Oops! Gmail Spam Campaign Gone Wrong

It’s common for ordinary email users to just leave their sent items behind. It’s just stored and piled up according to date. Though, there is a minority who are so keen. They found out that there are emails they didn’t send out. A spam message campaign run by Google was discovered by Gmail users.

In the Gmail forum, several users found spam emails distributed to unknown addresses with a variety of subject topics such as bitcoin and funeral insurance to weight loss. Even if the emails were suspicious, the Gmail accounts were not compromised.

The concerned Gmail users went to Twitter to warn other users about the annoying event. To bypass Gmail’s spam filters, the accounts were spamming themselves with a trick spammers.

The users said that changing their password only results in having the spam messages sent again. The issue also goes with people who use two-factor authentication. The accounts were not hacked or attacked, said the Google spokesperson. The incident is just a “spam campaign affecting a small subset of Gmail users.”

Google stated that the attempt involved forged email headers that made it appear as if users were receiving emails from themselves, which also led to those messages erroneously appearing in the Sent folder. They have recognized and are reclassifying all offending emails as spam, and have no reason to believe any accounts were compromised as part of the incident.

For users who find the messages in their sent items should proceed to report them as spam.