gmail & spam?

[ncage]

Hi guys, i just created my gmail account today. Within 5 min after i created it, i already had a spam email. The only email i sent out was to my work email to test it out. The name i created for my account would be very hard to guess with one of those randam email addy generators. What gives? Does google give your addy out to spamers?

 

[LeetViet]

I get alot of spam daily also, but all the time (except for once) they go into the Spam folder.

 

[mundane]

I've only sent out a handful of email from my account, and never subscribed with it. I was a bit surprised to start receiving spam; I suspect someone checked one of my emails on it's way through the 'net, read the from: address, and harvested it like that. But as the Golden Member says, they do a good job of catching the Spam before it hits the inbox.

 

[trek]

The spam only started arriving in the last couple weeks for me. It came to both my accounts at roughly the same time and I only use the second account for transfering files to and from school.

 

[ncage]

They did go in the spam folder like you said..but im like geesh if a spamer gets a hard to reproduce within 5 min of the account creation...gmail MUST give out your addy to spamers. What does everyone else think?

 

[BW86]

i havent got any spam and ive been using gmail for a long time now.

 

[BlueWeasel]

The amount of spam is starting to pick up on my gmail account, but it's nothing like what I get daily with my Yahoo email address. I still use the Yahoo one for hot deals, free magazines, and any other case where I think my email address will be given away.

I probably get about 10 spam messages a day with Gmail (been using it 4-5 months now) and they all go into my Spam folder. Yahoo's spam filters also catch most of the bulk mail, but I'm still getting 200-250 spam messages a day to that address.

 

[DannyLove]

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind gmail sends out your email to spammers. I agree, I barely started to receive spam several weeks ago, I never encountered the problem until one day and from then on, it just always comes in waves. And its always in the same format.

Danny73493k
Dannyg23463
Danny23464
etc etc

At least the spam folder catches it, otherwise I wouldn't use the account.

danny~!

 

[igowerf]

I've had my gmail account for 3 months now and I haven't gotten a single piece of spam. Maybe a spammer is using the same random name generator that you're using and he's spamming all those addresses @gmail.com.

 

[Wigwam]

most of the spam goes stright into the spam filter but many times a week i get emails to me in japanese. is there anyway i can activate a language filter ala hotmail to get rid of this as it is annoying!?

 

[Apocalypse23]

Hmm, weird. I have been using Gmail for quiet some time now, and i've never gotten spam. Actually, i've only ever gotten ONE spam email, which went directly to my spam folder. And I advertise my gmail account a lot too, I submit it to websites, give it around, have it displayed on my blog and site etc. I dunno I guess I got lucky, i'm really glad though. My hotmail is always full of spam

 

[UCJefe]

I started getting SPAM from minute 1 without anyone even knowing my account. The SPAM filter has caught them all (except the ones in Spanish) so it doesn't bother me. THere's no way Google gives out people's email; it's just that those spammers have some pretty good email generators and gmail is probably a popular target.

 

[ingenuiti]

Wow, it's good to know I'm not the only having this problem. I replaced a hotmail account (one in which I didn't get spam) with a gmail one. Now, I receive multiple spam emails a day.

I forgot to mention, some of the spam emails I receive are not even addressed to my gmail account but something similar to it (off by one or two letters). I thought that was odd.

 

[hopejr]

I've had gmail for about 3 months now, and it was fine until last week. Since then I've been getting about 15-20 spam messages a day (whereas with my yahoo address I only get 3 or 4 a day).

 

[ingenuiti]

Can you guys check to see if the spam emails are even addressed to your gmail account? The majority of mine are, but a handful of them are not even addressed to my gmail address. Something fishy is going on.

 

[Nothinman]

Can you guys check to see if the spam emails are even addressed to your gmail account? The majority of mine are, but a handful of them are not even addressed to my gmail address. Something fishy is going on.

They probably bcc'd you.

 

[drag]

You guys are nuts to think that Gmail would hand you e-mail out to spammers. Completely nuts.

Gmail is popular and is probably on fast servers. The spammers are mass mailing in a similar way to dictionary attacks on passwords.

They just write scripts to generate words, phrases, and numbers that people habitually use in their e-mail.
Even if they randomly generate numbers and names and only 5% of their spam actually hits a real account then that's still freaking thousands of people. (what? you think that some guy with a big book-o-email addresses is hitting the send button over and over again?)

This is what you do to combat spam like that:
Open up 2 accounts. Name them similarly. Only use one, when you get e-mail in the one you don't use, have it automaticly get deleted in the other account you actually use.

Go ask e-mail admins. At my work e-mail addresses that have been setup for tests and have NEVER been used, or were old salepersons accounts from years earlier still get spam.

 

[Malak]

I haven't gotten any spam yet...

 

[n7]

I've used gmail for several months, & haven't gotten any spam yet at all.