I've never used Google groups, period!

July 4, 2009 2:23 PM

Why does Google Groups keep emailing me informing me I can't post in a certain group, when I've never tried to?

I just received the following email for literally the 10th time today:

[e-mail] to me
show details 5:18 PM (0 minutes ago)
- Hide quoted text -
Hello [e-mail],

We're writing to let you know that the group that you tried to contact
(librarian) either doesn't exist, or you don't have permission to post to it.
There are a few possible reasons why this happened:

* You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.
* The owner of the group removed this group, so there's nobody there to
contact.
* You may need to join the group before being allowed to post.
* This group may not be open to posting.

If you have questions about this or any other group, please visit the Google
Groups Help Center at http://groups.google.com/support.

Thanks, and we hope you'll continue to enjoy Google Groups.

The Google Groups Team

I have never tried to contact a group called "librarian," and I'm really not familiar with what Google Groups is anyway. After the 7th email, I changed my password, but I have gotten 3 more since then. This has been going on since 8:40am, and it is now 5:22pm. What could be causing this and how can I get it to stop?

posted by srrh to computers & internet (2 comments total)

This is most likely a form of Joe-Job email spam, where (in your case) instead of spamming people the sender has been trying to spam google groups, only some of them no longer exist (or never did).

There is essentially nothing you can do about this. no one is or has accessed your email account, they are simply using your address as their "reply-to" to avoid getting the bounced messages themselves. It's also quite possible that your email address values were generated or selected at random.
posted by tiamat at 2:59 PM on July 4

Seconding tiamat. I've had stuff like this happen to me. As far as I figure, ignoring and filtering it is the best way to go. A "From: [e-mail]" and "Has the words: contact (librarian)" and "Action: move to Trash" should do the trick.
posted by shadytrees at 3:16 PM on July 4