Gmail Reveals the Names of All Users

ihatespam writes "Have you ever wanted to know the name of [e-mail]? Now you can. Through a bug in Google calendars the names of all registered Gmail accounts are now readily available. All you need to find out the names of any gmail address is a Google calendar account yourself. Depending on your view this ranges from a harmless "feature" to a rather serious privacy violation. According to some reports, spammers are already exploiting this "feature"/bug to send personalized spam messages."

D'Oh

chunkylover53 is going to be most displeased.

Re:D'Oh

Fortunately for Homer Simpson, that's @aol.com

I can't believe Google would do this!

Really, now everyone will know my name is John Smith? I am outraged and will see my lawyer immediately!

-- [e-mail]

Head in the clouds

This is exactly why I remain leery of applications in the cloud. I've got a google account for work, and that's the only use it ever sees. And it's under real.name.company anyway, and has no other useful information associated with it.

I try really, really hard not to leave to broad a trail online. Those databases just never die (except when they do, of course - but the timing is subject to Murphy's Law, so it's never in my favor).

I'm gonna go hide in my cave now.

Just how personal is this new spam

Does this mean they're only sending spam to people who really need Cialis?

Re:Just how personal is this new spam

Not yet but soon, just wait for the medical data to be compromised in a similar way.

Oh that tears it.

This is horrible. This is an outrage! I'm writing Google a letter telling them how awful this is an how they need to work on the Q/A. I mean my GMail address *IS* my full name, but I'm not going to let that fact stop me from acting like an emotionally charged idiot!

Bugs are to be expected...

It's a good thing they caught this in beta, before it affects a large number of people!

Finally Sean Penn will have justice

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/44460 [theonion.com]

Serious FERPA Violation

The Families Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 allows a student at a university to require the university to not release their name to anyone. For example, if you check for my name at my school's phonebook, you'll find I'm not listed. If you call my registrar's office and ask for information on me, they'll tell you that they don't have a student by my name. You see, it's against the law for them to even confirm that I'm a student.

Since many schools have outsourced their email systems to Gmail, anyone can generate a full roster of student names through this trick. This could obviously result in many violations of FERPA.

Privacy...

Ok...so I only see this as an issue for people trying to hide their identity for something nefarious. I mean christ, I give out my full name a dozen times a day to people I don't know. "Hello, we have a circuit down and need to open a ticket." "Hello, I have a few questions about your product." and damned near every other statement you might make when calling another company is almost IMMEDIATELY followed by "Can I have your name please?" Of course this is after they answer the phone "Hello, my name is..."? Now granted they don't always use their last name if they are just phone jockeys, but almost anyone worth anything in terms of sales/technical/etc reps will give you their full name, email address, phone number, etc.

In other news, purchasing cigarettes and alcohol require you to disclose your first and last name when you show your ID! Even worse, there are rumors that every time you make a purchase using anything other than cash you have to disclose your first and last name. This isn't a privacy issue, maybe a privacy irritation, but certainly not anything to get in a ruffle about. It isn't like names are even really unique identifiers. Now if it revealed birthdays or SSNs or credit card numbers or something then I would understand.

Course, maybe there is something here I am ignoring. Do the people getting in a ruffle about this freak out when someone of the opposite sex asks their name? "Oh my god they are trying to invade my privacy!" Generally it is considered "normal" to give them your name so they have something to call you other than "freak" or "uberhax4234".

Re:This only punishes the foolish

This bug really doesn't affect me as my email address is my real name.

Re:This only punishes the foolish

ahah! But now the spammers KNOW FOR SURE that there isn't an underscore/dash/whatever between your first and last name! You're so screwed!

Re:This only punishes the foolish

Gmail strips out punctuation. So email to [e-mail] goes to the same inbox as [e-mail]

Re:This only punishes the foolish

Then they'll know what part is your first and last name regardless of capitalization! THIS IS HUGE!

Re:This only punishes the foolish

Ditto.
Since all names are really all about pretense, I set up mine on Gmail as "[e-mail]" (Where 'firstname' and 'lastname' are my actual names.
I think there are only eight or ten other people in the US with my same spelled the same anyway. Regardless, I think Gmail's spam filters have only let a couple of false negatives into my Inbox.
*THIS* is why I use very different passwords for web mail as say, my banking or credit report service passwords, etc... If the password file were to be breached, I would only have one to change.
I suggest a good password management app such as this one: http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

OMG ... first names... then what? Last names?

Honestly - your name isn't a secret...

and if you're trying to hide your identity and you put your real first / last name into a free service, you're a moron.

Re:This only punishes the foolish

What, your parents named you Quantum G?

Re:This only punishes the foolish

I mean really... Does anyone with a lick of sense actually give their real name to a free web-based service?

In short, yes. Ever since GMail was launched and people discovered that its way more convenient that Outlook/Yahoo/etc., there's been a steady conversion of addresses in my contact list to "@gmail.com". People are moving to GMail as their primary mail accounts -- I don't know if you've been listening since 1998, but "free web-based email" is now often much, much better than whatever your university/company offers.

So yeah, this is a pretty big deal -- not so much for spammers, but as a privacy violation. You can't do a name lookup for an arbitrary e-mail address, and you shouldn't be able to do it for a GMail address. Someone should get an ass-kicking for this.

Re:This only punishes the foolish

Someone should get an ass-kicking for this.

Agreed. I'll certainly be asking for my money back...

Re:This only punishes the foolish

So yeah, this is a pretty big deal -- not so much for spammers, but as a privacy violation. You can't do a name lookup for an arbitrary e-mail address, and you shouldn't be able to do it for a GMail address. Someone should get an ass-kicking for this.

You know what else... Someone left a thick softcover book on my doorstep the other day that listed the names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone in my region. Hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions. I called the police about this, but they seemed unconcerned.

Re:This only punishes the foolish

I know individuals with a hell of a lot of sense who would give their real names in such a situation.

So? Part of the reason for that is that full names in and of themselves are not really a security risk. I walk around all day in public with an ID badge that gives my first and last name. Big deal. Our names are our public identifiers.

Re:This only punishes the foolish

for a small business owner, why not. I manage a few websites. Very, very small. Less than 20 people have write access. They wanted email. some users would use outlook or outlook express, others wanted a web mail front end. The email client the hosting service had was horrible so I hooked them up with a gmail hosted services. It works very, very nicely for them.

there are some cases where Google is a good alternative to other options.

Re:Is This Evil?

If this story was about a similar bug with Hotmail and Windows Live Calendar, yes it would.

Re:Ouf

...after which exercise balls (in lieu of the usual chair) will be thrown in a fit of unbridled anger (several tech websites will report a mysterious colorful stream of balls spilling out the Google offices).