Gmail account: The "G" stands for GRRRRRRRR

[trotsky]

I signed up for an account but haven't used it yet except to test it, and to send invites.

Hadn't logged into it in a week or so, but when I checked it today, I had 5 spams!

WTF?!? I haven't used that address to sign up anywhere, nor does it appear on any webpages. Does Google give all new addresses to some "opt-in" list or something?

[kick-ass-bob]

1. I have never gotten a spam at Gmail.

[LDS Jock]

3. I don't get spam either

unlike with yahoo. hotmail is a level all by itself. they are the king of spam

[meganmonkey]

2. Wierd - I haven't had a single spam in my gmail account

and I have had it for at least 2 months now.

:shrug:

[Tafiti]

4. I just signed up for one a week ago.

I logged in yesterday, and in the Spam folder, it had one message. I thought, at least it goes straight to a Spam folder so you don't have to look at it or delete from your inbox. Hopefully they're good at catching them.

But it is a little suspicious, since I hadn't given out my address to a single soul. They're being leaked somehow...

[ET Awful]

5. I've got one account that's been sitting unused for 3 months

and has no SPAM or any other mail in the inbox.

on edit: As an administrator of a mail server, I can tell you that simply because spam comes to your address doesn't mean someone was given your address. The spammer send out millions of random letter and word combinations to any domain, they know it's a real address only when you click on a link in the spam, at which point you're added to their "good" address list.

[trotsky]

8. Yeah I am responsible for a mail server too.

The random name guessing finally started to overpower our gateway so I had to take special measures to just simply dump anything not addressed to a valid address instead of processing it and sending out a NDR.

Two things made me think it isn't random guessing:

1) That others on Gmail haven't had the same spam problem. If it's random, it should be fairly common.

2) The folks at Google are certainly on top of most everything and would want to minimize spam and/or DoS attacks. Seeing an outside mail server making repeated attempts and guessing at usernames would almost certainly be something you'd think they'd lock down.

On edit: Now I realize that #1 kinda shoots my theory that Gmail is distributing addresses - otherwise EVERYONE would be getting them. This is why I say GRRRRR. I hate spammers.

[kick-ass-bob]

6. After reading post #4 I wondered...

Do you have a fairly generic gmail name? If so, they may just guess at it...

[trotsky]

9. It's only 6 characters, all letters

so that could be possible. But it's not a common name or word.

[nickgutierrez]

7. I've had a couple mis-identified as spam, but no actual spam. n/t