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AbandonedHero said on September 17th, 2007 at 12:37 pm :

Due to the nature of e-mails, spammers and the like are able to spoof the original sender or even the destination. Also, a blank carbon copy (BCC) can be used to mask who the e-mail was originally sent to - this is one way you could get e-mails without your address in the “to” field. As for the Google Password Assistance problem, it looks like someone doesn’t like you or is attempting to use an account they thought was theirs.

 

admin said on October 2nd, 2007 at 12:49 am :

Like I mentioned, it isn’t a spoof site, and actually entering a password would give me access to an account *that I don’t own*, which doesn’t make sense!

Aug 28, 2007 | The Gmail Hijack

Digg!

While I have tried time and again to raise this issue it has clearly not been resolved by Google, and it truly truly worries me.

For the past three years I have been, periodically, receiving genuine emails from Google (accounts-noreply@google.com) asking me to visit the provided link to ‘initiate the process for resetting the password’ for an existing email account that is not mine. The link is valid, the page it points to is a valid google.com website (no phishing, trust me). What is happening here? This has happened 7 times already, and I don’t quite know what to make of it.

Screenshot of genuine Gmail password reset request
No phishing, as shown by the bottom inset. Clicking on the link brings me to…

Screenshot of genuine Gmail password reset request
Now what do I do? By purely moral and ethical standards I uphold I have done absolutely nothing, except kept those emails for future record-keeping. My greatest concern is: what is happening to my emails? Do they ever get sent to the wrong recipient? The strange thing, that has already happened to me in that I have received emails from people whose header does not include my email address anywhere. And these are legitimate emails as well, talking anything from your common meeting presentation to more informal communications. They’re not spam, in case you were going to point that out…

Also written on this day..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 9:50 pm, EST under the category of Web design. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.