Google Fixes Bug That Leaves Some User Blacklisted as Spammers

Over the past few days, ending on Thursday, certain Gmail users were experiencing a problem with their accounts – specifically, having emails resent multiple times even when the communications in question were deleted. Even though Google says this bug only affected less than 2.5% of users, in a statement by the company at the end of last year it was reported that there were over 176 million people using Gmail. So although that percentage may seem minuscule, that still amounts to about 4 million accounts sending rogue emails for almost a week.

Users flocked to the support forums posting similar stories of having people, among which many companies’ clients, informing them that they had received multiple copies of the same email. Business owners, especially, were put-off by this malfunction because they feared that they would appear unprofessional to clients and other customers. Google resolved the problem and an apology was issued by an employee on the forum:

“Sincerest apologies for the inconvenience this has caused you,” he wrote. “While I can’t take the messages back with some sort of magical Undo Send, I totally sympathize with your situation.”

Google says all new emails should unaffected by the issue.