Gmail Combats Spammers, Blocks Users

An overzealous antispam measure mistakenly blocked legitimate users from their accounts


Antispam Measure Blocks GMail users
As an attempt to combat spammers, Google recently mistakenly disabled Gmail accounts of some users. Midweek, people started reporting in the official Gmail Help Discussion forum, that Google had locked them out of their accounts.

A Google staffer who oversees the forum and posts messages on behalf of Google acknowledged the existence of a problem at midafternoon Thursday.

"I understand that some of you have had a frustrating experience with your accounts being inappropriately disabled. Our team is aware of the problem, and our engineers are continuing to investigate," this person, identified as Google Guide, wrote.

Several hours later, the Google staffer declared the problem fixed "Our efforts to prevent breaches of our Terms of Use caused a number of users to be incorrectly identified," the staffer wrote.

The Google Guide also detailed some information about the situation in a subsequent post to the forum. The staffer said that it was the result of an effort to rid users who abuse the mail service, such as spamming.

Accounts which were disabled by mistake should have regained access to their mail with no data lost, said the staffer.

However, spokesperson Courtney Hohne said that Gmail would not reject any incoming messages to those disabled account, returning a "bounce-back" notice to senders, and will not automatically attempt to redeliver those rejected messages.

"Our goal has always been to keep Gmail free of people who abuse the service and to keep Gmail inboxes free of spam. We've been targeting a large network of spammers to keep them out of the Gmail system and accidentally disabled access to some other accounts," she wrote. Hohne said the mistakenly disabled accounts affected "a small fraction," well below 1 percent of the tens of millions of Gmail users.

Late Friday morning, some people are still complaining that their accounts were still locked.

The discussion thread is one of the longest in recent months, and is full of frantic pleas for help from affected people who use Gmail as their primary e-mail service for personal or work communications.

Along with disabled Gmail accounts, users were also complaining in the past month about a problem with the mail service. The new version of Gmail, dubbed Gmail 2.0, became extremely slow, often fails to load pages, and even crashes their browsers, users complained.

Gmail, which features an ungraded contacts manager and is designed to be faster and more stabled, is based on what the company calls "a major structural code change".

One of several threads devoted to this issue in the Gmail Help Discussion forum continues to grow, with nearly 300 messages at this time.

Good 'ol Gmail

Google's answer to the email rivalries is the Gmail. It's free, and has unique features that really make it stand out among its competitors


Google Gmail Exposed

Gmail has come a long way since it first debuted. In April 1, 2004, Google's web-based email service was released as a beta, but to a limited users only - you need an invitation from a Gmail user to create your own email account. In February of 2007, it was opened to the public, and anybody can create an account without any invitations.

Before the invitation-only status was removed, Gmail has the largest email storage capacity - 1 GB in size, compared to Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail's megabytes-sized inboxes. It was the choice for people who have to store lots and lotsa emails. And when it opened to the public, that storage capacity soared to 2 GB. As of now, Gmail's storage capacity is creeping to 5Gb and still increasing to a little more than 1 MB an hour.

The unique feature of Gmail is it's unique presentation and foundation. It uses AJAX, a technology that allows you to refresh certain areas of a webpage, without refreshing the entire page. That allows faster load times, and very responsive page. Clicking the Inbox immediately shows your inbox folder (without the page refreshing). In the same way, clicking any folder shows the folder's contents almost instantaneously.

And it's unique 'conversational view' allows you to see the thread of your email in one single view. All messages in the email are grouped together in a stack, so all the replies to the email and your replies to the email are readily available.

But these are the ones that makes Gmail stand out among the rest. You won't see these in Yahoo! and Windows Live Hotmail:

Security
By default, all your emails and data go through unencrypted connection. However, changing the http:// in the address bar to https://, you can manually force Gmail to use a more secure, encrypted connection to retrieve your emails. That reduces third-party sniffing for data and user information, like your contacts.

Plus Addressing
Gmail has this handy, and unique feature, that allows you to plus your addresses. If you receive the Sonicsoft Wired Update email, you'll notice that it is used extensively. Plus addressing allows users to send emails to username+extratext@gmail.com, where extratext can be any string. Emails will still be sent to username@gmail.com. This is especially useful when subscribing to online websites. So you can filter out the messages received from a subscribed site, a user might register the email address as username+websitename@gmail.com.

The Dot Addresses
Another useful feature of Gmail is that it doesn't recognize the dot or period. It ignores them instead. So, all emails to goog.le@gmail.com, g.o.o.g.l.e@gmail.com, and g.oog.le@gmail.com will still go to google@gmail.com. This is useful to sort out or filter messages you receive.

You might have noticed that Gmail is still in beta state - meaning it's not yet released as final. It's been beta ever since it was released, and many people are wondering whether Gmail will get out of beta state, or might go on forever as beta, known as the perpetual beta. Google says that it will remain in beta so they can improve their services whenever it is needed. Last month, Gmail was updated to version 2.0. However, some people are reporting problems with the new format. Users are allowed to go back to version 1 anytime they like.

Check out the Official Gmail Blog for more news.

Story:
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All Rights Reserved

The Giant Google

Google is expanding, and it can have so much data about you that you might not even aware of. But can we trust it with so much data?


Is Google Too Big?

Google is popular as a search engine, but it's really more than that. Now you have emails run by Google, along with word processors, spreadsheets, and presentations. Add to that Google's Picasa, Maps, and other things. Google is becoming big - too big perhaps.

With all that online services available from Google, it's not really a shocking revelation that it knows a lot of information about you.

The question is can you trust Google with your data?

This is a short list of what Google knows about you:

• Google Search
  Tying your search history to your browsing activities via the DoubleClick advertising network gives the company a much more detailed view of your online activities
  


• GMail
  The routing information and content of your mail--including any attachments--reside unencrypted on Google servers. Loss of, or unauthorized access to, business correspondence increases your company's legal exposure
  


• Google Docs and Spreadsheets
  Your files are stored unencrypted on Google servers. A business could be found negligent if it loses, or allows unauthorized access to, business documents. Until applications supporting Google Gears arrive, you lose access to your files when your Internet connection fails
  


• Picasa Web Albums
  Photographs in albums designated "unlisted" can still be viewed by anyone who knows the URL. At present you have no option to view or back up your albums offline
  


• Google Calendar
  Your daily schedule and associated information reside unencrypted on Google servers. Loss of, or unauthorized access to, business information puts your company at risk. You can't open your calendar without an Internet link, although this will change with the arrival of the Google Gears browser extension
  


• Google Desktop
  If you neglect to lock the search function, anyone using your PC has access to your personal files. Copies of business documents may be stored on Google servers, making them susceptible to loss or unauthorized access
  


• Google Talk
  Instant-message logs can be archived and searched in Gmail
  


• Google Product Search
  A log of your product searches could be associated with your browsing history via the pending DoubleClick acquisition
  
  Source: PCWORLD.com

The question is, can you trust Google with all that information about you? And since the data resides unencrypted on Google's server, who knows who can access your data - the government? agencies, hackers, rival business?

Google's online trove of personal and sensitive information is proving attractive to law enforcing agencies. In the previous year, Google has prevented the Department of Justice from demanding millions of search queries, stating that this is an invasion of privacy.

Google also said that it will begin clearing out some personal information of users, like their IP address, after 18 months from its logs, though this step may be insufficient for security-conscious users.

I'm not saying your data is at-risk all the time, but you should take precautions over what to store with Google. Also, Google should take steps to prevent unauthorized access and enforce privacy restrictions on the data it stores.