Google mail - Bah!

[Kay]

What's it called? gmail? For me it's grrrrrrrmail.

Here's what happened to make me not a happy camper. In the process of trying out the InternetTycoon product, I also had a go with Kenny Goodman's DealTrojan.

As I said in the feedback thread:

It's a tool which takes you through a process - Harvest - Refine - Process - Portfolio.

Part of the process requires you to set up a gmail account specifically for the purpose. Kenny makes it very clear that this account is to be used only for your DealTrojan activities. He tells you NOT to use that account for personal stuff. That's all fine and dandy, and thanks to Kenny for the good advice. I would never have bothered with a gmail address otherwise anyway, so it's just a throwaway address for me.

But what happens next?

Oh, Big Brother, sorry, I meant G, have now discovered that I have a gmail address and have decided to send their correspondence to me at that address. Luckily Dave spotted it and changed the default back to my real email address. But I'm sure I never at any time told G that I wanted anything sent to that gmail address, which was set up for the sole purpose of DealTrojan's doings.

It feels like being sucked in by G. Just because I now have a gmail address, it doesn't make it the centre of my universe, or even the first place I look for emails. In fact I'd forgotten about it already. (No short term memory.) I used to love G (they paid my bills) but I'm becoming increasing peed off with their intrusiveness. It's not even a privacy thing. It's more like owing your soul to the company store.

I don't want all my personal/business emails going via G.

There is life beyond G. I'm determined to find it.

[monty]

How did they discover the email address ? Which part of the GOOG ?

For me, I hate Googles frequent requests to provide a phone number for security purposes in the event of a lost password. They seem to be the only email provider that asks for one.

After suffering from a (increased) deluge of spam and unsubscribable newsletters over the last year or so, I've recently stopped using permanent addresses wherever possible. Mailinator (with a suitably long and unusual email name) along with subscribing to the mailbox via an RSS feed means I can create and abandon addresses at will. Peace at last ...

[Dave McM]

On one or two occasions in the past Kay's had cause to consider getting a gmail account, but when we've gone to do that from within her profile, we've been presented with a warning that the gmail address would become her primary email address for her G profile - so we've abandoned the process.

However, I'm sure Kay must have been logged in at G when she was getting set up with this DealTrojan thing - so presumably when she went to get her gmail account, G just went ahead and made that account her primary email address anyway, without a by-your-leave.

[grynge]

I had mega problems getting a couple of youtube accounts back late last year after they changed youtube to make everyone have a google account.

[akirk]

You can add an alternative address to a gmail account...
And you can bounce all emails into that account -> another (normal) account...
you can also have a number of gmail accounts...

so, for me - doesn't worry me...
I think that if you are going to play in Google's patch - you need to a) accept the constraints and b) work around them...

but can understand the frustration

Alasdair

[JJMcClure]

I have loads of gmail accounts, I'm constantly opening them for clients and for personal projects, I've never had this problem?

I also like their security measures, someone would have to steal my phone to hack my gmail effectively.

Not a popular opinion on this forum I'm sure, but that's the other side of the coin. What some people see as intrusiveness, I see as info that helps them improve a free service and I couldn't care less if that info became public anyway.

so, for me - doesn't worry me...
I think that if you are going to play in Google's patch - you need to a) accept the constraints and b) work around them...

That pretty much sums up where I am too.

[Dave McM]

I can imagine that G wouldn't switch users over from one gmail account to another; as far as I can tell, the problem arises if your G account's primary email address is non-gmail. (As Kay's was, up until this happened.)

JJ, I'm presuming you have a G account (I'd be amazed if you hadn't ) - is your primary email address for that account a non-gmail account? If not, can you remember what happened when you first set up a gmail account - or was your G account always linked to a gmail address?

[Clinton]

I'm guilty of always being slow in responding to JJMcClure's emails but, over the last year or so, we've both noticed that some emails in gmail go completely missing. No, I'm not making excuses for not replying and am not having a dig at him for not replying. We have both genuinely seen emails get lost in the ether. It happens only in gmail. There is only one other person I've had that problem with and he's a gmail user as well.

[delta4]

I have loads of gmail accounts, I'm constantly opening them for clients and for personal projects, I've never had this problem?

I also like their security measures, someone would have to steal my phone to hack my gmail effectively.

I never saw gmail security measures till last week when I was travelling for two weeks. I decided to login to my account and gmail asked me for my phone number. Usually I give fake data when creating accounts but that account is the one where I have my google adsense account so everything was fine.

[bwelford]

We have both genuinely seen emails get lost in the ether. It happens only in gmail. There is only one other person I've had that problem with and he's a gmail user as well.

I don't believe this happens only with Gmail but it is an instance of a general problem that mail may be identified as spam by any of the ISP's along the Internet route that took the message from sender A to recipient B. The particular ISP that identifies the message as spam may trash the message without giving any indication that this has happened. It's a big subject and I've had some interesting situations that I have explored in the past. Even your own e-mail service can be a part of the problem if it has a questionable reputation with respect to spam.

As part of my learning curve I became aware that Gmail may well categorize messages as spam where there are a number of links included. I was using a number of e-mail message services and usually they would get through to Gmail more reliably than to other e-mail services but not so when there were links in the message.