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Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?
- mariocesar 6y agoJust a simple option like "Allow just my contacts to share files with me". I lost so much time with all the spam and malware that is being sent to me just because my gmail account is so public ... :(
- techsupporter 6y agoSpammers, scammers, and marketers are abusing every possible system to get eyeballs and it's moved beyond frustrating. I've had to dump phone numbers due to SMS, voicemail, and phone call spam. My spam box on my e-mail address (not hosted at Google, but still) is littered with bogus calendar invites, fake invoices, file sharing attempts, and so on. I'm a little surprised spammers aren't putting ad messages in fields that get logged in HTTP access logs just so admins will trip over them somehow.
- boxingdog 6y agothey do something similar called ref spam.
- cesarb 6y ago> I'm a little surprised spammers aren't putting ad messages in fields that get logged in HTTP access logs just so admins will trip over them somehow. It's been a long time since I last had reason to look at an Apache access.log file, but Referer spam used to be very common (IIRC, the default Apache access.log format logs the content of the Referer header, and analytics reports based on these logs often showed these as live links; it was not rare for these analytics reports to be publicly visible, so these Referer links could be used to spam the Google index).
- fortran77 6y ago"referrer" spam has been a thing for a long time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referrer_spam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referrer_spam
- joking 6y agoThey do, I have seen referred field spam, which also appears on analytics suites.
- Avamander 6y agoThe next hot strategy is reverse-proxying an actual site to grow a domain's position in search engines.
- quickthrower2 6y agoWell there is spamming build logs. If you have used npm enough, you've probably seen someone asking for a job when you run npm i. This spam is possible from the console.log output of npm packages as they get installed.
- cbm-vic-20 6y agoAnswer: find the email address of the person the product manager of Google Drive reports to, and start sharing stuff with them. (/s: not condoning doxxing here)
- Overtonwindow 6y agoGenius!
- phendrenad2 6y agoBonus points for slipping your resume past the HR filters this way.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Simulacra 6y agoI just tried this. Let's see what happens.
- dakiol 6y agoPlease share the email address (use a throwaway account) so that everyone can do it as well. Otherwise it's pointless.
- Simulacra 6y agoNo, I’m sorry I cannot do that, for me that would be doxxing. I work for a government contractor and have access to a databases of executive contact information. I think if you spent a little time with a search engine you might be able to accomplish the same thing otherwise.
- oh_sigh 6y agoSo you used your database to look up information to intentionally share files with an unwilling party? Interesting.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago> Keep getting spam shared on an account I don't use much, but keep getting notifications. Not fun when my 9 yo son is on my phone and a notification pops up that someone shared "eat my pussy baby". Google needs to address this. Oh. That's bad.
- pedrocx486 6y agoOh god. I got COMPLETELY derailed by this last month. My girlfriend's son was using my tablet (which is logged on my main Google account) and recently I was being victim of this, and suddenly he asked me "what's a bussy?" I never logged my account out of an device so fast. Google needs to fix this crap.
- fortran77 6y agoDid you tell him? Lots of good music from De bussy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy
- edoceo 6y agoClassic parenting strategy here. Connect & Redirect. Well played.
- maerF0x0 6y agoBut one day they will remember the event and think "Dad, You sly dog..."
- organsnyder 6y agoAnd then they'll respect you all the more.
- XiS 6y agoOh, De bussy! I love de bussy! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-ebWS4Ko https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-ebWS4Ko (Family Guy - Peter finishes on the Bach not on the Debussy)
- schoolornot 6y agoTangential to this is that calendar/invite spam continues to be an issue as well. Want to trick someone into visiting a URL? Just send them a calendar invite and chances are they will click it.
- mariocesar 6y agoYes! they are still there.
- Simulacra 6y agohttps://twitter.com/GeorgeResch/status/1041459084636119040 https://twitter.com/GeorgeResch/status/1041459084636119040
- aahhahahaaa 6y agoWhat drives me crazy is that this will happen even if the email with the invite never hits your inbox and goes straight to spam. Outright insane to not patch that ASAP.
- kstrauser 6y agoMy adventures last week: Question: We have a G Suite Enterprise account. We used to share documents with a contractor. They no longer contract with us. How do we remove that contractor from every shared document. Answer 1: Run this report to get a list of every document shared with them. Manually visit each document and un-share it. Answer 2: Our API docs are at... FFS, Google. I really don't think this is that unusual of a request. I refuse to believe that we're the first company ever that wanted to remove people from our Google Drive. Why do you make it so difficult?
- cientifico 6y agoSolution we found back in the days. Create a new user, and give user name and password to the contractor. This might force to disable 2fa.
- kstrauser 6y agoThat would work to a point, but has its own issues (and also means that you have to pay for a company account for every contractor).
- amznthrwaway 6y agoIf a contractor isn't worth $10/month extra, solve the problem by ending the contract.
- wolco 6y agoftp folder for each.
- qppo 6y agoSome services (eg GitHub) still make you pay even if you don't have to create a new account
- ghayes 6y agoOur solution is to clone docs which we plan to share externally. Then, at least, it's a doc that has already been shared out, instead of docs that you continue to update.
- agundy 6y agoThis can be so confusing for non-tech literate people too. My mother asked me to help her, saying she was hacked because there was porn in her Google Drive. It can be really difficult for non-power users to even understand why this is happening or what to do to fix this.
- SanchoPanda 6y agoThe mods on the support forums who make it sound like basic functionality missing from their product is your own fault for not submitting some kind of ticket deserve the gaslighting prize of the year for each of the last 5 years. They don't even have an option to show you how much space folders take up, when they charge you based on space usage. https://support.google.com/drive/thread/3970069?hl=en https://support.google.com/drive/thread/3970069?hl=en
- mcny 6y ago> They don't even have an option to show you how much space folders take up, when they charge you based on space usage. iirc unlike Dropbox, files shared with you do not count against your quota on Google Drive as long as you don't add it to your drive.
- 1-6 6y agoThat sounds like a great way to extend storage beyond the limit!
- techntoke 6y agoHow so? someone has to share the files first and there is a quota on the amount of times a shared file can be accessed.
- distrill 6y agoopen a dummy account, upload and share it with your main account
- stickfigure 6y ago...or spend $2/mo and get way more storage without the hassle. This fits into the same category as "you can get as much free catsup as you want from fast food restaurants" - not a really useful life hack.
- 6y ago
- StanislavPetrov 6y agoI stop it by not using Google in any capacity.
- ramosu 6y agoIt seems Google simply abandon some of their products. I've been living with another issue since 2011: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/35889152 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/35889152
- p1necone 6y ago> It seems Google simply abandon some of their products. This is the understatement of the century. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- jiggawatts 6y ago> "9 years with this. This is beyond absurd and stupid. The way it is done now allows a complete stranger to fill my Firebase dashboard with 100 projects and I'm completely helpless. WTF" Wow. When people say that Google "doesn't seem to give a shit" about their users, this is what they mean.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kwijibob 6y agoI'm all in on GDrive - my whole world is in there. 25 years of files. I do notice Spam occasionally in the 'shared with me' menu - but it seems to get cleaned up. I already have all 99% notifications turned off in apps. Sounds like the real annoying part is getting the notification with the spammy sexual titles. If you didn't get notifications then likely the spam detection would delete before you ever noticed it in your 'Shared with Me' menu. Android needs to default to opt-in notifications like on IOS.
- dmoose 6y agoGiven Google's track record this exhibits a level of faith I would find hard to muster. I really hope you still have the offline backups.
- kwijibob 6y agoWell GSuite/Drive is a MAJOR Google product. And they have great export via Google Takeout which I do regularly to some giant tarballs (and ironically put on my otherwise empty dropbox)
- JamesBaxter 6y agoIt’s amazing how spammers will use every single vector to send stuff to us. I suppose if the cost of sending it is so low they have nothing to lose even when the take up is very low.
- quickthrower2 6y agoNot only that but a new vector is like a gold rush. It's a virus infected a new host that hasn't developed an immune response. A new vector (probably) hasn't built hardness yet against spam, like for example email with apps like Gmail filtering out most spam and SPF etc. If you start a forum, you expect spam, and there will be tools in the forum software to deal with it. But something new that isn't a traditional place to spam may be caught off guard.
- aahhahahaaa 6y agoYeah you have to assume that if a user can input anything, someone will use it to spam. Text, photos, video, audio... literally any form of user input.
- Avamander 6y agoI've recently started getting spam via various service providers' password reset e-mails. "Hi buy this pill quick and cheap from http://here* http://here*, you requested a password reset" Hhhhhhrrrrgh
- aahhahahaaa 6y agoOh wow that's even better than analytics referrer spam.
- quickthrower2 6y agoI suspect there are bots that go looking for forms to fill in without knowing what the context is, i.e. they'll target anything with an input tag.
- fpgaminer 6y agoRelated to this bug, some time ago I started getting spam on my Google Calendar. Not sure if Google ever fixed it, but basically Google would automatically add events to your calendar when you got an invite in your email. Honestly, it's a nice feature; saves a couple clicks every time I get an invite. The bug is that it applied even if the email was spam. There was no workaround, other than disabling the feature completely. Quite a pain. And yes, just like this bug, you'd get lovely "eat my pussy" events popping up on your calendar and reminders. Thanks Google, you're the best /s
- mjayhn 6y agoThis hit a bunch of us about a year ago, maybe two years, I forget. It was incredibly annoying and made me completely stop relying on gmail for calendar stuff.
- dmurray 6y agoI used to get these in Russian (I don't speak Russian and have no links with Russia). The worst part was I couldn't delete them from the Android app, which is like probably everyone else the only place I ever see my Google calendar. The functionality to delete them was hidden at calendar.google.com or somewhere I'd never had occasion to use. I don't get this spam any more, so I guess Google fixed it at some level.
- 4kevinking 6y agoI'm actually getting this spam now (started a couple months ago). Would love advice on how to get rid of it!
- fpgaminer 6y agoI think this is the guide I used awhile back to disable the feature: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-calendar-1835810050 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-c...
- phs318u 6y ago> Would love advice on how to get rid of it! This will sound facetious, but I mean it sincerely. Change email provider. I was an original "invite only" user of GMail. Eventually, I got so sick of Google's complete u-turn on their original philosophy that I changed, despite the cost in time and effort that decision entailed. It's worth it. But I will recommend you choose providers carefully. If you're not paying for it in some way (e.g. Fastmail), be concerned. Also, the ability to use your own domain is a huge boon (you'll never have to go through the excessive email-change pain again).
- cpach 6y agoI’ve been pondering migrating away from Dropbox. I guess I won’t migrate to Google Drive then.
- foobiekr 6y agoWhere are you migrating to? Dropbox's new client is absolutely terrible - an in-your-face resource hog trying to upsell constantly. But from a reliability perspective, Dropbox is absolutely great as long as you don't let it trick you into enabling their automatic offloading "feature" (hello corrupt all-NUL files!). But of the main choices, the quality/reliability ordering really is: dropbox, icloud drive, one drive, anything else and then google drive. So I'd like a good alternative to DB that is at least as good as icloud drive (which is not a high bar).
- Simulacra 6y agoFollowing. I would very much like to find a cloud storage solution other than Google That could add a bit more functionality, security, and customization.
- encom 6y agohttps://owncloud.org/ https://owncloud.org/
- ben509 6y agoOh no... shades of RealPlayer.
- benhurmarcel 6y agoI've been using Nextcloud, I'm pretty happy with it. I got a managed instance at Hetzner, it's decently priced.
- cpach 6y agoI’m not sure. I really liked Dropbox the way it was up until ~2018 or so. It did its job very well until they decided to bloat it... I think I’ll go with either iCloud (I mostly use macOS and iOS) or OneDrive.
- IOT_Apprentice 6y agoI'll tweet Jeff Dean and see what happens.
- ProAm 6y agoDidn't google just make everyone jump through hoops on Youtube to ensure all content was safe for children because of COPPA? Does this violate that new law?
- partiallypro 6y agoIs it possible that someone could share files with someone that is elicit content in order to get them in trouble or to target children's accounts? Seems...like a problem.
- viraptor 6y agoUnless the process fails at multiple stages, no. The metadata for who owns a file is not hidden. It's pretty obvious that you get randomly shared a file from someone else. Then again, we've had cases where the process failed at multiple stages before...
- dawnerd 6y agolittle side question, whats with these support forums that almost never have real employees answering but have community 'support specialists' that never answer the question and only tell you to use the feedback forms but beg for props on their answers. I don't get it.
- kstrauser 6y agoDon't be afraid to use that feedback form. You're not required to say nice things on it.
- komali2 6y agoI've always wondered about this - who out there is simping hours of their time for Google, Microsoft etc day in day out? I guess I'm grateful for their existence when I find their 10 year old answer to some weird esoteric thing I'm doing that happens to have worked. But who are these people that are (I presume) working for free to fill in the lack of existence of Google support teams?
- moandcompany 6y agoAs a ______ also affected by this issue on my personal Gmail accounts, I've filed a feedback/request for this internally.
- nikanj 6y agoThe same way you get any customer service from Google: Get your post on the front page of HN. This is probably going to get fixed shockingly fast now.
- phendrenad2 6y agoPretty sure this has hit the front page of HN before...
- crazygringo 6y agoI'm not sure it makes sense to disable this -- I can only imagine people forgetting they disabled it, then not understanding why they're not getting a family member's folder of photos. And you can already remove something shared with you by going in Drive to "Shared With Me" and clicking "Remove" in the context menu for the file/folder. Otherwise, sharing something with a Google account is no different from sending an e-mail, e-mailing a Calendar invite, etc. After all, you can't turn off receiving e-mails or calendar invites. But, like Gmail, what Drive should have is the ability to block specific sharers. In the meantime, you can use the "Report abuse/copyright" menu item on any shared item, although I don't know if that helps. :(
- figgyc 6y agoI mean usually people tend to send a message or email alongside sharing files with people so I doubt it would be much of a loss.
- philsnow 6y ago> But, like Gmail, what Drive should have is the ability to block specific sharers. It should have the ability to only accept document shares from people in your google contacts / in your organization.
- crazygringo 6y agoI don't think that would be super-helpful. Even if you work in a corporation, you occasionally need to receive a shared file from a customer, outsourced team, etc., even if you don't plan on it. Then, debugging why you're not receiving shared files will be frustrating. The problem here isn't people sharing things with you, the problem is abusive spam. So anti-spam tech (like blocking which is the most basic) is the right approach here, I think.
- llama9000 6y agoExactly - In my experience anyone could share their google docs to everyone under the sun, with or without notification. You don't get asked permissions to agree to have a shared file in any case. So as long as you don't filter out the share file requests from other people, there's no need to keep the notes about "some stranger has shared this file with you". Coz you wouldn't care. Though it's probably good practice in comms to inform someone by chat/separate email that "here's a new shared file you should be looking at."
- ausjke 6y agoit's also pretty a bad user experience when you do have a shared link and you want to make a copy(in case the source is deleted), you can't copy the directory, you have to create a new directory and copy those files instead, if your shared link has quite a few sub-folders, you need spend quite a while to do that manual copy.
- ibdf 6y agoI used to have everything google but have slowly moved away from their products because of this exact issue, because of a similar issue with the calendar invites, and because they just abandon their products. What's the point of releasing a brand new product and then releasing no updates? As a developer I love to try new software, but as a regular consumer I just need things to be reliable.
- thisbrt 6y agoIMHO Google drive is one of the worst service of Its kind in the market. Copying, moving duplicating files is as complex and blunt as it could be. Folder duplication doesn’t exist. I’m actually not surprised that sharing is still not fixed. Look at Meet. A service that only after being absolutely beaten by Zoom received some attention. They’re working on bringing Plus back in the form of Currents, but you still cannot stop people from sharing file with you in Google drive...
- grawprog 6y agoOh, I was really hoping to see a solution to this. I've been getting an increasing amount of Goole drive spam to the point where every couple hours I'm clearing away notifications for some bullshit that's been shared with me. I haven't even used google drive for like 7 or 8 years.
- aaron695 6y agoI don't think people here get this is a fundamental internet spam problem not solved with a button. Any solution to this, should work equally well with email and vice versa.
- ezrast 6y agoBlocking shares from outside your organization would be a fine solution for the many folks who just use Google Drive for personal storage or team coordination. Inter-organization communication isn't a primary use case the way it is with email.
- aaron695 6y agoIt's a fair point and you are the customer. But perhaps the way forward is, just as email pushed us ahead through massive interconnected communication, so is swapping files through massive interconnected communication. I'm sick of not being able to send digital artefacts > 25MB to people, and having corporate emails reject 15MB files. Perhaps it's the next leap forward. I think there's a good argument that's not the case, but I think there's an argument we should try it. Allowing people to stop it, will kill the idea in it's tracks, so I understand why the Google Drive Team don't want to roll out a button. It's possibly a Google Drive killer, it's not what Google Drive is.
- userbinator 6y agoI suspect the reason this stands out is that we normally think of problems in the other direction: someone is able to access something you did not share. In this case, it's being able to access something someone else shared, which AFAIK would often be unsolicited anyway, so the scenario is more like spam than anything related to security.
- scottmcdot 6y agoSimilar thing happens with spam calendar invites although I think Google have addressed that now.
- tcmeggs 6y agoLove that the only way to get support from Google in 2020 is to post to HN.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoFrom Google's point of view, it probably works as quite an effective filter. If a Google issue has made it to the HN front-page, it's probably worth looking at. Of course, this doesn't absolve them of the matter of it being the only way to get support.
- rexreed 6y agoI fail to be surprised anymore at the lack of what should be OBVIOUS functionality in some of the largest functionality systems. Whenever i think I might be stupid for missing what should be obvious functionality I submit a ticket to only realize that the functionality not only doesn't exist but somehow my really basic suggestion is a "unique" or "profound" idea. Honestly who is hiring these product managers? Who is coming up with these features? Why are what should be no-brainer obvious functionality items missing? Is there something about product management and design I don't understand? Why is it that you can't get notifications on group calendars or background images on Google docs or lots of other things I'm forgetting now that at the time I was like "wow I can't believe you can't do that"
- Jap2-0 6y agoAnother (similar) very irritating thing I've found with Drive is that while there is an option to remove a shared file from your drive (eg. if it's only listed because of link sharing), there are some that (seemingly at random) can't be un-shared.
- shadowgovt 6y ago> Not fun when my 9 yo son is on my phone... Well there's your first problem.
- dzonga 6y agoim a google one user. & will admit only pay, because it's a steal for the price. no other service offered 100gb for $20 a year.but yeah, google software quality is quite poor. wonder, why all those engineers doing leetcode interviews can't make quality products.
- rnotaro 6y agoI wish I could use my own domain with GOne. I'm using GSuite for my private domain after having too much reputations / emails reaching spams issues. Somehow it was getting worst over the years and 1+ of 10 emails were ending into spam. :(
- jennyyang 6y agoThe only reason why this hasn't been fixed is because even with this bug, people continue to keep using the product. So why bother fixing it? The only way to get Google to respond is to stop using their products. That's the only thing that matters to them.
- llama9000 6y agoI've never had the misfortune of having so many file sharings directed at my gmail, but if it happens to me this is what I'd do: 1) Create a filter to archive all file sharing messages + send to spam folder. You will have to check spam when you're expecting a file share later on though. 2) Turn off Gmail/GDrive notifications on your phone. I'd habitually check my mail regularly anyway. Someone wants me urgently could have a dozen other ways to ping me.
- throwaway29102 6y agoIn the spirit of 2020, maybe making the problem worse will ultimately make it better?