Henrik Nordström henrik@henriknordstrom.net writes:
ons 2013-12-11 klockan 11:27 -0500 skrev Alison Chan:
On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 10:47 AM, freebirds@fastmail.fm wrote:
Google requires a cell phone number to register for gmail.
No they don't. I was able to register a new gmail address without providing them my mobile number.
Plus the fact that google groups are used for mailing lists do not at all mean that you need a gmail account to use them.
The problem I have with google groups is that they let list admins add anyone to their lists, without any attempt to confirm that you (the victim) wants to be on this spammers' new list.
It seems that the only way to stop them sending the spam, or report it, involves signing up for a google account associated with the victim address.
I have no interest in signing up every address that might be targeted thus, just to untick the relevant box, so I instead treat all mails from google groups as spam, which seems like the only viable alternative.
It's possible that I'm alone in doing this, but I'd suggest that until Google do something about the rampant spam problem they cannot expect people to receive their mail.
They could trivially fix this by sending out confirmation requests before subscription and censuring admins who get too low a proportion of acknowledgements to their mass-subscribes.
Perhaps Google prefers to collude with the spammers and thus apply this not-so-subtle sign-up pressure on the victims, but that hardly seems to be consistent with their "Do no evil" mantra.
Cheers, Phil.