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Google glitch sends thousands of emails to one man’s Hotmail account

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google glitch sends thousands of emails to one mans hotmail account search
Image used with permission by copyright holder

When Google’s Web-based services went down on Friday, millions of users started googling ‘Gmail’ in an effort to find out what was going on. When they hit a link in the top result, the email address of California resident David Peck showed up in a ‘Compose’ box.

As a result of this unfortunate glitch, Peck’s Hotmail account – that’s right, Hotmail – was flooded with thousands of ‘spam’ emails.

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During the deluge, TechCrunch managed to track him down, with Peck explaining he was receiving “thousands of no-subject, blank emails.”

“Five hundred of them come every hour, I can’t stop them,” said a put upon Peck, adding, “I deleted everything last night and woke up this morning and had 1,900 new emails – only two of them were emails I cared about.”

The mail-based mess kicked off on Friday when some of Google’s Web services went up the shoot, affecting Gmail, Google+, Calendar, and Google Docs. The Mountain View company later admitted that “most” people with a Google account had been hit by the hiccup, with one in ten users experiencing connectivity issues in excess of 30 minutes.

Peck’s problems were the result of a separate issue regarding a bug on Google’s search page, the company said.

According to TechCrunch, Peck’s address appeared in a ‘Compose’ window that showed up when a user clicked on the ‘Email’ sub-link (below) that came back as part of the top return for a ‘Gmail’ search.

gmail-google-search
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Fortunately for Peck, most of the emails in his Inbox were blank rather than filled with rants from angry Gmail users demanding he sort out the issue affecting Google’s various services.

Over the weekend, Google confirmed there had been a problem with its search engine, at the same time indicating that Peck hadn’t been the only one to receive a few extra emails. “Due to a technical glitch, some email addresses on public webpages appeared too prominently in search results,” the company said. “We’ve fixed the issue and are sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

We’ve reached out to Mr. Peck via email to find out how he’s doing but don’t expect to hear back anytime soon….

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