Update: Google just reactivated my account after about 72 hours and three or four emails from me to their support team.

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. The issue you described should now be resolved.

However, please be advised that we have received reports regarding unsolicited messages sent from your account.

I'm following up on the latter but this should at least offer hope for others who have had their accounts disabled.

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Update: It's still disabled. Google have not responded to my emails about it.

In the meantime you can reach me via sean.anthony.corfield (at gmail dot com) for Gtalk. But, as usual, personal emails should always go to my corfield.org, never to the Gmail accounts which I use purely for mailing lists.

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For no good reason, my Gmail account (seancorfield) was disabled this morning (18th). Searching around the Google site uncovered that over the last few days many, many hundreds of users have also been locked out of their accounts. In one thread, someone quotes a Google employee as saying:

Hi all, We have been investigating these disables and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. Be advised that we received reports regarding unsolicited messages sent from many of the accounts that were disabled. We are investigating accounts in accordance with Gmail's Program Policies and your account may remain disabled or be re- enabled as a result. Gmail's Program Policies (http://mail.google.com/gmail/help/ program_policies.html) prohibit the use of Gmail accounts for sending unsolicited messages, or spam.

Seems like a massive SNAFU on Google's part, given the volume of complaints on their forums in the last few days. Hopefully they'll get their act together and fix the problem soon.

What is really frustrating is that you can't even get through their Contact Us form without all sorts of information from your original Gmail invite. Since that came to me a couple of computers ago, I no longer have that data.

Sean you spammer!! ;o)

That stinks man. At least they've finally opened up GMail so you don't need an invite to create a new one in the interim.

I guess there may be a few gmail users who are wittingly or unwittingly spamming people, other than the real spammers who have harvested addresses from wherever. Anyway, I've wondered why so many IT people use gmail. On a similar note I started setting up email links as a CF template that does a <cflocation href="mailto:name@dot.com"> Does anyone know if this will really fool the email harvesting crawlers out there?

One thing to note, is that if you are using Google Apps for Domains, and have a catchall address, the spammers are taking you for a ride.

Make sure you turn off your catch all address so that only valid email accounts can be sent from... and remote mail servers can tell that the email from address is completely invalid (it can't if you have a catch all address!). Also think about adding a SPF to your DNS entry for that domain (https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=33786)

I had it turned on for a while and saw the amount of crap that spammers were sending from fake emails from my domain name (the testament was thousands of undeliverable mails from non-existant accounts).

I am convinced they will never remove "beta" from the Gmail logo for this very reason.

"You can't get too mad at us... it's beta!" :)

I think that is a cover for the real probelm. Google opened up registration for all within the last 2 weeks and my suspicion is that they have issues with mass registrations that are most likely going on. Whatever the problem lets hope they figure it out quick.

I've been getting a ton of spam in the last week of so from gmail email addresses. I was wondering if Google had opened up the gmail registration. Looks like they have.

yes I have hotmail account and no spam at all untill this week when gmail opened registration up, now I am getting tons from gmail accounts.

MS is responsible in some way for this.... the machines sending the unsolicited email are probably Windows PCs and therefore it is MS' fault, Google is free of blame!

I feel your pain. A loyal Google Account user, small blog, and GMail - with a few ads on the blog via AdSense. Nothing wrong or abuse in my work or using, until today. Disabled account, no response to e-mails to Google. I can't understand it, had relied on GMail - too much. I will see what comes, but I shall no longer trust GMail for e-mails of any consequence. I am going to use my ISP accounts more in the future. At least they have Technical Support, and respond to cries from users for help. Best, DrWeb

The gmail disable fiasco finally hit me, and over a day I have not heard any response from gmail. And I found out not only my gmail account was shut down, all my invites are disabled as well for no good reason. And I know all these invites from me are rare email users, no way these guys can commit unsolicited spamming at all, let alone committing at the same time. There are some fundamental problems in gmail. By the way, I also noticed the volume of spammer increased beyond my curiosity. Are they accusing me of selling my gmail address? With the volume of spammer so high, maybe people should turn around to collect these addresses for sale.

likewise, account disabled. very displeased with google on this one. Nowhere near my limit on daily sends, nothing showing in my sent mail, no notification from google. Cant send or receive attachments. Thanks google - for nothing. Is it coincidence that they recently opened up gmail? Several of the people who I invited have been locked down/disabled, too.

And massive increase in spam, plenty of which is getting past the filters.

My primary account has now been disabled for 2 weeks now and it is having bad consequences socially and professionally. I have tried over and over again to contact Google. Does any one have an effective method of contacting Google to get some answers

Hi, I know this post comes late, but I have just been locked out of my google account. (15 October 2008). All I have got from them is a aut-response after filling in the forms on the google website. There was something about my blogs spamming, the yesterday, but I signed in OK after going to a page and entering the letters, but today was just locked out again.

My blogs and adsense adds on blogs and website are all still in place, but I just cannot sign in at all.

I just don't understand it. I've had the account with Google for around 5 years. I never spam anybody and the only thing I can think that's upset them is I've left my URL on Stumbleupon.com and digg etc.

It seems that everybody that this has happened to is in the same boat and if I ran my business by cutting people off without explanation I would soon go broke. But I guess Google is too big to worry about things like that.

Hello, I've sent like 5 requests to unlock my Gmail account, but since these are just processed by some script, there is no real chance to get it unblocked. I've been with GMail since early beta stage and I've never violated Google's TOS in any way -- still, my account has been disabled for no reason and without any explanation.

Google is great company, but if it comes to customer support of free services, they don't care about people. I have a dozen of registrations on this account, since I would never think that this can happen to me when I've done nothing against Google's TOS agreement. I've been using GMail as my official and primary e-mail address for years.

If anyone knows how to sort out this situation, please e-mail me. I will be much grateful for any meaningful advise. Good luck to everyone.

Just had an exact repeat episode&account disabled. I my case its because there was a security issue with Google Checkout&the worthless redundant buying service that I signed up for to get 10% off some gear. What a fool. The Googlesphere is inherently evil and heres why. They promote trust that lures users with awesome free cloud computing service. I foolishly trusted Google and used Gmail, Docs, and Picassa to safeguard my data. Now, because of some BS Checkout problem, theyve locked me away from my data. IMAP made the situation far worse, since I now have lost 3-years worth of email data. INSANE. I blasted the cheerleaders at Lifehacker who promote all things Google. I suggest that anyone who suffers a similar fate do the same. The word needs to get out that Google cant be trusted.

I totally give up with Google now. Through no fault of my own I lost adwords and had to struggle for 12 months to get it back. Now I have lost access to my blogs after building them up to a 3-rating, my email address, Picassa and all other services I had signed up for.

I've had no explanation whatsoever, and been locked out for several weeks now. To use analytics, I signed with a new account, but will never again rely on e-mail or adwords. The word linch-mob comes to mind.

My GMail account was just compromised a few days ago and some fraud purchase were made with my Google Checkout. GMail disabled the account and did not charge me for whatever was bought. I STILL can't get in to my account. I can not get them to re-enable it and I had last years tax documents in the inbox so who knows what is eventually going to happen with this.

Well I was just locked out of my gmail account. Looks like I was intercepted at a nice hotel in Beijing, using their "free" wifi access. Now Google is asking me questions about starting my account 5 years ago, who remembers that stuff? My travel documents are in my inbox, my verification email account with the airline is also that same (blocked) address. How the hell am I supposed to get home? I am a bit frustrated with Google right now. Would be interested if many others are in the same situation this recently (2009). I have trusted Google with my travel itinery, travel documents and my entire internet presence, and now this. I think I will be looking at the ISP contact route from now on, provided I make it home.

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