :|

  15. Google search for gmail by FuzzNugget · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, I think we've located the source of the problem

    1. Re:Google search for gmail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's like a Rabbi giving himself a circumcision.

    2. Re:Google search for gmail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If he is a Rabbi he could not do so as he already gave up on turtlenecks a long time ago

  16. Google software buggy? by scottbomb · · Score: 1

    Say it isn't so.

    1. Re:Google software buggy? by ubrgeek · · Score: 2

      Well, that'll stop once it's out of beta ...

      --
      Bark less. Wag more.
  17. Damn! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fixed already.

  18. Show of Hands by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How many of you read the summary and developed a sudden desire to bombard this poor soul's inbox by trying it for yourselves? Be honest.

    I'll start things off by admitting to it myself.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    1. Re:Show of Hands by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Not me. But then I'm not five years old, emotionally, psychologically, or physically.

    2. Re:Show of Hands by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I did, but then I realized I'd have to figure out how to log in to gmail on an account I've entirely forgotten or hand over some data for a new one.

    3. Re:Show of Hands by CanHasDIY · · Score: 0

      Not me. But then I'm not five years old, emotionally, psychologically, or physically.

      I certainly hope not; otherwise, we would need to hunt down the filthy pedophile who shoved that stick up your ass.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    4. Re:Show of Hands by Common+Joe · · Score: 1

      Erm... no, not me.

      [Pause.]

      Excuse me. I have to shut down a script.

    5. Re:Show of Hands by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      How is not behaving like an ignorant jackass "having a stick up my ass"? The one with a problem my friend is you for even momentarily considering "bombarding his inbox".

    6. Re:Show of Hands by bluegutang · · Score: 1

      I had a sudden desire to open a compose window and see the guy's address in it.
      But no sudden desire to press "send".

    7. Re:Show of Hands by Chapium · · Score: 1

      I guess you had better not ever open a phonebook.

    8. Re:Show of Hands by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

      How is having a sense of humor being a five-year-old?

      BTW, I would assume someone as mature as you're trying to make yourself out to be would not insist on including playground epithets in every response, especially the opening one.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    9. Re:Show of Hands by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whatever you might think of the poster you're responding to, fact remains that you were not funny, I (and most others) would not consider doing what you pondered and I do fully believe that you are an asshole, based on this thread and older ones you've participated in. Clear enough for you? Don't bother answering, since I know exactly what you'll say.

  19. Re:Does he work as an analyst for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As I joke I got myfirstname.mylastname@gmail.com just to see how many people wouldn't replace them with actual first names and last names. Less then I expected.

  20. Re:Does he work as an analyst for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ... it brings up a Compose window with an email address already filled in: the Hotmail account of a Fresno, CA man.

    Nice try. His email address is noreply@gmail.com. What did he expect?

    Something doesn't add up...

  21. Why do you scoff? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't understand the attitude in the replies. No, this isn't technically a Gmail bug--though it might be nice if it didn't populate the to: field like that. I'm not sure I can think of a valid case for it to do so--shouldn't mailto: be used in most cases like that instead?

    It does expose a kind of attack though--unless the Google index gets fixed, someone can Google-bomb the Gmail links with mail to a particular address, and apparently people at large ARE stupid enough to do what amounts to a reflection DDoS against some poor mark's inbox. It's not that hard to imagine how that could cause problems--and if you need to accept Gmail for some reason, particularly if you need to accept it from somewhat arbitrary addresses, it would be hard to filter at the receiving end.

    Google should probably fix those links.

  22. Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by magarity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why exactly do you need to use google search to look for gmail when you're already logged in? Hundreds of people are doing that per hour, wtf? Hello? Address bar?

    1. Re:Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why exactly do you need to use google search to look for gmail when you're already logged in? Hundreds of people are doing that per hour, wtf? Hello? Address bar?

      When gmail is down there is probably a large number of people trying to find out what is wrong with it.

    2. Re:Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some browser turn the address bar into a search-engine search if what's typed isn't actually a URL.

    3. Re:Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by swillden · · Score: 2

      Why exactly do you need to use google search to look for gmail when you're already logged in? Hundreds of people are doing that per hour, wtf? Hello? Address bar?

      Vast numbers of people search google for "google".

      From their perspective, they want to search for something so they type "google" into their web browser and it takes them to google.com where they can do their search, never realizing that they could have skipped the first step and just typed their search query in the same place they typed "google".

      I've heard a rumor (no idea if it's real) that at one point the Chrome team tried popping up a tooltip explaining to people who typed "google" into the location bar that they can just search from the location bar, but focus group testing showed that (a) it annoyed people and (b) most of them continued typing "google" into the location bar anyway.

      Now, of course, Chrome gives you a page that looks like a Google search page by default whenever you create a new tab. I have no idea if this has gotten people to just type their search query there, rather than typing "google" first.

      But even if it has gotten them to stop searching for "google", I'm sure many of them type "gmail" into that faux search page.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    4. Re:Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you'll notice, that 'default google search page' actually has the text entry area pop the cursor up to the address bar, where the letters appear when the person types.

    5. Re:Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by swillden · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I've wondered about that choice. I think the search page is to help the less-clued, but the choice of focus favors the power user, who prefers to use the location bar where he or she can type either a url or search terms.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    6. Re:Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Imagine you're a standard (tempted to say clueless, but it's a relative term) user.

      1. You found gmail using the search bar and logged in to look at Betsy-Sue's latest cat pictures, leaving "keep me logged in" selected.
      2. Then you got distracted and decided to look at some cat videos on youtube, which you found by entering youtube in the search bar.
      3. At this point you're still "logged in", even though the gmail window is long gone.
      4. Gosh darn it, you think, where did my gmail go?

      Now... what happens next?

    7. Re:Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by slapout · · Score: 1

      I lot of my relatives end up with a tool bars installed that change the default search provider to something else. For them, finding google first is a good thing.

      --
      Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
    8. Re:Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT? by bluegutang · · Score: 1

      Gmail had 425 million users in mid-2012 (according to Wikipedia). Probably more now. If only one in a million people are stupid enough to do something each hour, it will still occur hundreds of times per hour.

  23. His IP address is 127.0.0.1 by TsuruchiBrian · · Score: 0

    So nobody try to DDOS him ok?

    1. Re:His IP address is 127.0.0.1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thats what you think im giving the guy a good lesson at that address right now

    2. Re:His IP address is 127.0.0.1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      also his domain is localhost

    3. Re:His IP address is 127.0.0.1 by dkf · · Score: 1

      I thought he was at 192.168.1.1...

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
  24. More importantly by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2

    Has he been contacted by the entire population of Nigeria about a couple of pallets of exotic goods all gummed up in customs, and could he help liberate said goods for a tidy profit?

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  25. Re:Does he work as an analyst for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Something doesn't add up...

    Whoooooooosh?

  26. Are we forgetting something? by MickLinux · · Score: 1

    This guy has a HOTMAIL account. One of my brothers had a hotmail account about the time hotmail started ...ummm... releasing the names of their users' non-hotmail contacts to spammers.

    Point being, maybe this guy should change to a non-hotmail account. Then Google can update their form to the NEXT super-popular hotmail user.

    Okay, tongue in cheek all done.

    Yes, it is not lost on me that worse than "don't be evil" is the unstated "don't be NSA", and worse than that is "don't be Microsoft", and Google is even messing up that one...

    --
    Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
  27. ten bucks say it was an NSA related update by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the outage was probably to install easier government snoop access.

  28. Arrest Imminent by Princeofcups · · Score: 1

    Has the recipient been arrested for hacking yet?

    --
    The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.