Any Gmail person can tell me why Gmail is tolerating Gmail phishing emails that use Google's own services (e.g. https://storage.googleapis.com/savelinge/... ?
More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46665414
More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46665414
- using legitimate sites to bypass filters, like sending you a bill through a legitimate bill-creation site
- pretending to be a tracking service for something you supposedly ordered, then over the course of days pretending the package got lost on the way and offering a discount code for the 'purchased' amount, expecting you to use it on their phising site.
Gmail not only fails at spam classification, they classify these messages as important and nag you with first priority notifications and summaries.
The number of spam calls, texts, emails, iCloud account unlock requests, etc I’ve received in the last year is insane.
The reason is that I have an opposite experience, during the last couple of years I have received much less spam messages than before.
I have hosted my own e-mail server for more than 2 decades. Previously, I had to filter large quantities of spam messages, but lately the number of spam messages is much less than 10% of the total number of received messages.
Take DocuSign for instance. Still, this many years later, is a major source of phishing emails from their free trials. DocuSign could easily shut this down today by either requiring a CC for the trial, or forcing a call with a sales rep to start a trial. But they don't, they continue to allow their service to be used for wide scale phishing.
Atera, an RMM, is another one that has been a big source of malware delivery, also via the free trials.
Shutting down the trial accounts after the fact does nothing, the emails already went out.
I've always had some level of political spam, usually only close to voting months, but this year has been the worst for me.
In the US, we elected a well-known scammer ... twice!
It's been a _lot_ of years that I've hesitated to answer calls from unknown numbers.
This stuff is automated. The ability to automate spam calls (using the same form of APIs developers love, like Twilio) make it absurdly easy for one person to set up a spam machine. No AI required.
Unfortunately scamming is a business and if certain actions become less expensive, I would expect more of them.
It's such a good tactic too to start the voicemail with the conversation already going people are like "what? who?"
The clear, unspoken message in the USA is now: "Enrich yourself in any way you can, as fast as you can. Buyer Beware is the law of the land."
The man is the absolute worse person - unless your a rich guy, who wants to make more money by screwing over people who mostly don't even know it.
Anyone who reads this, I dare you to find out why that thing in your life you hate so much, sucks so bad - nothing is ever by accident or unintentional.
The United States, and its People, will be discovering/realizing different ways we have been absolutely f-d by that grifter for likely the rest of my millenial life, thankfully (silver lining!!) US life expectancy has dropped substantially for the 150 million Americans in the bottom 50% of income - rich people in America have to deal with this bs for almost 8 more years than we do
Oh yeah, if you want a faster out even yet - just make 30k or less per year, your life caps at 71 then.
I joke but I hate so much that people will read this and then promptly go back to sustaining this system at their job.
We work our lives away so the rich dont have to and they get to live 14 more years on average than poor people.
That is the most corrupt thing a Leader in a western country has ever done in the modern world.
While you're correct that this is a trend that has been going on for a while, the keyword is trend. Do you understand what a trend is? It's a direction. Meaning, under Trump, it has gotten worse, and that is directly related to the piss-poor policy choices of this administration.
I won't mince words here. People who think policy is completely detached from outcomes are dim, and should spend less time talking because it wastes everyone's brain space.
Email scanning and file scanning (on our computer) became acceptable when the level of spam and malware became intolerable. But it was at cost of our privacy. Today, Gmail scans all your mails and makes money from it. Both Windows and macOS have built-in anti-virus or malware scanners, and file indexers, and thus know all the applications and files in your system (which provides for more data on your profile with them). Now with both OSes, and even browsers like Chrome and Firefox, including AI, they will now use our own computers to not only collect our personal data, but even process it on our system and use it to build even better profiles to more profitably exploit us.
It also just happens that they're the ones best positioned to provide attestation and identity services.
> Evaluating Large Language Models' Capability to Launch Fully Automated Spear Phishing Campaigns: Validated on Human Subjects
> https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.00586
LLMs make phishing absurdly profitable, and can now make profits from targets who were previously economically unviable to target.
There’s a leak or someone is selling the data in a lot of the delivery companies in my country. I order something then without fail the fake text message pretending to be the delivery service. Only thing they screw up is claiming it’s failed to deliver too soon and the weird urls.
Messed up these companies are either selling it or being irresponsible with data.
Called my state senators to complain about it and ask for assistance. Enjoyed the complete lack of follow through.
I get, maybe, one actual spam email per year through gmail's spam filters.
I get more actual spam at my work email, which is not hosted by gmail, even though the email volume of emails sent from outside of my employer's network is orders of magnitude smaller than my personal email volume.
Why aren't these things opt-in? Ditto for every other thing that sends you email. I reflexively mark anything I didn't sign up for as spam on principle.
If their platforms (Gmail, YouTube, DoubleClick) are being used to launch scams, they're failing at scale and governments are failing at legislating / regulating.
The only way to use Google services somewhat safely is with hefty ad (and the rest) blocking.
All this ID and surveillance and privacy invasion and metadata retention and yet all these scams only seen to grow. It never seems to end up protecting anyone deserving of protection.
I wonder what it's all been in aid of...
The first major safety conferences for trust and safety came together only in 2023.
The reality is, Google is driven strictly by incentives and there are no consequences for letting spam/scams run wild vs. pirated content which gets automatically removed when a DMCA notice is received.
The problem with this is the piecemeal enforcement all but proves they only care about stuff they get a cut of and that fact became more clear to me recently when I was watching a random drama made in Asia that I wont name due it being one of the best historical and educational shows I've ever watched - but there was a scene (this was made in the 90s btw) that was entirely innocent, not sexualized - it was done humorously, but I'm not a pdf file either so - anyways, there were fully naked children, with absolutely no censorship, on Youtube - 100% long enough to be noticed by their trackers - they obviously just are not reviewing certain content, at all.
I don't care about piracy at all - I'd still use Youtube if it was the primary source for pirated content, the idea that there may be some obscure content, that seems totally fine, in a language nobody really uses - except for Epstein types, if ever that was discovered - that Youtube had become a haven for pdf files bc of lax application of standards - I would want Youtube split away from Alphabet and force sold on the cheap to a more responsible owner (like Tiktok minus the responsible owner part) - plus an enormous fine.
I didn't believe that such content could exist at all on the platform - until I literally saw with my eyes that it obviously can.
Yeah, I can "just" after I "just" do A, and B, and C, and D, and E, and F, and G.
Drives me batty on top of being insulting. "Surely you realize I thought about that weeks ago, and if it were that simple, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
But hey, I get paid every 2 weeks.
Does that XML get processed by a mailreader?
<ListBucketResult xmlns="http://doc.s3.amazonaws.com/2006-03-01"> <Name>savelinge</Name> <Prefix/> <Marker/> <IsTruncated>false</IsTruncated> <Contents> <Key>winbridge.html</Key> <Generation>1775478745793193</Generation> <MetaGeneration>2</MetaGeneration> <LastModified>2026-04-06T12:32:25.871Z</LastModified> <ETag>"3616712a8e68db66062a3f514b5fb7c8"</ETag> <Size>626</Size> </Contents> </ListBucketResult>
So, pleas ignored, forward these recruitment scam emails to the legal/fraud/phishing teams of the impersonated brands. For a company without the appearance of caring (in my opinion), perhaps law firm letterhead can encourage necessary prioritization.
There are some limited mechanisms for opting out of targeted mail (e.g. things that have your name on them), and mechanisms for opting out of credit offers in particular. There are not any mechanisms for opting out of "current resident" spam sent to everyone in an area.
There are so many businesses now which exist mainly to cheat you, operating at the very edge of what’s technically legal, and relying on their customers not really understanding the full terms of the deals they’re agreeing to. It’s sickening.
- Seniors are sold various quackish financial products like annuities which are a terrible deal for them.
- Timeshares, which nearly never work out in the favor of the consumer (and whose value collapses 50-80% instantly if you look at what they go for on the resale market)
- Prepaid card products that cost a bunch of money to load and then incur monthly fees too (exploiting those who have for whatever reason got blacklisted from banking)
- Every financial product that has a 25%+ interest rate, actually, which isn't limited to those with bad credit. Even if you have an 899 credit score, if you walk into Nordstrom and get their credit card, you will have a close to 30% rate on that. This whole business model is obviously built on tricking people into spending money they don't have and carrying a balance.
- Salesmen hawking solar panels that come to my front door and promise me all kinds of savings. Note: Probably only half these are scams! Just have to figure out which half.
- Health insurers, pretty much across the board. They do things like declare the most dominant ambulance service in San Francisco, the SFFD, "out of network", so the SFFD then sends you a bill for $1000 if you had to use an ambulance. The neat lifehack by the insurer is that most people will just curse, cry, maybe go into debt, and pay it. Only like 10-20% of patients will file a complaint with the insurer's state regulator, and those can just be quickly paid. Result: Savings of 80-90% for health insurance company! (If this one sounds oddly specific, you can guess why.)
Seriously dotancohen, get your people under control.
Some municipalities even make it opt-in so you'd need YES/YES to get mail without a name and address on it. (ie. not direct mail)
There are also laws to enable opting out of direct mail (with name and address).
In effect, junk mail is just gone once you slap a sticker on your mailbox. This is not an unsolvable problem if you just regulate things.