Student collects 15 million Gmail addresses


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<h1>Student collects 15 million Gmail addresses

More than 7,100 sets of 5,000 links to Google profiles may be just what spammers are looking for. In his blog, a student from the University of Amsterdam reports that he gathered around 15 million Gmail addresses from Google user profiles within a month. Matthijs Koot analysed just under 35 million profile links from Google's profile site map, which is easily accessible on the company's servers. Koot says he used the same IP address for all of the 35 million queries, but Google didn't attempt to stop the mass download. A Google spokesperson told British IT news source The Register that the site map does not make any information available that is not already publicly accessible.

The site map contains URLs to more than 7,100 text files with 5,000 profile links each. Site maps help other Web services map a web site's structure – in this case, for the indexing of Google profiles. In a lot of cases, Koot was not only able to get the Google user's user name (from which the person's Gmail address can be derived), but also the person's real name, information about education, employment history, current employer, place of residence, links to Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and the profile holder's Picasa photo albums. Spammers, for example, could use this data for personalised advertising attacks.

More plus screenshot: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Student-collects-15-million-Gmail-addresses-1251356.html

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Really, I thought no one can see our Gmail id details. Now, I understand why I get spam mails even I use it for personal purposes only. Once, I have seen a resume review in https://edureviewer.com/resume/resumewriters-reviews/ and after finding good reviews of resume service, I have ordered a resume from that website. They told me to share my Gmail Id in which they will send me a soft copy of my resume. And after that once in a week or sometimes 3 times in a week, I get spam emails from a girl who says that she is rich but her money is stuck somewhere. And she asks for my bank account details so that she can send money to my bank account. Now I understand why I am getting these kinds of spam emails.

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