Gmail’s spewing out spam, and nobody seems to know why

All the hype surrounding Gmail may be thanks to its first redesign in some seven years, but not all is well with Google’s mail service.

According to a number of reports, Gmail users on Sunday found a number of spam messages sent from their accounts.

“My email account has sent out 3 spam emails in the past hour to a list of about 10 addresses that I don’t recongnize,” wrote one user on Google’s Product forum. Changing passwords didn’t help this particular user either, nor did marking the mails as spam.

“Please help, what else can I do to ensure my account isn’t compromised??” the user begged.

Notably, this particular thread is some 160 posts long, and the above isn’t the only complaint.

“Same thing just happened to me. Exact scenario where it was sent ‘via telus.com’ but the topics are about bitcoin and funeral insurance(??). Checked my activity and found nothing and I still have 2FA enabled,” wrote another.

According to Google, there is indeed an issue, and there’s seemingly nothing Gmail users can do about it.

“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,” a company spokesperson told Mashable.

It’s not clear what’s going on here. Google suggests that it is working on the issue, but information regarding the spread of the problem, or just how large the “small subset” of affected users, remains unknown.

Basically, if you happen to receive a mail about funeral insurance, bitcoin investment or money lending from your boss, partner, or technophobe granny, this might be the reason why.

H/T: Mashable

Feature image: Jay Wennington via Unsplash