Really Great Post. Best wishes. Thanks

[Note from Admin: Comment edited by admin due to keyword spam, next time use your real name instead of lame keywords. I'm sure your real name is not "Email Security Solutions"]

@George the Foreman

Honestly, I would not feel bad if you assume if this is an user error. I really don’t care if this is going to be solved, as long as this is not happening with my emails.

I have seen the emails that I have received, which were replies to an original email which originated with the person I got the email for. I let this person know, and his response was shocking. He had received all the emails I had in my inbox, so it was clear the emails were being delivered in both inboxes.

I’m not going to paste the header info here, as that will expose email addresses and more.

I will wait patiently for an answer from Google, but I doubt they will ever take on this case with the China nightmare they have on their hands.

I was afraid they might not reply. I suspect that they have checked out that sort of complaint thoroughly, but they are deluged with that sort of inquiry, in spite of the FAQ on their Web site to deal with it.

My thinking is this. UNIX is 40 years old, and Linux is 15 years or so. And Google has surely delivered many billions of e-mail messages over several years. By now, surely that software has been VERY thoroughly tested.

On the other hand, it is not at all hard to imagine someone typing in smith@google.com instead of smith1234@google.com SOMEWHERE in the process. There are quite a few possibilities for entering a wrong address: the From address, the Reply-to address, forwarding address, or just a random address from an address book–and probably some none of us has thought about. In the absence of headers or ANY solid information other than the fact that you received some mail, I see no reason to assume anything other than human error.

@George Foreman

I sent the header information and an explanation to the email address you stated above here on December 22nd.
I heard nothing back, I only got the standard auto response email that they have received my email.

Furthermore, I contacted the guy whose emails I was receiving. He has a new email address set up, and had to change all his auto delivery of emails again.

Sorry about the sarcasm, but this really needs attention, and Google is best equipped to handle it.

The normal procedure when finding what you think is a security bug that might affect millions of people is to report it to the company that you think made the mistake. That’s called a bug report.

I looked it up for you. Google’s security page is here: http://www.google.com/corporate/security.html . That page explains what to do. You can send your e-mail to security@google.com . Don’t bother with a screen capture. Just copy and paste the damn headers, OK?

Now, since you already blogged about it without producing the evidence, I’d say you owe everyone a confirmed bug report. We don’t need the whole report. Just the number.

True, but if you think I make the point you should not use GMail because Google has deactivated the email account, you are missing the point.

I argue that you should be careful using free email accounts, as your emails could be redirected to somebodies inbox based on eMail address similarities.

Apart from Google scanning your emails to match it with ads, more people might be reading your email. More than you might know!

That’s all I wanted to post here. You can do whatever with this information you like.
If you don’t like the message, I’m sorry, but that’s going to be your problem then.
My problem is that I’m getting more and more emails from this guy in my inbox. It’s cluttering my inbox, as I’m even getting read confirmations from the people he sends emails to.

But thank you for researching the case, and thank you for your comments.

I did check up on the other part of your story, and it looks like you blew it. The account was reactivated as soon as the identity of the account holder was turned over, so the account holder lost nothing except for temporary use of his mail box while the matter was being argued in federal court. Google did the right thing and protected the user.

One more thing. The article was dated Sept. 26, 7 weeks ago. There was plenty of time to check the facts BEFORE writing about the incident.

Source: http://tiny.cc/this-news-report

a federal judge allowed Google to reactivate the account as soon as they turned over the identity of the account holder. So as far as I can tell, the account holder did not lose his e-mail. The article is date Sept. 29, so there was plenty of time to have checked before writing a blog.

Let me see if I can post a screenshot of the headers of the emails here. I don’t want to expose too much data to jeopardize this guys account even more.

But since I’m receiving online faxes and voice mails right now, there is clearly something wrong with the delivery of his emails.

The link you posted doesn’t say what happened to the e-mail account, but with a little searching I did discover that Google was under court order to deactivate the account. One account says it was temporarily deactivated. I certainly don’t hold Google at fault for complying with a court order, and I don’t think either one of us knows whether the account holder lost any data, or whether it was even active.

Without seeing the e-mails and headers, I can’t say for sure why you are getting these e-mails, but you were given at least two possible reasons. I can assure you that getting e-mails that appear to be addressed to other people is not only permitted under e-mail protocol, but also a common occurrence. Perhaps you don’t get much spam or mail with blind copies.

I think what you need to do is show the messages with headers to someone who is knowledgeable about this, and then if you still think you have found something, contact Google Mail about it. That’s the only fair and proper thing to do.

I work with computers a lot, and I find a lot of problems. I always discuss problems before I write a bug report. If I didn’t do that, no one would pay any attention to what I wrote. Much of the time it turns out to be a user error or misunderstanding. If I do find a problem, it’s hardly ever exactly what I thought it was.