[HN Gopher] There's no way to report spam on Google Drive ___________________________________________________________________ There's no way to report spam on Google Drive Author : edent Score : 233 points Date : 2022-04-04 11:54 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (shkspr.mobi) (TXT) w3m dump (shkspr.mobi) | paulpauper wrote: | Social networks, google is the greatest gift to scammers and | spammers ever. By the time the scam or spam is stopped, the | profit has been realized. Spam prevention is always reactive, not | proactive, giving scammers an advantage. Algos are too slow to | stop a smart spammer, companies do not care that much unless the | media brings it to their attention or they get sued. | dr_orpheus wrote: | I also have seen that when I go to look at at in on my laptop the | file isn't actually there. And that is supposedly the only way to | report it as spam, so its unclear if Google is actually catching | it as spam or not. | uranium wrote: | My guess was that when this happened to me, it meant that | Google had figured out it was spam after the notification got | through, likely due to people marking it as spam. So I got the | notifications, but the files had gone away before I looked. | amichal wrote: | I'm confused. Most of the tweets in the article have a response | from Google directing the user how to report these as abuse spam | from within google drive and docs. | https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2463296?hl=en (After | removing everyone's link shortner. Granted I couldn't find the | time in the iOS client and am not at my desktop to check there. | | Edit: ignore me I see the issue is there is no way to block the | notifications on mobile and since these don't show up on desktop | they can't be responded to in any reasonable way there either. | mminer237 wrote: | There actually is, it's just stupidly hidden: | https://matthewminer.name/blog/how-to-report-this-google-dri... | rambambram wrote: | 503 error, must be busy now. I don't have this problem since I | don't use Drive, but my guess is - whatever is on your page - | it's worth a separate post. | edent wrote: | That's amazing! Thank you. I've no idea why Google "support" | can't tell people that. | annoyingnoob wrote: | As far as I can tell, Google does not actually care that its | platforms are used for abuse. | | You can report spam from gmail accounts, but if you do you just | get even more spam. Gmail appears to pass your complaint onto the | spammer, who now has a verified email address to spam more. | Though the spammer might have to get yet another gmail account | first. | mc4ndr3 wrote: | Use the mobile feedback form. | edent wrote: | Where is that? I don't see it in the Android app. | waserwill wrote: | in case anyone is wondering: | | - Open the app, and select the 'Shared' folder at the bottom | | - Find the spam content, click the three dots to open a menu | | - At the bottom, hit 'Report abuse', select an option, and | confirm. | | So far, I've only been able to do this one-by-one, though I | receive a couple of these shared docs every day. | duskwuff wrote: | That only works if the document is still shared with you. | If the spammers are halfway clever, they're removing access | immediately after granting it, so the victim can't actually | open the document to report it as abusive. | thematrixturtle wrote: | But what would be the point of doing that? They can't | sell you whatever it is they're trying to sell unless you | open the doc. | tedunangst wrote: | Users who actually click links in the document are | clustered towards early openers? Share doc for two | minutes, collect clicks, unshare to cut off spam reports. | lern_too_spel wrote: | I received a lot of spam share notifications on Google | Drive, and there is no spam in the Shared with Me view in | the app. I don't know what their game is, but this is | happening. It also doesn't make sense that Google Drive | doesn't remove the notification after the file is no | longer shared with me. | zarmin wrote: | Have you all been getting the videos I shared with you? :lips: | mrlatinos wrote: | The past couple weeks I've received at least 5 notifications like | this and found the lack of "report spam"/"block sender" | functionality surprising. I submitted feedback through the app | but I have little confidence that anyone is actually looking at | those - I've always seen Google's feedback submission on Android | as a b*tch abyss. For now I've just blocked all Drive | notifications. | paulpauper wrote: | Google does not care that much. It's not a high priory for them | evidently. reporting blog spam takes forever too. It goes into | a batch that may eventually be processed. | HNHatesUsers wrote: | alienalp wrote: | In recent days i also started receiving those. I don't get how | Google manages to do something this stupid. I was considering | switching to iphone. This case improved odds of it. | trampish wrote: | I've been receiving these on my iPhone (via Google Drive app) | with no real recourse. This problem isn't limited to Android | users. | alienalp wrote: | My complain was about this policy let this happen. Obviously | in a company like Google there should be company wise rule | which won't let a stranger able to send notification to my | phone. | lnxg33k1 wrote: | I have also switched to iphone to a better quality of e-life, | but you need to avoid using anything google related altogether | , at a certain point google services are not something they | sell or make business with, their job is to show you | advertisement and spam, so the rest is just a side gig to | better do their primary thing, so one is better off just | avoiding them, these replies in the post are just as pathetic | as the company itself, people always report these spam (this is | not the first post about it, there was also a guy a while ago | who had a fight with his wife because of the sudden spam on | google drive), it's just PR | coldcode wrote: | Not a day goes by without a post on how crappy Google is at | support or fixing problems or ignoring the public at large. | "Don't Be Evil" (if that was ever a thing) is now "Don't Give A | Shit (At Scale)". | | If Google is so large that it cannot manage even something as | basic as spam, perhaps it is too big to exist? | dale_glass wrote: | That's always been a problem with using a huge company as your | provider: you're effectively meaningless to it unless you're on | the top of some huge organization like the US Army. If you can | decide whether tens of millions of USD get spent or not then | miracles can happen. If you're the average joe worth $20 of | business to the company, or worse, pay by watching ads, then | you can be sent off to the self-support chat bot and otherwise | ignored. | | If you need a service of any complexity, and want to have your | personal interests taken into account, you're best going with | some medium size company -- large enough to be staffed by | competent people, but small enough that they still fear bad PR | and people going with the competition. | LightG wrote: | Disagree strongly. | | I'm naturally averse to "huge companies" but Amazon does | customer support fantastically well. | | If Amazon can do it, and do it very well, so can Google. | | They just choose not to. And so I choose not to use them. | | Maybe I'm not their target audience. | dale_glass wrote: | Which Amazon? The online shopping? Yeah, that one's easy | because good customer support is mostly taking your side | unless you're being abusive, and because in reality most | returns get thrown out anyway. Amazon shopping is also | highly profitable. They're not scrounging cents they get | from you watching ads. | | AWS? You get no tech support without paying for it as far | as I can tell. Pay $29/month minimum if you want to open | tickets. | aurizon wrote: | block the world, allow friends with a pw like their initials - | lengthen as needed. This is an invasion by homeless bots, one-at- | a-time blocking = they outnumber you. Add the access PW to your | signature as PW = your initials, or your initials twice/thrice in | case bots surface. This is OK for families or small crews where | the PW rules can be uniquely changed case by case. For bulk, we | will all have to go to the new FIDO protocol which seems to be | gaining traction. https://fidoalliance.org/tag/new-fido-protocol/ | edent wrote: | OK, but how do I do that on Google Drive? | aurizon wrote: | Who has access? I have sent files via GD to people, adding | names as needed. Have you granted open access to anyone at | all? Not using GD more than once a month, I have not seen any | spam, so I am a GD newb? | notreallyserio wrote: | Based on the content in the article, you don't have to be a | heavy user of Google Drive to see this sort of spam, nor do | you have to send anyone files. | bonobo wrote: | This is not about protecting the files you share, it's | about spammers abusing the file sharing mechanism to send | you notifications. THEY share a file with you in order to | trigger a notification and there's no way to block this. | aurizon wrote: | Ah, I see. Have never got one, fingers crossed. I am not | a big user... | bonobo wrote: | I also have been receiving lots of these lately. I don't | understand why "blocking everyone that's not in your contact | list" is not a feature. | | This thread below on Google Drive Help Center was closed with a | response that you can now block a specific user -- which is | useless against a horde of bots. | | https://support.google.com/drive/thread/58636526/how-to-bloc... | mrlatinos wrote: | I don't see any way to block users through the Android app. | maps7 wrote: | I'm getting these recently too as Android notifications. It's | very annoying and could be very unprofessional or hard-to- | explain if one came in at the wrong time. | mossity wrote: | 99% of the spam email I've been getting has been using using | static redirect sites hosted on GCS to try to get past spam | filters too. I've tried reporting it via | https://support.google.com/code/contact/cloud_platform_repor... | but it's pretty exhausting. | mythz wrote: | I've had to disable all notifications from Google Drive because | of this, which only started happening recently. | | Whatever Google did to make it easy for random spammers or | new/bot accounts to indiscriminately spam unrelated accounts is | causing distrust & will end up with lower usage as a result. | lern_too_spel wrote: | I use a notification filter to block notifications from Google | Drive with :rose: or :heart_eyes:. No more Google Drive spam on | my phone. Unfortunately, there is no browser extension API for | reading all notifications, as far as I can tell, so the only | way to make it stop in my desktop web browser is to write a | monkey patching extension for it, which is enough trouble that | I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. | | Just blocking notifications from Google Drive and complaining | on the Play Store is the right thing. | scrumbledober wrote: | I'm at least glad to see I'm not the only one. This has been a | bit frustrating the last couple weeks. I was wondering where I | had used my Google drive account that suddenly I was getting hit | with them | gspr wrote: | Ditto! I was sure I had accidentally changed some Google | setting, and the Drive spam irritated me to no end. I'm so glad | to be gradually downscaling my Google dependency. What a | ridiculous company! | hnburnsy wrote: | What legitimate user shares GD files with emojis in the document | name? | bell-cot wrote: | I'll guess that you have no daughters / granddaughters old | enough to use social media much? | hnburnsy wrote: | Google Drive doesn't feel like frequently used social media | tool. Maybe I am out of the loop. | LightG wrote: | Little things like this helped me give up on Google. | | Just ... rubbish. | | They're basically a showcase of technology. | | Impressive if they can keep the flywheel turning without giving a | ... for the everyday people they once pretended to serve. | dghughes wrote: | Yeah there's been a noticeable uptick in Google Drive spam on | Android. Sexy lady stuff, junk like work PowerPoint attachment, | all kinds of spam. | martin_a wrote: | > Sexy lady stuff | | I have this all over YouTube, togeter with dubious "phone | cleaners" and the whole range of probably malware and backdoor | infested app garbage. | | Funny thing is: After reporting probably too much of those ads | on YT, I can no longer report _any_ ad at all. | | Banned from the report function. wtf. | someotherperson wrote: | Instagram and similar can outright ban you for reporting | spam. I guess spam reporting is also abused and brings you | into a radar you weren't previously in. | | Nuts. | slig wrote: | Instagram has a serious "follow spam". Clearly fake | accounts will follow people who follows some kind of niche | account with hopes that people will follow back. It works, | I can see that those spam-accounts have real followers. | | It tried to report those accounts to Instagram, and they | don't care (the @spamaccount doesn't violate any ToS). So | now I just block. | bombcar wrote: | There's no point in reporting spam, just setup an adblocker | in general and move on. | mysterydip wrote: | "our metrics for how many bad ads we're serving goes down | after we block users from reporting it." | | -machine learning algoritum somewhere | lern_too_spel wrote: | Ads on CNN AMP pages cover content, and there is no way to | see the text underneath when using Chrome. So many reports, | and nothing happens. Luckily Firefox lets me block the ads. | wingmanjd wrote: | I recall something similar occurring during my earlier CS:GO | days. I was temp-banned for reporting/ attempting to vote out | too many cheaters. -\\_(tsu)_/- | csnover wrote: | Not only is there no way to report spam on Google Drive, I | noticed in the past few months that Google have also started | refusing spam reports via SpamCop. Now those reports just go to | google-abuse-bounces-reports@devnull[0]. | | I suppose relative to their market size one could make an | argument that they are doing a good job of "only" being the | source of ~1.8% of all spam[1], and who knows what they did with | these reports to begin with, but the intentional deterioration of | reporting capability isn't a great look, and there's no effective | recourse since they are too big to block outright. | | [0] https://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=inprogress | | [1] https://www.spamcop.net/hoshame.shtml | apatters wrote: | It would be consistent with criminal monopoly behavior if | Google's next step was to start charging us for submitting spam | reports... watch this space | dweekly wrote: | I'm a Xoogler and one of the Twitter users included in this OP. | | A few interesting things here; reporting flow is _terrible_. You | have to open the (porn /dangerous) on Google Drive in mobile, | then on desktop open it in recent, then go to Help > Report | Abuse/Copyright | | example link (NSFW!!) | https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ftlYcB4sY7FLj_1WHkoS7Jd2... - | links to rju2.all444link.com (many of these are using | all444link.com) - last edit (shown on mobile only) was from | ratchaneekorn_spk@spk.ac.th - abuse report link is at | https://docs.google.com/u/0/abuse?id=1ftlYcB4sY7FLj_1WHkoS7J... | with clear link structure | | Every single one of these spam pages was A) advertising porn, B) | using all444link.com, and C) was from a user at a Thai | educational domain name (different hosts, though). | paulpauper wrote: | It's not a high priory for Google stopping spam, same for all | major tech companies. Their framing of this is that they are | not the internet's babysitters. An assumption is users bear | some responsibility for not being scammed or it's not | profitable for them to invest lots of resources into stopping | spam. ISPs are somewhat different in that customers are paying | and ISPs bear a greater cost, so they tend to take spam more | aggressively. | blooalien wrote: | They're maybe not the _internet 's_ "babysitters", but they | _are_ the "babysitters" of their own network infrastructure | and services, and these spammer scum _do_ abuse that | infrastructure and waste /steal bandwidth and other resource | that don't belong to them. You'd think Google would want to | put a stop to that when it's gotten to a point where it's | happening "at scale" and wasting large enough amounts of | resource that it starts to equate to real-world dollars being | lost/wasted. Sure, users bear some responsibility for not | being scammed, but that doesn't mean that Google has to | tolerate it happening through _their_ services and | infrastructure, especially not when their own end user | license agreements for those services _actively prohibit_ | such usage. | paulpauper wrote: | That is the problem. google does not deem this spam that is | on their platform to be enough of a cost to justify trying | doing more to stop it. It's a basic cost-benefit analysis. | monkeybutton wrote: | >They are not the internet's babysitters | | This kind of attitude is why we're all enduring nonstop spam | calls. | jlmorton wrote: | Contra the point of this thread, Google actually prevents | me from getting basically any spam calls. | | With the combination of Google Fi and Pixel, I receive very | few spam calls. Almost all of them are automatically | screened, the phone never rings, and I'm left with a "spam | notification," with a transcript of the call asking me to | extend my warranty. | | Similarly, essentially all spam text messages are | identified as spam, and generate only a silent | notification. | | For the few spam calls that slip through, it's one click to | screen the call with Google Assistant. | tedivm wrote: | Are you confusing google drive spam with email spam? In this | case Google is the ISP- as the article said, the Google Drive | App is sending notifications to people for this spam. | People's local ISPs have literally nothing to do with this at | all. | paulpauper wrote: | Earthlink takes spam way more seriously than google because | EarthLink has paying customers. Most people who use google | products do not pay. Google is not going to invest millions | of stopping spam if there is no financial reason to do so. | That is the cold reality of cost-benefit analysis. There | would have to be some legislation or legal precedent in | which google is forced to do something. | tedivm wrote: | Google has paying customers for its office suite. They | charge for individuals storage beyond the free tier, and | their business users pay a per user fee. | phendrenad2 wrote: | Okay so bear with me. My local carwash has a legitimate crazy | person there who tries to sell his flat-earth pamphlets. The | carwash tries to chase him away, not because they're the | street's "baby sitter", but because he's bad for business. | People could go get a car wash elsewhere. People could store | their files elsewhere. | paulpauper wrote: | Let's assume the carwash has thousands of very expensive | customers who generate billions of dollars for it, and many | more cheaper customers that generate much less or nothing. | And the crazy person is hassling some of the non-paying | customers, but it costs google $1000/day to stop him, | because he's very persistent. Is it worth google paying | $1000/day to protect those non-paying customers or help | those expensive customers? | phendrenad2 wrote: | Yeah that's my point, being the babysitter of your | platform is sometimes cost-effective, and sometimes not. | [deleted] | Animats wrote: | There's PhishTank.[1] | | [1] https://www.phishtank.com/phish_detail.php?phish_id=6178855 | jeffbee wrote: | Would love to know why Google Public DNS is responding SERVFAIL | on this domain. Everyone else can resolve it :-/ | tyingq wrote: | It's working for me. $ host shkspr.mobi 8.8.8.8 | Using domain server: Name: 8.8.8.8 Address: | 8.8.8.8#53 Aliases: shkspr.mobi has address | 77.72.0.226 | jeffbee wrote: | Weird because even Google's own DNS query UI says it is | SERVFAIL: | | https://dns.google/query?name=shkspr.mobi | "Status": 2 /* SERVFAIL */, "TC": false, "RD": | true, "RA": true, "AD": false, "CD": false, | "Question": [ { "name": "shkspr.mobi.", | "type": 1 /* A */ } ], "Comment": | "Resolution failure. Please check | https://intodns.com/shkspr.mobi" | tyingq wrote: | Even weirder, works for me... -\\_(tsu)_/- | | https://dns.google/resolve?name=shkspr.mobi&type=A | | {"Status":0,"TC":false,"RD":true,"RA":true,"AD":false,"CD": | false,"Question":[{"name":"shkspr.mobi.","type":1}],"Answer | ":[{"name":"shkspr.mobi.","type":1,"TTL":14400,"data":"77.7 | 2.0.226"}],"Comment":"Response from 139.162.230.184."} ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-04 23:00 UTC)