I finally got around to going to Gmail to check my mail today and was informed by Google that my Google account had been disabled for TOS violations. Yes, I was a bit surprised by that, seeing as I send out about two emails a week, if that many, and I give no web site, human, or anything else any sort of access to my Gmail account.

In order to get my account back, I had to hand over my cell phone number to Google, which I have to say, I did not want to do. That was the ONLY option available for verifying it was my account. I either had to let them send me a text message or a voice mail to my cell phone. This actually annoyed me more than having my account disabled for who knows what reason. As tight as I am with my Gmail account, I am a thousand times tighter with my cell phone number, which Google now has its hands on. Booooooo.

Once I finally got back into my account, there were about a hundred “delivery failed” notices for emails I did not send. Spam for some online Canadian pharmacy … sent to everyone in my address book. Wonderful! That’s just what I needed, and I am sure anyone who’s email server didn’t block the offending email needed it too! ARGH! This wasn’t how I’d planned to spend my Sunday evening.

I don’t know how someone got the contents of my Gmail address book. Like I said, I don’t share it with any web sites that want it (including not at all with Facebook), and if someone somehow managed to figure out my password, they deserve some kudos. My passwords aren’t guessable, aren’t words, and tend to be LONG. Additionally, my password recovery question is one even my husband or Mom couldn’t answer. So I am at somewhat of a loss to determine how my address book was used to send out spam emails. From my point of view, it sort of feels like a breakdown of security on Google’s side of things.

Anyway … if you received a spam email from my Gmail account, it wasn’t me, but I’m sorry. I can’t tell if any actually got accepted by anyone’s email program, but looking through the delivery failure notices, it doesn’t look like any got through to anyone who might be reading this or keeping up with me in any other way. I don’t have all that many addresses in my address book, and it looks like every last one of them failed to be sent. All the same, if you did get one, I am sorry. No idea how it happened, no idea how to keep it from happening again. I guess we just move on, yes?

If anyone reading this did, in fact, GET one of these emails and still has it sitting in their spam box or trash bin, could you forward it to me? Might help me figure out what happened or at least from whence the emails were originally sent, and I would like to know.

And I am still not at all happy about having to give Google my cell phone number. Not happy at all.