Gmail Accounts Sending Out Spam - Beware

New trouble arises for Gmail as a number of user accounts are automatically sending spam mail

Pun for the wun

Gmail users, please make sure to check your sent box to know if the same is happening to your account or not. As it is reported by a user that some accounts have been sending spam mails without their account holder's knowledge!

"My email account has sent out 3 spam emails in the past hour to a list of about 10 addresses that I don’t recognize. I changed my password immediately after the first one, but then it happened again 2 more times. The subject of the emails is weight loss and growth supplements for men advertisements. I have reported them as spam. Please help, what else can I do to ensure my account isn’t compromised??" - As stated by Louis, owner of the affected Google Mail account 

So as per the user, even changing the password is not working out  for affected Gmail users who tried to change their googlemail account password. Which indicates that spammers might have found a new way to send spam emails or  found a flaw in Google's security fabric that enabled them to send spam mails via another user's Gmail account.

What caused it?

 

Although Gmail's spam filter is indeed very impressive and one hardly ever gets to see any sort of spam mails in the inbox, but this  case is different as spammers have somehow managed to send spam mails from another persons account by spoofing into their Gmail's email account. The emails appear to be from a website called telus(dot)com. Although a spokesperson from Telus had these words of wisdom to share for the internet and the users affected by spam Gmail messages:

"We have identified spam emails being circulated that are disguised to appear as if they are coming from http://telus.com . We are aware of the issue and can confirm the messages are not being generated by TELUS, nor are they being sent from our server. We are working with our 3rd party vendors to resolve the issue, and are advising our customers not to respond to any suspicious emails."

Here's a "we are fixing"statement from Google which every tech website is claiming that it was given to them by Google: 

"We are aware of a spam campaign impacting a small subset of Gmail users and have actively taken measures to protect against it. This 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. We have identified and are reclassifying all offending emails as spam, and have no reason to believe any accounts were compromised as part of this incident. If you happen to notice a suspicious email, we encourage you to report it as spam. More information on how to report spam can be found by visiting our Help Center." - Google's statement which is actually given to nobody.

What can we do to avoid?

 

Let's be honest, there's currently nothing you can do to avoid it except for living in a cave and pretending that nothing ever happened (until Google fixes it).  And if someone you know sends you a spam message on Gmail, make sure to forgive them because it's actually not them and they might not even have an idea. And make sure to keep a check on your sent folder whether  you are a Gmail web user of a Gmail app user, it's kinda more important than your browsing history right now, you know. Although Google is working on a fix, but we are yet to see if they fix it until the subset of users is a subset or, after it turns into a major set.