A new form of abuse: Gmail forwarding
I’ve been the unhappy recipient of a new way to abuse Gmail: automatic forwarding.
How did I discover this? I’m receiving someone else’s email spam.
Why am I receiving someone else’s email? Because the user is using Gmail, and they have turned on automatic forwarding… to me.
Why is this abuse? 1) Because I don’t want it, and 2) because this user goes out all over the net and subscribes to every single newsletter and email list they can find. Which means I get a copy of it. It’s a new, indirect way to spam.
I’ve sent four emails to abuse@gmail.com on this issue. I get the instant, automatic reply about how they take abuse very seriously… but I’ve heard nothing back from the abuse team. I’ve been emailing them since September 29, 2008 and I have yet to receive a non-automatic reply.
Email forwarding, when turned on, should have a mechanism to verify the recipient email address, some kind of confirmation system, so that this kind of abuse cannot occur. As it is now, anyone can set up a Gmail account, subscribe to every newsletter and email list that they can find, and then turn on forwarding to you. There, you’re screwed. And there’s pretty much nothing that you can do about it. Even if they never log in to that Gmail account again, you’re going to get their spam. Forever, apparently.
Unless the Gmail abuse team wakes up.
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