Gmail accounts are used in 91% of all baiting email attacks

[Porthos]

Gmail accounts are used in 91% of all baiting email attacks

Bait attacks are on the rise, and it appears that actors who distribute this special kind of phishing emails prefer to use Gmail accounts to conduct their attacks.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[Diggs]

It's not like the receiving person can block the domain which is my preferred response.....

 

[britechguy]

I find this line in the article most interesting, "This preference is because Gmail is a very popular service that people associate with legitimacy and trustworthiness."

My question upon seeing that is, "Why would you use the service, particularly a free service where people can create "burner addresses," to be legitimate or trustworthy?"

If you're receiving any email message from an unfamiliar sender and are not expecting it, the one and only piece of advice is: delete it and move along.

The fact that Gmail as a service is rock solid is a completely separate issue from it's users being either legitimate or trustworthy. You judge how legit and trustworthy something is not only, or even primarily, by the email service used to send it.

This is why I'm pretty much adamant that there is no technological solution to these issues that will ever come close to being really effective. It's only user education that allows anyone or any entity to stand a chance. And, to me, what's sad is that education really should not be necessary for most of these phishing expeditions at this point. If you don't know the sender, and aren't expecting the message . . . How many years and how many scams must occur, and be widely publicized, before this becomes a "baked in" behavior? I just don't know and there is definitely an element of, "You can't fix stupid!," involved, too.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

"Sensationalized media story".

Common sense...the largest, FREE email service can be (is) used for most "bad things". What does that writer want to happen, Google interviews each new sign up? Blocks countries? Charges for the service?

 

[GTP]

I created a gmail account when I started playing Pokemon Go. I've used it maybe 10? times when someone wants an email address.
I rarely check it, maybe once a month.
There are always around 200+ spam/junk/rubbish emails and nothing legitimate.
I log in, clear the rubbish then logout.

Google fails miserably when it comes to filtering garbage.

 

[NJW]

There are always around 200+ spam/junk/rubbish emails and nothing legitimate.
I log in, clear the rubbish then logout.

Google would do much better if you train the filters on your account. Instead of deleting spam messages, mark them as spam and set the spam folder to delete messages older than 30 days.

Check the contents of the spam folder for false positives and mark those not-spam; put legitimate correspondent addresses (that are likely to use that gmail address) in Contacts, or manually add a filter to allow them.

After a few weeks, things will be much improved.

 

[britechguy]

Google fails miserably when it comes to filtering garbage.

Speak for yourself. I've never done much training of any Google spam filters and I cannot recall the last time I had a piece of spam in the inbox of any Gmail account I own or those of my clients.

Their filtering is, in my experience and observation, the gold standard. And I've been using, and having others use, Gmail for many years now. Nary a single complaint about spam.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Speak for yourself. I've never done much training of any Google spam filters and I cannot recall the last time I had a piece of spam in the inbox of any Gmail account I own or those of my clients.

Their filtering is, in my experience and observation, the gold standard. And I've been using, and having others use, Gmail for many years now. Nary a single complaint about spam.

My Gmail has tons of junk in it too, it's honestly comparable to my tunes M365 filters though so it's not like it's a torrential flood so bad it renders the mailbox unusable.

 

[britechguy]

My Gmail has tons of junk in it too,

Then all I can say is to try @NJW's suggestion. If I did any training it wasn't much and it was years ago. It certainly didn't take marking more than probably 20 pieces of spam as such, and unmarking the occasional thing that was misclassified as spam as "not spam."

I can't explain why, for some here, their experiences with Google's built-in spam filtering are at such divergence with what I've experienced and observed for a period of almost 20 years now.

I haven't needed any filtering besides their built-in filters for years now, and they've been better than any other I've used prior.

 

[Diggs]

Their filtering is, in my experience and observation, the gold standard. And I've been using, and having others use, Gmail for many years now. Nary a single complaint about spam.

Agreed. I get very little if any spam in my Gmail accounts and of course I even publish my email address in many places on the web. Charter/Spectrum on the other hand is incredibly bad even with personal training and blocking on the accounts.

 

[GTP]

Google would do much better if you train the filters on your account. Instead of deleting spam messages, mark them as spam and set the spam folder to delete messages older than 30 days.

Check the contents of the spam folder for false positives and mark those not-spam; put legitimate correspondent addresses (that are likely to use that gmail address) in Contacts, or manually add a filter to allow them.

After a few weeks, things will be much improve

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about the spam at all. I'm just saying that there are always around that many spam emails in the inbox.
I have no interest in "training" gmail either, I don't really care for gmail at all. It's a necessary evil imo.
Adding contacts will never happen either for more reasons than I can count.
As I stated it's only used when I need to supply an email address to unknowns so the amount of crap it attracts is of no concern. I just select all, delete and log out.

Their filtering is, in my experience and observation, the gold standard.

That may be the case, but I can't be bothered doing it.