Phishing Google through their own service
- Published December 24th, 2006 in Personal
Gmail acts as my sink for all my email messages. It’s big enough to assure reliable uptimes, the space given is more than enough for a couple thousand of emails and it has a very nice web/mobile interface. One of the drawbacks though being that it does not provide an IMAP server (yet). Accessing through the web interface to manage a lot of emails can be a really cumbersome task. But I get their point: publicity has to be attached to somewhere.
Very recently their spam filter is also letting me down. False-positives (messages marked as spam that are not spam) are quite rare but the opposite is very common. I receive more than 30 spam messages (daily) that make their way into my Inbox folder. Worst: most of them come with a X-Spam header set by my Faculty’s mail server!
But today was the big rundown in their spam filter. A phishing/worm email used Google’s trademarks and images to pave its way into my Inbox. And it actually did. Here’s the screenshot.
There were some hints that could help classifying this email as spam even if the spam engine has problems interpreting Portuguese. First off, links to google.com.br that point to a different URL (this case being the worm itself). Usage of Google’s copyright footer (2006 Google). Last but not least: usage of the alias NatalFeliz@google.com!
-2 points to Google. No problem though. You still have a really high karma to me but it would be great if you could actually improve your spam filter.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Do you report those messages as spam, or simply delete them? Bayesian filters need to be trained, you know…
Pedro,
I’ve probably reported more than 1000 spam messages. I’ve been receiving daily more than 30 spam messages for the last two months. Every single one is reported as spam.
Their spam filter is definitely broken.
OK, I believe you, then.
It’s just that I receive a lot more - say, 200 spam messages a day. And, most of the time, none of them gets to the inbox. Sometimes, it’s one a day.
I do have some false positives from time to time, but I’ve gotten into the habit of skimming through the Spam folder to detect them each day.
When I gave you the number 30 I was referring to the spam messages that get into my Inbox. Daily I receive more than 1000 spam messages (I guess due to having multiple aliases all being redirected to here!) that actually make their way into the spam folder.
I also have the habit of taking a look at the spam folder. It’s quite a boresome task if we’re talking about 1000 spam messages.