February 21, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Comments
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.
Posted By Rey Bango / Posted At
2/18/07 7:11 PM
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?
Posted By Richard / Posted At
2/18/07 11:20 PM
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).
Posted By dc / Posted At
2/19/07 6:52 AM
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!" :)
Posted By Dave Shuck / Posted At
2/19/07 10:04 AM
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.
Posted By Dan / Posted At
2/19/07 10:21 AM
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.
Posted By Ray Buechler / Posted At
2/19/07 2:01 PM
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.
Posted By Bren / Posted At
2/20/07 4:15 AM
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!
Posted By TJ Downes / Posted At
2/20/07 3:10 PM
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
Posted By DrWeb / Posted At
2/20/07 11:09 PM
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.
Posted By Bill Lin / Posted At
4/10/07 11:42 AM
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.
Posted By kev / Posted At
4/10/07 8:28 PM
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