Did Gmail's database leak or something?

I've got a big family and I set them all up with Gmail accounts... 16 accounts in all.

Starting December 3, all 16 of our accounts plus all of my personal Gmail accounts started receiving spam. ALL of them, ALL within an hour of each other. I shot some emails out to a couple of my friends and they, too, starting getting spam around the same time as my accounts.

I don't know how any spammer could have mysteriously guessed all of those Gmail accounts -- one of them consisted of random letters and numbers and they got that one, too.

I can only guess that Gmail's files were compromised in some way.

Did anyone here with Gmail accounts get a bunch of spam starting Dec. 3? They are fortuneately being caught by Gmail's spam filters, but the idea that all 30+ of our accounts are now in the hands of some spammer somewhere really pisses me of regardless.

I rarely use my gmail account, just checked it first time in about a week and I had 7 emails in the spam box.

My yahoo account is most used and least spammed.

> My yahoo account is most used and least spammed.

Yahoo also has a *very* good spam filter. I get maybe 1 spam email a day in my inbox, compared to the hundreds that go straight to my Bulk mail folder. Almost no false spam positives, with the exception of an SL fansite whose first letters very nearly spell "sex" .

Azelda

I just noticed both my accounts, including one not published, have their spam folders full to bursting. Ok, only 25 a day, but that is still a lot.

I figure the spammers just got around to running their programs against gmail, it being new and all. Heck, gmail had caught all but one this week. I am glad I speak some Russian and could read the subject line on the one that made it through. Just opening that one would have meant doing some time, I think!

Zero spam in mine. w00t!

How is your gmail set up? [email]name@gmail.com[/email]? Could be spammers are just guessing names. Mine is set up as [email]name.name@gmail.com[/email] which Im assuming is more difficult to guess.

I got 2 in mine around the 3rd also, but they were in the spam box, not the inbox. At least the filters work.

The moment my gmail account was put in my 2nd life profile. the spam soared.

'nuff said

Oops - sorry. Unintentional double posting.

Aaron,

Gmail is *supposed* to send you spam - that is the whole point of it. And, to make things even more sinister, every time you use Gmail, your outgoing mail is scanned, and when they find certain keywords they treat them as a trigger for a particular type of spam.

Google was quite upfront about this.

As were those of us who decided we wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

No Selador, Gmail does not send you email. It puts targeted ads on your screen next to your emails. Just like Hotmail does. Just like Yahoo does. Google is Google so everyone got pissed when they said they'd do it, give you more for free, and make it 100% faster than everyone else.

And I doubt Google's business plan involves sending me 12 Vicodin that automatically end up in my spam folder.

Aaron,

<<No Selador, Gmail does not send you email.>>

I didn't say it did.

No, you didn't but it sounded like that's what you meant, especially since this whole thread is about spam emails being sent to our Gmail accounts. Your response was that Gmail was supposed to this, so I thought you meant the sending of the emails.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

In response to the original question I didn't get any more spam on my gmail account than I did on freshly initiated MSN, Netscape, or MyWay accounts. Some things to consider:

Have you forwarded any other mail to your Gmail id? Thats what I did when I first got it. In fact I forwarded my Yahoo mail, MSN mail and my Verizon email ID (the last of which I never use but collects tons of spam anyway) to my Gmail ID just to test its spam filtering (which worked pretty well). When I stopped the forwarding the spam stopped too MOSTLY. My guess is that in there somewhere a message or two bounced back to the original sender allowing them to harvest the new address.

Another, even more likely possibility. I bet in the 16 Gmail accounts you set up most of those people had each other in their address book. All it would have taken is for ONE of them to have one of those spyware viruses to harvest all your IDs pretty quickly. My guess is that most email ids get into the spam mailing list most quickly this way, and via those dreaded chain letters that your AOL friends end up including you in on. You know, the ones where everyone they send it too gets to see everyone else's address.

> via those dreaded chain letters that your AOL friends end up including you in on. You know, the ones where everyone they send it too gets to see everyone else's address.

Yeah, those are annoying; they tend to never understand why you'd ever want to get off their distribution list too

Azelda

ditto I jsut started getting spam in mine too and I only use it w/ friends...