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Gmail Bug Sends Thousands of Emails To One Man

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."

23 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. "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.

  2. Only today? by Carewolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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
  6. 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?

  7. 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 ----
  8. 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
  9. Google search for gmail by FuzzNugget · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  10. 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.

  11. 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!
  12. 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.

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

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

    --
    Bark less. Wag more.
  14. 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
  15. 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
  16. 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 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.
  17. 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
  18. 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
  19. 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.