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General discussion

Is GMail the worst email provider ever created?

Mar 19, 2005 12:56AM PST

Or am I just the unluckiest new GMail user out there? I've been a member for a few weeks now and it seems like a spoofer's paradise. I'm now getting approximately 10-12 alerts in my inbox EVERY DAY about undeliverable emails that were apparently 'sent' from my account. For a while I was dutifully forwarding the full message headers to GMail tech support but now I can't keep up. I know I never compromised my password in any way so why is this happening? What's the solution besides cancelling my GMail account and going back to one of the many email providers I've never had a problem with, like msn, hotmail, yahoo, etc.?

Discussion is locked

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For me, it's exactly the opposite.
Mar 19, 2005 1:32AM PST

But I don't share that address. Once someone leaks it to the spammers, it won't matter which email service you use.

Bob

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Yeah but I'm not talking about spam
Mar 19, 2005 1:44AM PST

I've shared my hotmail and yahoo addresses with lots of people, online retailers, etc. Of course I get plenty of spam, that goes with the territory. But getting numerous emails that look like they were sent from MY address coming back to me as 'undeliverable?' That has never happened to me before. Maybe I need to learn more about what spoofing really is, but I thought it was a horse of a different color from ordinary spamming.

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Sounds like spoofing to me.
Mar 19, 2005 2:51AM PST

That issue is not limited to any email system I know of.

And anyone that complains about it... just needs to do more research. If you ever find a cure, you'll be living well.

Bob

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Spoofing
Mar 21, 2005 7:45AM PST

Bob, Just what is spoofing all about? For that matter, what is phishing (Sp?) all about? I thought fishing was all about dangling a worm out there, so the fish would bite? HA!:?) ,just kidding.
I really do not know what these terms are, really.
Bob, how about a quick primer on these subjects.

Thanks, Kevin

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Real quick. 10 words or less on each.
Mar 21, 2005 8:04AM PST

Pharm - Usually a web site that looks like YourBank.com but isn't. You strangely can't log in.

Phish - An email from YourBank.com with instructions to ...

Spoof - The email protocol allows me to send an email with any return address I want. I am THX1138@control.com if I want.

Bob

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spoofed emails
Mar 31, 2005 5:50PM PST

some viruses on other peoples machines, can check email address books and "spoof" the senders address. there is nothing you can really do about it,as there is no "real" way to verify the sender, you can check email headers, which should but not necessarily, show the reals senders email addy.Try the following Link for more detail.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/itservices/help/spamming&spoofing.htm

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spoofed emails
Mar 31, 2005 8:11PM PST

My Hotmail address has been spoofed a few times in the last 12 mths. I noticed this when ?Undeliverable? mail messages arrived re emails I had never sent.
What I found really weird was when my new Yahoo address (which I disclosed to very few people) started receiving very regularly almost identical emails from a variety of addresses (from various countries) with a .pif attachment which I suspect is a virus. To my amazement one of those emails was from my nephew who does not have my Yahoo address and whose work email I did not have (till then!) I would be grateful for any advice on resolving this problem.

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RE: spoofed emails
Mar 31, 2005 11:31PM PST

I've had the same thing in the past with various accounts. I don't recall what attachments there were but my anti-virus always picked them up. At first I wasn't sure what to do about them since my AV seemed to be doing its job. Then I started using Mailwasher to check my e-mail and anything suspicious was deleted before it ever made it in my Outlook e-mail. That was ok but it made checking e-mail a two step process. First to get the basic text of the e-mail with Mailwasher and delete the junk and then download the rest with Outlook.

I also added the Spambayes Outlook add in and its been working great but you have to train it for awhile. I'm still using this process today. It makes checking e-mail a bit of a chore but it keeps all the crap off my computer.

Mailwasher used to have a free version but I think they stopped the freebie. You can check at www.mailwasher.net and see what is there.

Like I said its tedious but it works for me.....

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undeliverable email headers
Apr 1, 2005 11:34PM PST

I receive 4 or 5 emails a week with the header that they are undeliverable, I use mailwasher pro to check my email so that I only have to read the headers before downloading and to filter spam and almost without exception it always list's these emails as containing a virus and are never in responce to me having sent an email that was not deliverable. I suggest that you give it a try it was not free but I find that it does a great job as a filter, particularily if when something is spam or the origin blacklisted by one of the services I don't mark the email as spam but always list the whole domain it is coming from as spam and it works very well, I have never received a false positive while using this product and I get over 100 emails a day.

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spoofed & 'undeliverable' emails
Apr 4, 2005 1:17AM PDT

Thanks, snharden and schizo1988, for the suggestions, though I was trying to understand how the problems arose. I used a couple of products (not Mailwasher) but found they did about nothing, so gave up using Outlook altogether and only use web-based email. Of these, Hotmail has been very active in enhancing their spam filtering system and I now get 1 to 2 spam messages a day, down from over 50 a day. I used to block whole domains till I found I had blocked genuine emails. Yahoo! and Bigpond (an Australian ISP) have not been as effective in their filtering. Our fourth email address (through Rabbit) gets no spam at all.

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sounds like..........(uhoh)
Apr 6, 2005 11:16PM PDT

sounds to me like spammers are using your address as a return address for the spam they are sending out.

I have an email at gmail publicly visible and I'm thinking about taking it down now.

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Heres a solution!
Mar 31, 2005 7:52PM PST

Close your account with gmail and start over. Sounds like you have some sort of e-mail loop going on. It may be google or just your account. I know lots of people with gmail accounts including myself and we are not having any probs. If google was being spoofed they would certainly know about it. If you want a new account send me a email at snharden at hotmail dot com and I will send you a new invite. You know what to do with that e-mail addy I just wrote I hope.

The e-mail loop thing I'm talking about used to happen alot and was common in the nets early years but I must say I haven't heard of it in quite some time. There used to be a way to address a e-mail and when sent would be rejected at the recieving end then bounced back to the origin as undeliverable but since it wasn't addressed right in the first place gets rejected again and forms kind of a endless loop. Sounds weird I know but it used to happen to people. Remember gmail is still in beta......Good luck....

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Also, you could do this...
Mar 31, 2005 8:08PM PST

just send yourself an invite (i.e. I have more than one email address, one for personal stuff, one for "business/work" and one for junk). Just don't use the same email as your original invite.

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You dont know your account hasn't been compromised.
Mar 31, 2005 8:03PM PST

While you may not have given your password to anybody, somebody may have received it.

Robot crawlers go over the entire web looking for passwords - possibly a leak in the gmail servers has created this problem.

Another possible issue is spyware. If you had any spyware on your system, it is entirely possible they have sent your password to a third party.

My advice would be to invite yourself to a new account and set a different password - see if problem repeats.

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About gmail
Mar 31, 2005 8:56PM PST

I have been a member of gmail for 2 months now and so far I have had very little spoof mail I got more on yahoo mail than I do with gmail.
regards craig

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Spoofing on Gmail
Mar 31, 2005 9:39PM PST

I have been using gmail for about three months now, and ,so far(knock on wood), I have had no problems. Matter of fact, I like it far better than Yahoo or Hotmail.
Maybe you should close down that gmail acct. and open a new one. That should fix your problem.
You could also check with Gmail user groups. They offer plenty of assistance on resolving gmail issues and bugs. And, I would also recommend informing gmail themselves so they are aware of the issue
Good luck to you and a super day!

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Gmail
Apr 1, 2005 3:03AM PST

I've had Gmail for 2 to 3 months now, and although I've had a few glitches, I still prefer it to any of the others I've used. I have it configured with Outlook Express as well, as it is still in Beta, but the features are superior to any other program or POP service.
Today they increased the storage to 2 Gb's and added
RTF on a phase in program.
Eventually, it will be the best of the best.
I subscribe to numerous newsletters, etc ,and have had no problems with any type of unwanted/unsolicited
mail or adverts.
Occasionally a newsletter will hit the SPAM filter because it may have ads attached, but none that I haven't been subscribed to, and I just click, NOT SPAM
Maybe I'm lucky, but I,ve installed a lot of security,and in the 2 years I've been at this, have had no problems, and have more than 300 programs installed.

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I like Gmail!
Apr 4, 2005 12:03PM PDT

yea, i like Gmail a lot, i mean, it;s really cool that i found out today that my Gmail box is 2059 MB. can u image that? 2059 MB man! that;s hella a lot of storage, i probably won;t use them all, but at least, it looks cool.

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News Flash
Mar 31, 2005 9:35PM PST

Word on the street is Google has decided to up its storage limit to 2GB after Yahoo matched Google's 1GB.

Whats next 1 terabyte, 1 exabyte......Just how much e-mail storage do people really need......

Google Boosts Free Storage in Web E-Mail Battle
April 01, 2005 02:03 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc., which took the first shot in the free e-mail storage battle with the release of its Gmail product last year, said on Thursday it is doubling free storage to 2 gigabytes shortly after Yahoo Inc. matched its original offer. More...

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Gmail problems
Mar 31, 2005 9:57PM PST

I have had a Gmail account for about 4 or 5 weeks now and have had no problems so far. I decided that when I got this new account that I would only use it for sending "private" emails to my friends and such. No listing it anywhere on the web for any reasons. When I sign up for something, or order something from the net, I use a different account. THAT account gets all kinds of spam and junk mail. So far my plan has worked. My Gmail has stayed clean thus far. As for your problem... It is the first complaint I have heard of concerning Gmail. Who knows, I might be the next account to get spoofed, but I think yours is an isolated case. Maybe changing your password, or making a totally new account would solve your problem.

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Ditto
Mar 31, 2005 10:16PM PST

I have been using gmail for a couple of months and do exactly the same thing for now, use it only for really personal comm. If I need to use email for any on-line registration or shopping, etc. I use my hotmail account and boy does it really get hammered (even with their newer junk mail reporting). So far, I'm really pleased with how gmail works but I'm not sure what will happen once I "open" it up to other uses. . .

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Same thing here
Apr 1, 2005 1:38AM PST

I've had my gmail account since June of last year and have not had any spoofing issues. Unline my yahoo account.

My solution is the same, to have certain addresses be purely private and not provide to any businesses. I also ask friends that do batch emails to use the BCC setting and not show my address when they send mass emails. Friends that do not comply are not given my gmail address.

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Re G-Mail
Mar 31, 2005 9:58PM PST

I have Recently signed up to

g-mail and i find it great, i get no unwanted

E-Mails, i think it is great service and

i have told all my friends all about it,

i have heard of no promblems with it.

Jackie

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Spoofing - a fact of cyber life if ...
Mar 31, 2005 11:11PM PST

First a definition. Spoofing is the forging of the headers of an email message. Typically this means that at least the from address is forged. As a result, if the To address is not valid and the message bounces, the owner of the email address gets the bounce message, not the PC that sent the message.

Why can spoofing work? Simple. Repeat this mantra until it sinks in. "There is no security on sending email." The analogy to snail mail is fairly close. Anyone can send snail mail as you. But the PO is fairly good about making sure that only you receive snail mail sent to you. By design, originally security was only on the receiving side of email, just like with the Post Office.

That has changed to some extent. Responsible ISP's have for some time required a log in to send email. Lately, responsible ISP's have gotten sticky about which other email servers they receive email from. This was as much an anti-spam change as anything else. (Spam is unsolicited, commercial, email. Spoofing is usually done by spammers, but it is not a requirement of spam. Phising is email that attempts an identity theft. Pharming is a relatively new technique of identity theft involving web site take over.)

I will spare you all the technical details. The scenario is simple. Malware gets installed on an unprotected PC. That PC has your email address on it. The malware finds your address and uses it to send email. The sending can be done in a variety of ways depending on how badly the spoofer wants to hide things. The key point is that the sending does not require anything more about you than your email address.

Passwords don't matter very much to a spoofer. They aren't needed at all for spoofing to occur. So don't worry about that yours has been compromised.

Until various protective schemes under consideration (and disagreement) can be put into place, there will be no systematic solution to this problem because security on sending was not built in from the beginning.

Points to consider:
1. Your chances of being spoofed depend on how public you are with your email address. If you are active on any kind of mailing list, it will be avialable widely enough that chances are it will be available on an infected PC.

gmail addresses are no more susceptable a priori than any other email address. However, I suspect that all the free services, get used a lot more by folks who want to be anonymous for purposes of mailing lists, etc. Therefore, it would not surprise me if they were more likely to be spoofed than that of some random ISP.

2. Always have multiple email addresses and carefully segregate them between business and family and home and pleasure, etc.

3. You can get digital signatures and use those to sign email that matters. They are available at low cost or free, depending. Digital signatures means that the recipient of a message can make sure that it comes from you. They won't prevent spoofing.

Because of the nature of the net spamming and spoofing are facts of life that are not likely to go away anytime soon.

The only thing you can really do is filter out the undeliverable bounce messages into a separate folder where you can check up on them from time to time. You don't really want to zap them automatically. There may arise an occasion when you send an important message yourself, and it bounces. The only way to track down what happened is to have all the bounce messages.

Regards,
Al Christoph
Senior Consultant and Proprietor
Three Bears Software, LLC
just right software @ just right prices @ 3bears.biz

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I have had gmail for about 2 months now and I have received
Mar 31, 2005 11:38PM PST

only one spam email and thats a newsletter which I labelled as spam, so I dont really feel I've even received spam since I should have just unsubscribed from the newsletter. Gmail is new but being new does not mean that Google compromises quality. I have to clean out my yahoo and msn/hotmail accounts daily from spam to the tune of 10 a day for yahoo and 50 for hotmail. I have used neither of these email addresses for any personal or business emailing to the extent which i receive spamming. With all the hoopla surrounding Gmails launch, you would think that Gmail would have come under much more of a focused attack from the spammers and spoofers. I believe that most instances of virus proliferation comes from unsaavy or just plain dumb computer users who unwittingly send virus through the mail. I had a friend who sent me daily jokes via email and the last time I spoke to him on the phone I lambasted him for sending such useless drivvel. He sends that and so called chain letters to me. I have now blocked his email address and told him to call me with any information of substance. Most ISP's will not send emails to excessive contacts or everyone in your address book because it looks like a spam attack is occurring or a mass emailing is about to occur. For example, if you have 200 people in your address book in outlook and you attempt to send a hello message to all of them and your ISP is Verizon DSL, it probably will just sit there and time out because of the number of email addresses that simple message must be routed to. In essence, I would blame dumb mail recipients and senders, rather than Google Gmail.

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A Few Additional Thoughts, Al...
Apr 1, 2005 1:37AM PST

It's important to note that being spoofed is not, necessarily, the fault of Google's lack of vigilance. There are a number of servers out there that will let you send outgoing mail with any old address set up as the return.

Another trick that spammers use to create phony addresses are random letter assignments attached to a known domain. They want the messages to look like they came from a legit source (would you open something from 127596!!x@gmail.com?).

Regardless of how this address has been harvested by this system, it's likely that the address will keep receiving spoofed messages.

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"There is no security on sending email"
Apr 2, 2005 10:57AM PST

'Repeat this mantra until it sinks in. "There is no security on sending email." '
Thank you, thank you for saying this ~ the minute one sends an email the first time your addy is out there and forget security...we are kidding ourselves if we think otherwise.

Ann

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GMail has server overload problems, etc.
Mar 31, 2005 11:30PM PST

I have had GMail about months and loved it until recently. It appears their servers are overloaded due to taking on too many new members, because it runs very slow recently. Also they are putting my new mail in the Trash box, so check it each time you log in. I have waited more than a week for a reply to my inquiry about this, but nothing so far. Now I read that they are increasing storage to 2 GB, get real! You are having problems handling 1 GB. Get the bugs out first. I have stopped using it until they respond to my queries.

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Overloaded servers?
Mar 31, 2005 11:45PM PST

What a surprise. Thats usually what happens. Google is a great search engine and now they want to be everything to everybody. Everytime these companies get big they take on everyone and there brother and they lose there focus.

If the rumor mill is true they are working on their own browser and operating system as well. And one of the tech sites had inside info that they are also working on anti-virus and anti-spyware software. I hear they just got one of Mozilla's programmers to help them out. We'll see as time goes on...

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GMail increasing storage limit
Apr 1, 2005 2:47AM PST

Hm, well, didn't the news about them increasing the storage limit to 2 GB come out today, April 1? Maybe it's just an april fools joke.