I
’
m usually a little pessimistic when it comes to security researcher claims about security vulnerabilities in big mainstream sites and services. That said, sometimes they do have a point.
Case in point is a report from security vendor Websense. In a blog post they alleged that “Google’s popular web mail service Gmail is being targeted in recent spammer tactics. Spammers in these attacks managed to created bots that are capable of
signing up and creating random Gmail accounts for spamming purposes.”
Sounds pretty serious to me.
Websense also alleged that the spammers had somehow managed to beat Gmail’s CAPTCHA system as well which is supposed to weed out automated bots.
So I checked in with Google to see if this is legit and this is what I got.
“We are aware of the issue,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email to InternetNews.com.
The spokesperson’s email added that using Gmail to send spam is a violation of the Program Policies in Google’s Terms of
Service.
“We disable these accounts immediately and will continue to do so
if they spread.“
So what does that mean? In my opinion it means that yes there might be a problem, but Google is on it.