This is Zee from The Next Web. I can absolutely 100% put-my-reputation-on-the-line tell you that the widget is not harvesting emails. I know the developer personally and trust him completely
My main email account is all over the web, and I only get one or two spams per month in my inbox (and as many false positives for registration confirmations). For Gmail users, spam is a solved problem.
I think that with regard to gmail, the spam problem has shifted back to overly aggressive filtering, rather than being solved. And with Priority Inbox, it seems like it shouldn't have to be that way.
When Priority Inbox was added, the idea of putting all of the adverts I signed up for in one view, and the rest right in front of me was a huge improvement.
The problem is that more and more, I'm finding the things that I actually signed up for end up in my spam folder rather than in this "middle tier" where I can assign them high priority if I care enough about them. Notifications of a new statement from a few banks of mine, not always, but often, end up flagged as spam. Many companies that I do business with and have specifically signed up for their adverts end up flagged as spam. I can whitelist them, sure, but I was so used to accepting that the spammers have won that I hadn't started looking in the spam folder until very recently (and when viewing my inbox, it takes one click to even see that I have new mail being sent to Spam).
Alice.com, Onlive, Godiva, Subway, local mall, local car dealership, credit card "points" account, beautician (if you haven't guessed, I share this account with my bride), all flagged as spam. Of the 71 items, 2 are traditional spam (one for prescriptions I don't need yet, and one with random letters and numbers from a woman I don't know).
Hm, do you go out of your way to make sure that you click the "Not Spam" button? I get it every once in a while... and there was a while when I consolidated into my gmail address that I had some false positives, but it was retrained very quickly. I still go through it once a month, but I haven't missed anything recently.
Of course, the one email I missed... got stuck in a Spam folder in an account that is pulled into my main Gmail account so it never even made it to the right spam folder. Oh well, that's Microsoft's fault for having my email address stored separately in a thousand different places and having, I'm not sure, inbred children running their recruiting division.
I don't see why we couldn't return to the old days, where the spam filter gave it a rating. Let Google do that and display random highly-unsure-spam-status emails in a special area or in the place of an ad to get your attention? Color-coding? I'm not sure how to best fix false positives once they reach your inbox or spam folder.
author here: I second that - I know who wrote the widget but the developers are understandably afraid to get hacked themselves if they make their identity known.
You won't even make the widget's author known. You're keeping that secret, and I doubt you've had someone competent analyze the widget's source code. No thanks.
Also, after some fuzzing, it looks like the widget might be vulnerable to a SQL injection attack, so I hope nothing really is being harvested.
I can understand why they might want to keep that a secret. I can imagine some group, perhaps Lulzsec themselves, attacking someone who tried to help the victims.
I immediately thought that this wasn't worth the risk of trying just on the off-chance its phoning back to Lulz with my info. Sort of asking to be hunted. Maybe I'm paranoid...
Probably a more secure way is to log into your Gmail account, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the "Details" link of the line "Last account activity: 1.5 hours ago on this computer. Details" They show you locations from where your account has last been logged into.
That will only tell you if somebody has hacked your Gmail account. The OP is for checking if somebody may have hacked one of your other accounts (e.g. Sony) where you used your e-mail address.
23 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 55.9 ms ] threadI think that with regard to gmail, the spam problem has shifted back to overly aggressive filtering, rather than being solved. And with Priority Inbox, it seems like it shouldn't have to be that way.
When Priority Inbox was added, the idea of putting all of the adverts I signed up for in one view, and the rest right in front of me was a huge improvement.
The problem is that more and more, I'm finding the things that I actually signed up for end up in my spam folder rather than in this "middle tier" where I can assign them high priority if I care enough about them. Notifications of a new statement from a few banks of mine, not always, but often, end up flagged as spam. Many companies that I do business with and have specifically signed up for their adverts end up flagged as spam. I can whitelist them, sure, but I was so used to accepting that the spammers have won that I hadn't started looking in the spam folder until very recently (and when viewing my inbox, it takes one click to even see that I have new mail being sent to Spam).
Alice.com, Onlive, Godiva, Subway, local mall, local car dealership, credit card "points" account, beautician (if you haven't guessed, I share this account with my bride), all flagged as spam. Of the 71 items, 2 are traditional spam (one for prescriptions I don't need yet, and one with random letters and numbers from a woman I don't know).
Edit: bad grammar on my prt.
Of course, the one email I missed... got stuck in a Spam folder in an account that is pulled into my main Gmail account so it never even made it to the right spam folder. Oh well, that's Microsoft's fault for having my email address stored separately in a thousand different places and having, I'm not sure, inbred children running their recruiting division.
I don't see why we couldn't return to the old days, where the spam filter gave it a rating. Let Google do that and display random highly-unsure-spam-status emails in a special area or in the place of an ad to get your attention? Color-coding? I'm not sure how to best fix false positives once they reach your inbox or spam folder.
(See this comment from our editor in chief: http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/16/lulzsec-has-releas...)
Also, after some fuzzing, it looks like the widget might be vulnerable to a SQL injection attack, so I hope nothing really is being harvested.