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."

Re:Bigness destroys companies

[hawguy]

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.

Re:Bigness destroys companies

[ackthpt]

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.)

Re:

[ShaunC]

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.

Re:

[Darinbob]

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.

Re:

[buchner.johannes]

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.

Re: Bigness destroys companies

[PC_THE_GREAT]

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.

Re: Bigness destroys companies

[PC_THE_GREAT]

s/abd easy ti/and easy to/g

Re:

[qpqp]

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

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

Re:

[Darinbob]

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 cer

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

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.

Re:Bigness destroys companies

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Re:

[ElBeano]

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.

Re:

[Em Adespoton]

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?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[LordLimecat]

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.

Re:

[Kenja]

Hipster gMail user had an account before it was mainstream.

Re:

[Bengie]

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.

Re:

[Em Adespoton]

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

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

"Gmail" Bug?

[lagartoflojo]

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.

Re:

[phantomfive]

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.

Only today?

[Carewolf]

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

Re:

[perryizgr8]

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

Re:

[nurb432]

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

But sloppiness kills..

gmail bug

[DocSavage64109]

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.

Re:

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

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.

Re:

[Fnord666]

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.

Re:

[Jakeula]

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 the

Re:

[edibobb]

Egads! Google is becoming Microsoft!!

Re:

[hawguy]

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 r

Re:

[lgw]

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.

Re:Google searches while logged in to Gmail?

[hawguy]

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.

Re:

[lgw]

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.

Re:

[Em Adespoton]

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).

How do you know you're having a shitty day?

[circletimessquare]

When you are being DDoSed by motherfucking Google .

Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day?

[DocSavage64109]

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.

Re:

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

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

Re:How do you know you're having a shitty day?

[circletimessquare]

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.

Are we forgetting something?

[MickLinux]

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 me

Re:

[Chelloveck]

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

Re:

[whisper_jeff]

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.

Re:

[Darinbob]

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.

Sigh. useless links.

[rueger]

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....

Re:

[Cramer]

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.

Re:

[murdocj]

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".

Re:

[Cramer]

Hah. We are the Google Test Environment(TM)

Lawsuit

[Animats]

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

I wonder.

[ndsbriand]

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

Re:

[DocSavage64109]

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

Grrr

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Obama! :|

Google search for gmail

[FuzzNugget]

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

Google software buggy?

[scottbomb]

Say it isn't so.

Re:

[ubrgeek]

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

Show of Hands

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Re:

[DerekLyons]

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

Re:

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Re:

[DerekLyons]

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".

Re:

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Re:

[Common Joe]

Erm... no, not me.

[Pause.]

Excuse me. I have to shut down a script.

Re:

[bluegutang]

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".

Re:

[Chapium]

I guess you had better not ever open a phonebook.

Hundreds of people per hour do WHAT?

[magarity]

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?

Re:

[swillden]

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 locatio

Re:

[swillden]

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.

Re:

[slapout]

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.

Re:

[bluegutang]

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.

His IP address is 127.0.0.1

[TsuruchiBrian]

So nobody try to DDOS him ok?

Re:

[dkf]

I thought he was at 192.168.1.1...

Arrest Imminent

[Princeofcups]

Has the recipient been arrested for hacking yet?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try. His email address is [e-mail]. What did he expect?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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 [e-mail]. What did he expect?

Something doesn't add up...

More importantly

[smittyoneeach]

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?