Google disables all G Suite accounts in our university due to spamming

[user32556]

On November 5, several students reported that they cannot access their G Suite accounts. Google seems to disable all G Suite accounts in National Taiwan University (@g.ntu.edu.tw) due to spamming.

> "Your account is disabled due to spamming." https://i.imgur.com/G2ZCkcE.jpg (in traditional Chinese)

Fortunately, most services in the university do not depend on G Suite. They depend on a unversity account (@ntu.edu.tw).

[wcoenen]

For anyone having trouble keeping up with the renames: "Google Apps" was renamed to "G Suite" in 2016, and was recently renamed again to "Google Workspace".

[PsychicPebble]

Also, recently Google has changed the look of the Google drive, Gmail, and probably most of G Suite's logos

[homero]

And Play movies is now Google TV

[easytiger]

At this point I think Google is being run by some runaway AI. Very little that they do makes sense to me

[cromka]

Classic Google.

[thebruce87m]

Create. Confuse. Cancel.

[lern_too_spel]

Why not simply disable sending email instead of shutting down the entire account? This heavy handed enforcement is what makes me want to get off Google productivity services.

[londons_explore]

I'm unaware of any Google product with any kind of per-user "admin" UI that only employees can access.

That kind of thing isn't good for security - an evil employee could use it for bad things.

Instead, all accounts get the same permissions, except disabled accounts (and in some cases blacklists for certain features, but these are avoided because maintainance of the list is a burden).

[lern_too_spel]

The permission can be marked on the account using the account management tool. The product would simply read the flag on the account, so the product would not have its own administration tool.

There is no technical reason why I should lose access to my documents if I happen to have abused some other Google service. There is just lack of will on Google's part.

[tehwebguy]

Apparently non-evil employees/bots can use it for bad things too.

[duxup]

Sounds like something Google and that University need to work out. I am curious about what happened that they needed to shutdown G Suite.

My understanding is Google is a bit less likely to go full ban and just lock you out with no recourse with G Suite than regular services.

[n_u_l_l]

What might have happened is that an admin account of the university has been hacked, and someone is abusing it for spam.

[duskwuff]

Or a large number of accounts were created with placeholder credentials which were compromised in mass -- for example, passwords set to dummy values like "changeme", or to predictable values like the student's last name.

[908B64B197]

Sounds plausible.

It's a good thing to shut down early this type of spam, else other providers might start blocking *.tw domains and it will take longer for them to get unblocked.

[someonehere]

I wonder if they haven’t turned off the ability to use third party mail clients and enforce 2FA. It’s possible their accounts were compromised and someone was sending mail as them without their knowledge.

If the university has compromised credentials and allows third party mail clients to access without 2FA/unique codes enabled, then they’ve opened themselves up to being spammers.

[user32556]

Update by OP: Our university contacted Google and all G Suite accounts are back now.

[kerng]

Google automation in action. Another one bites the dust...

[FandangoRanger]

Good? They should have been doing this years ago. Look at how spammers operating with gmail addresses have screwed up Usenet, or as Google calls it, Groups.

[jjd33]

Trusting Google, an American company. While it is sad you shouldn't trust a foreign company nonetheless an American one.

[sida]

I don't know there is something inherently not trustworthy about Google or American company.

I think the main problem with Google (and perhaps part of the reason why Google is great in the first place) is that Google relies too heavily on algo solutions and when the algo makes a mistake, you cannot get to a real person for support

[toast0]

Google is inherently untrustworthy because it's near impossible to get help if something goes wrong.

Additionaly, Google Workplace (or whatever it's called next week) is particularly unsuited for enterprise because even when you do get a hold of someone, they aren't willing or able to provide enterprise level support.

For example, we were getting a lot of spearphishing, so we wanted to disable links in inbound email; can't do that. Then we were aquired and wanted to merge our account into our acquirer; can't do that either.

[im3w1l]

If Stanford had this issue, someone would know someone and it would get fixed.

[FandangoRanger]

>I don't know there is something inherently not trustworthy about Google or American company.

That something's called PRISM.