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Ask HN: Why am I getting Google Drive notifications about strangers' documents?
Google Drive keeps popping up messages like this:
> [redacted]@gmail.com "Mentioned you in [Russian-looking document name]"
What gives? Why on Earth would I be notified of documents mentioning me? And how do they know it's me? Is it basically any document containing my email address or something? This seems such an obvious phishing/trojan attempt that I've not clicked on any of them.
- Nextgrid 6y agoI wonder if this is a similar attempt that the calendar event spam we had a few years ago where you'd get calendar invites to random events, with the spam being in the event notes.
- ev1 6y agoThis is spam, they are just spraying the equivalent of calendar invites
- kuroguro 6y agoYep, adding random invites by email to the document in hopes someone reads it. Spam over google drive instead of email basically.
- zhte415 6y agoI don't use Google Drive, so perhaps a naive question: If someone clicks on the link, is/are the author(s) of the document able to see who the reader is? If so this seems like a huge vector to increase the spammers 'signal' ratio to target specific individuals (people that click through stuff and their potential interests - finance, porn, gardening, who knows).
- robjan 6y agoThey can if you are signed in using the same Google Account that was invited to the document
- zhte415 6y agoWow. Most potential targets, perhaps not an average HN reader, would stay logged in because of the convenience of accessing GMail and/or YouTube, and perhaps other services. This seems a dangerously effective vector for targetted phishing.
- itsoktocry 6y ago>This seems a dangerously effective vector for targetted phishing. How is it any different than email phishing?
- svet_0 6y agoIt's a common issue google are refusing to solve for some reason - https://support.google.com/drive/thread/6434357 https://support.google.com/drive/thread/6434357
- l0b0 6y agoYikes, 600+ upvotes and no response? There must be thousands of users frothing at the mouth by now.
- jsiepkes 6y agoWhen you read stuff like: "[...] I got the exact same porn spam in Google Drive yesterday [...]" it seriously makes you wonder why on earth Google wouldn't care about that kind of harrasement happening on their platform. I also wonder what would happen if one would start spamming Sundar Pichai's Google Drive like that...
- viraptor 6y agoI'd be surprised if he had a publicly exposed mailbox. Most likely it would just add more work for some assistant triaging his inbox.
- slig 6y ago"This question is locked and replying has been disabled." Classic.
- l0b0 6y agoWorkaround: terminate and disable Google Drive.
- Shared404 6y agoFor those comfortable with either self hosting or paying, Nextcloud is a good alternative.
- visox 6y agoI also had these, couldn't read it anyway.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoYou don't have to be using a Gmail account to get them. My FastMail account got these notifications a few days ago, but by the second day the spam filtered had them figured out.
- codegladiator 6y agoAlso this from google forms https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23004180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23004180 === Lately getting these spam emails via google forms https://imgur.com/a/ueO4001 https://imgur.com/a/ueO4001 Reporting as spam doesn't work. the bitly link takes to a .tk domain. Anyone else facing this ?
- shostack 6y agoYep, getting at least one per day now. Horribly annoying. I guess the only solution for now is to totally disable Slides notifications?
- parliament32 6y agoYeah it's spam. I clicked through one, it was a one-slide PP with a link going to a phishing site.