10 ms·

Google Hangouts/GTalk glitch sends chats to wrong recipients

230 points by CWIZO 13y ago

goshx 13y ago
I'm sending random messages to random people just to see them freaking out. "Oh, this might be the bug they were talking about this morning"
- TallGuyShort 13y ago
  I hope you inform them you were joking. I think it's pretty irresponsible to misrepresent a problem this potentially serious.
  - goshx 13y ago
    Of course, just a good excuse to talk to people I haven't chat for a while. :)
CWIZO 13y ago
This just happened to me. I recieved messages (in gmail) from a contact that ware meant for his wife. Be careful! I guess the best course of action is not to use gmail chat until google announces they have fixed the issue.
- houk 13y ago
  No, trust has been broken. You can't tell me you have confidence that this randomly won't happen again in the future? It's shattered mine.
  - CWIZO 13y ago
    Off course. I'll probably never use gmail chat for anything sensetive.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Your search for perfect, flawless permanent security will be long, lonely and ultimately fruitless. Already you've cut yourself off from flying, riding on trains and driving. Nobody can guarantee that deadly accidents will never happen, and indeed they do happen. Presumably you only eat food your grow yourself. There are regular instances of contamination in the industrial food sector. Not that any guarantees can really be made, but at least contamination will be mostly your own fault. See where I'm going with this?
    - eknkc 13y ago
      I generally agree with this reasoning but this is not "flying", this is "flying with x airlines which dropped a plane once". There are alternatives and one could choose a statistically safer one. There is obviously no guarantee. However, gtalk now has the highest likelihood of sending your messages to random people. That's a reason to avoid it.
      - mseebach 13y ago
        When considering "passenger miles flown per incident", GTalk (and Google in general) has a security record completely on par with the best airlines.
        vectorpush 13y ago
        What about the best chat services? In something like 18 years of chatting on the internet from IRC to ICQ, AIM, Skype, even Facebook messages, I have never seen a message go out to an incorrect recipient that wasn't the fault of my own negligence.
        mseebach 13y ago
        Well, they're also good[1]? British Airways didn't become a better airline when the Air France plane crashed, just like Air France didn't become a worse one. 1: Except, of course, IRC which is a protocol, not a service, and it was never designed to be private, but that's pedantry.
- bluecalm 13y ago
  This tend to happen when your policy is to stop supporting tested, established protocols for chat clients and introducing your own in beta version to the entire planet at once.
timmipetit 13y ago
This also just happened to me. Some messages that I send (using the browser) to a friend were received by someone else. A messages intended for my girlfriend was received by a coworker. My Hangouts app (Android) actually showed these messages in the "wrong" conversation.
bendoernberg 13y ago
Good thing I've gotten most of the friends I chat with regularly to switch to OTR-enabled chat clients.
- devx 13y ago
  Yeah, can we get OTR in Hangouts already, Google? (no, not that "we're not archiving it - promise!" OTR)
  - simias 13y ago
    What would be a correct OTR implementation for you? For in-browser chat you'll have to trust them at some point anyway...
    - nomailing 13y ago
      Why not with a Browser plugin? Pidgin already Supports OTR via gtalk. And on Android you can use Gitterbot. Google should really implement OTR in a Javascript library in the Client Browser. Would that be possible?
      - simias 13y ago
        Sure, but I like the convenience of web-based no-install gtalk. I think as far as google is concerned convenience beats security. They "read" your mails, know what you search for and who your friends are. It would seem strange for them to go out of their way to provide truly OTR gtalk. And I'm totally fine with that, there are plenty of alternatives if I ever need encrypted chat.
    - neeee 13y ago
      WebRTC?
Ueland 13y ago
Was about to create a thread on /r/netsec and ask what was going on, or if i had gone crazy, after a former colleague of me got everything i wrote to my fiancee. Pretty horrible bug. A Norwegian example/proof: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83758451/Screenshot_2013-09-26-10-40-51.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83758451/Screenshot_2013...
curiousDog 13y ago
Wow, I've always fully trusted gtalk. Even sent over my SSN and credit card details. Never again.
- mseebach 13y ago
  Well, you shouldn't do that, ever. That said, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    > perfect is the enemy of the good While I agree with that statement in general, I couldn't quite make out what you meant by it in this context. Are you saying "good" = "most of the times your Google messages will go to the intended recipients" and "perfect" = "all of the times your messages will go to the intended recipients"?
    - mseebach 13y ago
      Good means that GTalk is really, really good. Perfect means that it will never have a bug. Nobody is talking about that this is some acceptable status quo. It's a bug and it will be fixed. If past performance is considered, it will be fixed fast.
      - r0h1n 13y ago
        Sorry, but I disagree with your choice of adjectives. You are reducing what happened today to a mere "bug", which is the way Google (or developers) would look at it. Instead, approach it from the user's POV. Having your financial, personal, professional, secret or illegal (yes, I'm sure there will be that too) communications sent to multiple random people is more than just a bug. I agree GTalk is "really, really good" like you say, but then what happened today also should "never, ever happen".
        vdaniuk 13y ago
        Consider that statistically it can happen to any other messaging service provider. And switching to other instant messaging service won't offer you additional protection due to that the core problem (it is impossible to guarantee zero bugs without huge overheads) is the same for all services.
acchow 13y ago
We deserve a public and highly detailed post-mortem.
- Sarkie 13y ago
  Do we?
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    You don't?
  - amirmc 13y ago
    Yes, we do. Especially all those business users who have paid for GApps and have trusted Google with their comms. In general, we deserve to have more decentralised services that are built on the principle of 'privacy by design', rather than 'trust by design'. Maybe, screw-ups like this can help spur more efforts in that regard.
    - nine_k 13y ago
      If a distributed, private by design service happened to be 300% as expensive, will you be willing to pay for it? How about 200%? 120%? How much are such things worth for paying customers?
      - amirmc 13y ago
        If you're asking me specifically, then yes I'd be willing to pay for it, preferably as a part of a set of services/tools (that would need to include imap, contact management, calendaring). I'd happily switch away from Google services for that, providing usability isn't hugely compromised [1]. I'm actually working on open-source infrastructure to get us closer to this [2]. If you're making a general point about why people would pay for such things then privacy/security is just one more axis on which to consider purchasing decisions. It's up to the individual/organisation to decide what they really care about when they're choosing between different options. My concern is that there aren't really enough options that do consider the privacy/security aspect as well as the usability, so I see a gap there. I'd be glad to hear others' opinions on this though. [1] I was already a paying user of MobileMe purely because I wanted auto-syncing of contacts and calendar so that price-point ($99 per year) is clearly one I'm willing to pay for something that works. I paid it grudgingly at first but I did pay (and renew). Whether that's actually a sustainable price-point for the provider is a different question. [2] http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/ http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/
ddalex 13y ago
Just happening to me, I thought I was going mad. It happens on regular accounts, not just Business, I've seen it this morning when I got messages intended for somebody else. I would refrain to send any sensitive information over Google Talk right now.
- amirmc 13y ago
  > "I would refrain to send any sensitive information over Google Talk right now." Why only "right now"? Why ever send sensitive information over a 3rd party's server. While I believe that Google will find and fix the problem, they probably make little to no claims about the level of security they offer. So using them at all should be a calculated risk.
  - manojlds 13y ago
    So how else do you send them?
    - mseebach 13y ago
      The exclusion of third party servers is meaningless. Any communication over the internet will pass through at least several third party routers, which are by all intents and purposes servers. What you shouldn't do is transmitting sensitive information without controlling the end-to-end encryption chain. If you do that, you can involve as many third party servers as is convenient.
      - amirmc 13y ago
        > "What you shouldn't do is transmitting sensitive information without controlling the end-to-end encryption chain." Actually, this is what I meant and I should have been clearer. Thanks for pointing it out.
- elango 13y ago
  Two days back, the Mute function did not work on Google Hangout. Had to use the mute function on Mac.
wintersFright 13y ago
Someone's continuous deployment process is about to get mirred in bureaucracy and paperwork
- CraigJPerry 13y ago
  :-) Releasing is hard to scale up like google have to. How many apps are they releasing to daily...! It's not technical building blocks (they can all be automated), not even busy work, just complex intertwined dependencies from completely different, often non-electronic, domains. Hypothetical release co-ordinator speaking: "Did app A release this morning into EMEA prod? Ok that means app B can go but only once the security review team drop their veto. Has release candidate 2 been promoted to the canary environment yet? Remember B's new deployment process is in scope this release, and do not release to the 5 servers in the BCP datacentre today..." Could you imagine managing the constant evolution of a rules engine to replace a good quality release co-ordinator? I don't think i'd be able to sleep! As far as i can see, continous deployment doesn't have the general applicability that continuous delivery enjoys.
  - est 13y ago
    No, releasing is easy, until your established process get fucked up by an Indian PM asking you to "integrate" features into G+
    - eshvk 13y ago
      > No, releasing is easy, until your established process get fucked up by an Indian PM asking you to "integrate" features into G+ Was it his/her race that fucked it up? Would it have been better if Google hired only the finest corn-fed Mid Western white American?
      - ISL 13y ago
        Perhaps there is confusion in this thread regarding "PM". PM to a programmer may mean "Program Manager", but in most countries with parliamentary government, "PM" may mean "Prime Minister".
manojlds 13y ago
Here's the status link - http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380220199000&sid=3&iid=2115900d3a8ac9a969139e5db5f60052 http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380220199...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
k-mcgrady 13y ago
Suddenly I'm very glad Talk has never been available in my country. After this I doubt they would have any hope of getting it past EU privacy laws anyway. Edit: As the people below have pointed out Voice isn't available to me - Talk is.
- koyote 13y ago
  Wait, Talk is country restricted?
  - stickydink 13y ago
    Talk is everywhere, OP probably means Voice, which isn't.
- ChrisClark 13y ago
  I find it very strange a simple instant messaging client would not be available in your country. Are you thinking of Google Voice?
- VMG 13y ago
  You're assuming of course that EU companies have a better privacy track record.
playhard 13y ago
I just opened the chat tab and i was shocked to see the conversation i had with my co-founder sent to my college friend. Two more lines from the same conversation was sent to my friend's brother. This is serious.
pkallberg 13y ago
Sounds like chat roulette on a grand scale!
nmridul 13y ago
What if this happened with Gmail ? My bank details and other data getting displayed on someone's Inbox ! EDIT - I don't use gtalk for sending confidential info, so this doesn't affect me, but this could also happen with Gmail that I trust lot of data with (bank, school, government etc)..
- stinos 13y ago
  I don't understand what your bank details are doing in your mail? Or what do you mean by 'details'?
- capecodcarl 13y ago
  This is probably a good reminder that you should never send anything in unencrypted e-mail that you wouldn't be willing to write on a postcard and send via USPS.
- phillijw 13y ago
  Remember that time when first.name@gmail.com would go to firstname@gmail.com and they were two separate accounts? People still use GMail.
davidjgraph 13y ago
Tut, always so negative. I told an old friend this morning that I was going to charge the anal probe, of course I meant that remark to my co-founder. Haven't talked to him in ages, we had a good chat and we're going to meet for a drink at the weekend (sans probe). Cheers Google!
- stingraycharles 13y ago
  This is irrelevant. Just because you had a positive experience from it doesn't make this bug less serious.
  - pauletienney 13y ago
    Why so serious ?
  - Mustafabei 13y ago
    Sheldon? Is that you?
- eknkc 13y ago
  Maybe he has a thing for probes?
vs4vijay 13y ago
Same here...
7952 13y ago
In situations like this I would actually prefer it if the service went offline until fixed.
ekns 13y ago
I've had this happen with facebook chat once maybe two years ago. I wonder if there have been other places where something like this has happened...
c-a 13y ago
Wouldn't a problem like this call for pulling the service off while it's being investigated/fixed?
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nknighthb 13y ago
> At this time Google Talk is not functioning correctly and we are continuing to work to restore full functionality. This is where you turn it off until you fix it. This isn't a service disruption, this is a service malfunction with far more serious potential consequences than delayed emails, or inability to download an app, or duplicate credit card charges, and you can't fix those consequences after the fact, not even by applying vast amounts of money.
- GvS 13y ago
  I think they turned off Hangouts and reverted to old talk. I noticed that messages I've tried to send with Hangouts from G+ web page were not delivered and chats from gtalk dekstop client are saved in gmail as "chat" not "hangout"
- smithzvk 13y ago
  Maybe this explains why us people that link our SIP to the PSTN via Googlo Talk haven't been able to do so for the last 18 hours or so? Maybe they are attempting to figure out what they can safely turn off/revert. Edit: A bit of reading says that this probably is unrelated...
DangerousPie 13y ago
Time for some Russian roulette: Send offensive messages to random people on your GTalk and see who receives them!
sanyi 13y ago
I have experienced this bug for years: everything I send over GTalk goes to the NSA.
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StavrosK 13y ago
Well, now I'm glad I convinced most of my friends to install OTR. I do wish there were an XMPP-supporting instant messaging service with a good mobile app, though. Google Talk has gone to hell after it got turned into Hangouts...
- philsnow 13y ago
  Use straight jabber/xmpp ? Sign up for a jabber.org account (or hell run your own ejabberd). I think there are some decent mobile clients.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Unfortunately, there just cannot be a good mobile client unless it supports push notifications, which requires server support, which XMPP doesn't have. The existing clients need to keep a connection open and take too much battery, sadly...
stevoo 13y ago
Just happend to me today. A coworker was writing to someone else and everything was coming to me as well.
sssparkkk 13y ago
Besides the fact that this is a pretty serious bug, I'm rather underwhelmed by the care Google has been taking of their hangouts product after releasing it last May. And I'm not even talking about things like online-status 'missing' (it's a design decision on their end), but more the general experience of using hangouts. As far as I can tell you're still not able to mute the new message sound, without turning off notifications all together (hangouts in Gmail). Chatter picking up in a hangout and you want to mute it for a while? Again, not possible. Turn off all notifications for that hangout and chances are you'll completely forget you were ever part of that conversation (snoozing notifications hangouts-wide makes sure you miss all other personal messages sent to you as well). Uploading a photo on a slow network is a pretty terrible experience: it'll start telling you the upload has failed and it's retrying (no progress to be seen anywhere). If you delete the message and try again, you'll probably end up with two of the same messages in your conversation, because often it doesn't appear to correctly 'receive' your deletion request either. When you've received a photo that you need to save to your gallery (maybe you want to zoom-in a little, or share it with someone else?), be prepared to hit that save button for a while until you finally get a confirmation that the photo has actually been saved. Stuff like this is not a problem when it's your first release, but 4 months on you'd expect a company like Google to be able to iron out quirks like these. But no, we get extra emoji as one of the few updates to the hangouts platform. [edit: spelling]
- liquid_x 13y ago
  There's now a mute sound option in gmail, click on the down arrow next to your name above the contacts list
  - sssparkkk 13y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out, last time I checked there was no such thing.
- nodata 13y ago
  > And I'm not even talking about things like online-status 'missing' Can someone tell me what the green underline beneath an avatar meant then?
mdup 13y ago
For some time I've pretended that anything I write that should be private (IM, mail, etc.) is actually public. Nowadays it has become so easy for your recipient to transfer a mail to the wrong person. Once I've also been victim of my phone sending texts to the wrong people. So from now on, just write things you can assume in front of the whole world. Don't write shit about people you don't like. Keep that for face-to-face talk with your friends. Things written last so much longer than things said.
Keyframe 13y ago
I don't trust hangouts ever since I discovered, by accident, that if you get somebody else's invite you can set their status and messages for the invite in calendar as you want. I reported that to google to which they said it's by design if you're sending out invites to non-google accounts or if invite is received in a non-gmail client. While I understand you can't do it any differently if you want that functionality, but this was on a business account. I'd rather see limited functionality then where you can set status for the invite only in gmail/calendar and if you're non-google account or 3rd party email client you get to only view the invite.
realrocker 13y ago
Happened to me this morning. I listened in for a while to my friends chat to his client about a bug, while interfering several times with messages of "wtf" and "what ok?" before realizing the situation and horrified at the prospect of the client receiving my invaluable inputs. Called the guy up in a jiffy and told him about it. It seems that I was just a passive receiver.
frank_boyd 13y ago
For those who don't see why they should route their communication through a company known to partner with the NSA, try one of the server-less/decentralized/encrypted communication platforms like http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
I'm starting to seriously consider moving my teams away from Google; especially for chat. Hangouts has been a debacle. I'm furious that the upgrade was shoved down our throats (on Android) for a next-gen tool that was as feature incomplete as the first EA Sports' Madden game on a new gaming system.
nucleardog 13y ago
Contrary to the articles suggestion that this is recent (past day or two), this actually happened to me for the first time back on the 20th of the month. It happened between two non-apps (regular Gmail) accounts. I mean, I watch what I say online anyway, but I sure wasn't expecting Google to force me to open a dialogue with an ex.
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archon810 13y ago
Google has already fixed it within hours http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380265199000&sid=3&iid=2115900d3a8ac9a969139e5db5f60052 http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380265199...
- goshx 13y ago
  well, look again.
orblivion 13y ago
Any idea if this is happening over Jabber clients as well?
gaving 13y ago
Deja vu anyone? http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/google-android-sms-bug/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/google-android-sms-bug/ Good going Google.
Apocryphon 13y ago
I suppose this is a good time as any to ask fellow HN readers for alternatives. Preferably the ones with extra crypto features added in the wake of the PRISM revelations. What alternative chat clients do you use besides/instead of GTalk?
rajesh1906 13y ago
Google Talk glitch sends chats to wrong recipients..
houk 13y ago
I am amazed that this hasn't received more attention.

230 points by CWIZO 13y ago

goshx 13y ago

I'm sending random messages to random people just to see them freaking out. "Oh, this might be the bug they were talking about this morning"

TallGuyShort 13y ago
I hope you inform them you were joking. I think it's pretty irresponsible to misrepresent a problem this potentially serious.
- goshx 13y ago
  Of course, just a good excuse to talk to people I haven't chat for a while. :)

CWIZO 13y ago

This just happened to me. I recieved messages (in gmail) from a contact that ware meant for his wife. Be careful! I guess the best course of action is not to use gmail chat until google announces they have fixed the issue.

houk 13y ago
No, trust has been broken. You can't tell me you have confidence that this randomly won't happen again in the future? It's shattered mine.
- CWIZO 13y ago
  Off course. I'll probably never use gmail chat for anything sensetive.
- mseebach 13y ago
  Your search for perfect, flawless permanent security will be long, lonely and ultimately fruitless. Already you've cut yourself off from flying, riding on trains and driving. Nobody can guarantee that deadly accidents will never happen, and indeed they do happen. Presumably you only eat food your grow yourself. There are regular instances of contamination in the industrial food sector. Not that any guarantees can really be made, but at least contamination will be mostly your own fault. See where I'm going with this?
  - eknkc 13y ago
    I generally agree with this reasoning but this is not "flying", this is "flying with x airlines which dropped a plane once". There are alternatives and one could choose a statistically safer one. There is obviously no guarantee. However, gtalk now has the highest likelihood of sending your messages to random people. That's a reason to avoid it.
    - mseebach 13y ago
      When considering "passenger miles flown per incident", GTalk (and Google in general) has a security record completely on par with the best airlines.
      - vectorpush 13y ago
        What about the best chat services? In something like 18 years of chatting on the internet from IRC to ICQ, AIM, Skype, even Facebook messages, I have never seen a message go out to an incorrect recipient that wasn't the fault of my own negligence.
        mseebach 13y ago
        Well, they're also good[1]? British Airways didn't become a better airline when the Air France plane crashed, just like Air France didn't become a worse one. 1: Except, of course, IRC which is a protocol, not a service, and it was never designed to be private, but that's pedantry.
bluecalm 13y ago
This tend to happen when your policy is to stop supporting tested, established protocols for chat clients and introducing your own in beta version to the entire planet at once.

timmipetit 13y ago

This also just happened to me. Some messages that I send (using the browser) to a friend were received by someone else. A messages intended for my girlfriend was received by a coworker. My Hangouts app (Android) actually showed these messages in the "wrong" conversation.

bendoernberg 13y ago

Good thing I've gotten most of the friends I chat with regularly to switch to OTR-enabled chat clients.

devx 13y ago
Yeah, can we get OTR in Hangouts already, Google? (no, not that "we're not archiving it - promise!" OTR)
- simias 13y ago
  What would be a correct OTR implementation for you? For in-browser chat you'll have to trust them at some point anyway...
  - nomailing 13y ago
    Why not with a Browser plugin? Pidgin already Supports OTR via gtalk. And on Android you can use Gitterbot. Google should really implement OTR in a Javascript library in the Client Browser. Would that be possible?
    - simias 13y ago
      Sure, but I like the convenience of web-based no-install gtalk. I think as far as google is concerned convenience beats security. They "read" your mails, know what you search for and who your friends are. It would seem strange for them to go out of their way to provide truly OTR gtalk. And I'm totally fine with that, there are plenty of alternatives if I ever need encrypted chat.
  - neeee 13y ago
    WebRTC?

Ueland 13y ago

Was about to create a thread on /r/netsec and ask what was going on, or if i had gone crazy, after a former colleague of me got everything i wrote to my fiancee. Pretty horrible bug. A Norwegian example/proof: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83758451/Screenshot_2013-09-26-10-40-51.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83758451/Screenshot_2013...

curiousDog 13y ago

Wow, I've always fully trusted gtalk. Even sent over my SSN and credit card details. Never again.

mseebach 13y ago
Well, you shouldn't do that, ever. That said, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  > perfect is the enemy of the good While I agree with that statement in general, I couldn't quite make out what you meant by it in this context. Are you saying "good" = "most of the times your Google messages will go to the intended recipients" and "perfect" = "all of the times your messages will go to the intended recipients"?
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Good means that GTalk is really, really good. Perfect means that it will never have a bug. Nobody is talking about that this is some acceptable status quo. It's a bug and it will be fixed. If past performance is considered, it will be fixed fast.
    - r0h1n 13y ago
      Sorry, but I disagree with your choice of adjectives. You are reducing what happened today to a mere "bug", which is the way Google (or developers) would look at it. Instead, approach it from the user's POV. Having your financial, personal, professional, secret or illegal (yes, I'm sure there will be that too) communications sent to multiple random people is more than just a bug. I agree GTalk is "really, really good" like you say, but then what happened today also should "never, ever happen".
      - vdaniuk 13y ago
        Consider that statistically it can happen to any other messaging service provider. And switching to other instant messaging service won't offer you additional protection due to that the core problem (it is impossible to guarantee zero bugs without huge overheads) is the same for all services.

acchow 13y ago

We deserve a public and highly detailed post-mortem.

Sarkie 13y ago
Do we?
- r0h1n 13y ago
  You don't?
- amirmc 13y ago
  Yes, we do. Especially all those business users who have paid for GApps and have trusted Google with their comms. In general, we deserve to have more decentralised services that are built on the principle of 'privacy by design', rather than 'trust by design'. Maybe, screw-ups like this can help spur more efforts in that regard.
  - nine_k 13y ago
    If a distributed, private by design service happened to be 300% as expensive, will you be willing to pay for it? How about 200%? 120%? How much are such things worth for paying customers?
    - amirmc 13y ago
      If you're asking me specifically, then yes I'd be willing to pay for it, preferably as a part of a set of services/tools (that would need to include imap, contact management, calendaring). I'd happily switch away from Google services for that, providing usability isn't hugely compromised [1]. I'm actually working on open-source infrastructure to get us closer to this [2]. If you're making a general point about why people would pay for such things then privacy/security is just one more axis on which to consider purchasing decisions. It's up to the individual/organisation to decide what they really care about when they're choosing between different options. My concern is that there aren't really enough options that do consider the privacy/security aspect as well as the usability, so I see a gap there. I'd be glad to hear others' opinions on this though. [1] I was already a paying user of MobileMe purely because I wanted auto-syncing of contacts and calendar so that price-point ($99 per year) is clearly one I'm willing to pay for something that works. I paid it grudgingly at first but I did pay (and renew). Whether that's actually a sustainable price-point for the provider is a different question. [2] http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/ http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/

ddalex 13y ago

Just happening to me, I thought I was going mad. It happens on regular accounts, not just Business, I've seen it this morning when I got messages intended for somebody else. I would refrain to send any sensitive information over Google Talk right now.

amirmc 13y ago
> "I would refrain to send any sensitive information over Google Talk right now." Why only "right now"? Why ever send sensitive information over a 3rd party's server. While I believe that Google will find and fix the problem, they probably make little to no claims about the level of security they offer. So using them at all should be a calculated risk.
- manojlds 13y ago
  So how else do you send them?
  - mseebach 13y ago
    The exclusion of third party servers is meaningless. Any communication over the internet will pass through at least several third party routers, which are by all intents and purposes servers. What you shouldn't do is transmitting sensitive information without controlling the end-to-end encryption chain. If you do that, you can involve as many third party servers as is convenient.
    - amirmc 13y ago
      > "What you shouldn't do is transmitting sensitive information without controlling the end-to-end encryption chain." Actually, this is what I meant and I should have been clearer. Thanks for pointing it out.
elango 13y ago
Two days back, the Mute function did not work on Google Hangout. Had to use the mute function on Mac.

wintersFright 13y ago

Someone's continuous deployment process is about to get mirred in bureaucracy and paperwork

CraigJPerry 13y ago
:-) Releasing is hard to scale up like google have to. How many apps are they releasing to daily...! It's not technical building blocks (they can all be automated), not even busy work, just complex intertwined dependencies from completely different, often non-electronic, domains. Hypothetical release co-ordinator speaking: "Did app A release this morning into EMEA prod? Ok that means app B can go but only once the security review team drop their veto. Has release candidate 2 been promoted to the canary environment yet? Remember B's new deployment process is in scope this release, and do not release to the 5 servers in the BCP datacentre today..." Could you imagine managing the constant evolution of a rules engine to replace a good quality release co-ordinator? I don't think i'd be able to sleep! As far as i can see, continous deployment doesn't have the general applicability that continuous delivery enjoys.
- est 13y ago
  No, releasing is easy, until your established process get fucked up by an Indian PM asking you to "integrate" features into G+
  - eshvk 13y ago
    > No, releasing is easy, until your established process get fucked up by an Indian PM asking you to "integrate" features into G+ Was it his/her race that fucked it up? Would it have been better if Google hired only the finest corn-fed Mid Western white American?
    - ISL 13y ago
      Perhaps there is confusion in this thread regarding "PM". PM to a programmer may mean "Program Manager", but in most countries with parliamentary government, "PM" may mean "Prime Minister".

manojlds 13y ago

Here's the status link - http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380220199000&sid=3&iid=2115900d3a8ac9a969139e5db5f60052 http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380220199...

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k-mcgrady 13y ago

Suddenly I'm very glad Talk has never been available in my country. After this I doubt they would have any hope of getting it past EU privacy laws anyway. Edit: As the people below have pointed out Voice isn't available to me - Talk is.

koyote 13y ago
Wait, Talk is country restricted?
- stickydink 13y ago
  Talk is everywhere, OP probably means Voice, which isn't.
ChrisClark 13y ago
I find it very strange a simple instant messaging client would not be available in your country. Are you thinking of Google Voice?
VMG 13y ago
You're assuming of course that EU companies have a better privacy track record.

playhard 13y ago

I just opened the chat tab and i was shocked to see the conversation i had with my co-founder sent to my college friend. Two more lines from the same conversation was sent to my friend's brother. This is serious.

pkallberg 13y ago

Sounds like chat roulette on a grand scale!

nmridul 13y ago

What if this happened with Gmail ? My bank details and other data getting displayed on someone's Inbox ! EDIT - I don't use gtalk for sending confidential info, so this doesn't affect me, but this could also happen with Gmail that I trust lot of data with (bank, school, government etc)..

stinos 13y ago
I don't understand what your bank details are doing in your mail? Or what do you mean by 'details'?
capecodcarl 13y ago
This is probably a good reminder that you should never send anything in unencrypted e-mail that you wouldn't be willing to write on a postcard and send via USPS.
phillijw 13y ago
Remember that time when first.name@gmail.com would go to firstname@gmail.com and they were two separate accounts? People still use GMail.

davidjgraph 13y ago

Tut, always so negative. I told an old friend this morning that I was going to charge the anal probe, of course I meant that remark to my co-founder. Haven't talked to him in ages, we had a good chat and we're going to meet for a drink at the weekend (sans probe). Cheers Google!

stingraycharles 13y ago
This is irrelevant. Just because you had a positive experience from it doesn't make this bug less serious.
- pauletienney 13y ago
  Why so serious ?
- Mustafabei 13y ago
  Sheldon? Is that you?
eknkc 13y ago
Maybe he has a thing for probes?

vs4vijay 13y ago

Same here...

7952 13y ago

In situations like this I would actually prefer it if the service went offline until fixed.

ekns 13y ago

I've had this happen with facebook chat once maybe two years ago. I wonder if there have been other places where something like this has happened...

c-a 13y ago

Wouldn't a problem like this call for pulling the service off while it's being investigated/fixed?

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nknighthb 13y ago

> At this time Google Talk is not functioning correctly and we are continuing to work to restore full functionality. This is where you turn it off until you fix it. This isn't a service disruption, this is a service malfunction with far more serious potential consequences than delayed emails, or inability to download an app, or duplicate credit card charges, and you can't fix those consequences after the fact, not even by applying vast amounts of money.

GvS 13y ago
I think they turned off Hangouts and reverted to old talk. I noticed that messages I've tried to send with Hangouts from G+ web page were not delivered and chats from gtalk dekstop client are saved in gmail as "chat" not "hangout"
smithzvk 13y ago
Maybe this explains why us people that link our SIP to the PSTN via Googlo Talk haven't been able to do so for the last 18 hours or so? Maybe they are attempting to figure out what they can safely turn off/revert. Edit: A bit of reading says that this probably is unrelated...

DangerousPie 13y ago

Time for some Russian roulette: Send offensive messages to random people on your GTalk and see who receives them!

sanyi 13y ago

I have experienced this bug for years: everything I send over GTalk goes to the NSA.

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StavrosK 13y ago

Well, now I'm glad I convinced most of my friends to install OTR. I do wish there were an XMPP-supporting instant messaging service with a good mobile app, though. Google Talk has gone to hell after it got turned into Hangouts...

philsnow 13y ago
Use straight jabber/xmpp ? Sign up for a jabber.org account (or hell run your own ejabberd). I think there are some decent mobile clients.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  Unfortunately, there just cannot be a good mobile client unless it supports push notifications, which requires server support, which XMPP doesn't have. The existing clients need to keep a connection open and take too much battery, sadly...

stevoo 13y ago

Just happend to me today. A coworker was writing to someone else and everything was coming to me as well.

sssparkkk 13y ago

Besides the fact that this is a pretty serious bug, I'm rather underwhelmed by the care Google has been taking of their hangouts product after releasing it last May. And I'm not even talking about things like online-status 'missing' (it's a design decision on their end), but more the general experience of using hangouts. As far as I can tell you're still not able to mute the new message sound, without turning off notifications all together (hangouts in Gmail). Chatter picking up in a hangout and you want to mute it for a while? Again, not possible. Turn off all notifications for that hangout and chances are you'll completely forget you were ever part of that conversation (snoozing notifications hangouts-wide makes sure you miss all other personal messages sent to you as well). Uploading a photo on a slow network is a pretty terrible experience: it'll start telling you the upload has failed and it's retrying (no progress to be seen anywhere). If you delete the message and try again, you'll probably end up with two of the same messages in your conversation, because often it doesn't appear to correctly 'receive' your deletion request either. When you've received a photo that you need to save to your gallery (maybe you want to zoom-in a little, or share it with someone else?), be prepared to hit that save button for a while until you finally get a confirmation that the photo has actually been saved. Stuff like this is not a problem when it's your first release, but 4 months on you'd expect a company like Google to be able to iron out quirks like these. But no, we get extra emoji as one of the few updates to the hangouts platform. [edit: spelling]

liquid_x 13y ago
There's now a mute sound option in gmail, click on the down arrow next to your name above the contacts list
- sssparkkk 13y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out, last time I checked there was no such thing.
nodata 13y ago
> And I'm not even talking about things like online-status 'missing' Can someone tell me what the green underline beneath an avatar meant then?

mdup 13y ago

For some time I've pretended that anything I write that should be private (IM, mail, etc.) is actually public. Nowadays it has become so easy for your recipient to transfer a mail to the wrong person. Once I've also been victim of my phone sending texts to the wrong people. So from now on, just write things you can assume in front of the whole world. Don't write shit about people you don't like. Keep that for face-to-face talk with your friends. Things written last so much longer than things said.

Keyframe 13y ago

I don't trust hangouts ever since I discovered, by accident, that if you get somebody else's invite you can set their status and messages for the invite in calendar as you want. I reported that to google to which they said it's by design if you're sending out invites to non-google accounts or if invite is received in a non-gmail client. While I understand you can't do it any differently if you want that functionality, but this was on a business account. I'd rather see limited functionality then where you can set status for the invite only in gmail/calendar and if you're non-google account or 3rd party email client you get to only view the invite.

realrocker 13y ago

Happened to me this morning. I listened in for a while to my friends chat to his client about a bug, while interfering several times with messages of "wtf" and "what ok?" before realizing the situation and horrified at the prospect of the client receiving my invaluable inputs. Called the guy up in a jiffy and told him about it. It seems that I was just a passive receiver.

frank_boyd 13y ago

For those who don't see why they should route their communication through a company known to partner with the NSA, try one of the server-less/decentralized/encrypted communication platforms like http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/

ChikkaChiChi 13y ago

I'm starting to seriously consider moving my teams away from Google; especially for chat. Hangouts has been a debacle. I'm furious that the upgrade was shoved down our throats (on Android) for a next-gen tool that was as feature incomplete as the first EA Sports' Madden game on a new gaming system.

nucleardog 13y ago

Contrary to the articles suggestion that this is recent (past day or two), this actually happened to me for the first time back on the 20th of the month. It happened between two non-apps (regular Gmail) accounts. I mean, I watch what I say online anyway, but I sure wasn't expecting Google to force me to open a dialogue with an ex.

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archon810 13y ago

Google has already fixed it within hours http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380265199000&sid=3&iid=2115900d3a8ac9a969139e5db5f60052 http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380265199...

goshx 13y ago
well, look again.

orblivion 13y ago

Any idea if this is happening over Jabber clients as well?

gaving 13y ago

Deja vu anyone? http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/google-android-sms-bug/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/google-android-sms-bug/ Good going Google.

Apocryphon 13y ago

I suppose this is a good time as any to ask fellow HN readers for alternatives. Preferably the ones with extra crypto features added in the wake of the PRISM revelations. What alternative chat clients do you use besides/instead of GTalk?

rajesh1906 13y ago

Google Talk glitch sends chats to wrong recipients..

houk 13y ago

I am amazed that this hasn't received more attention.