Over the last two years, Google Drive users have repeatedly been asking the brains at Google to bring for them an option to block spam. Over these two years there has been an increase in the number of cases over time of phishing and spamming and this only takes head as there was no stopping these spammers from sharing content with millions of users with an email and this spammed content often resulted in monetary loss or a problem at a professional level as explicit content being shared on professional drives.
Furthermore, the problems were reaching the maximum in third world countries as technological illiteracy was rampant across these nations leading the users in the most populated country of India to be the most susceptible to phishing and scamming attempts. Not only that, the spread of drive links through WhatsApp as sources of false information and hate crime only spurred Google to be there to take action quickly and swiftly.
In order to stop these misinformation campaigns, spamming and phishing attempts Google has finally rolled out an option to block an email address from sharing content with you. The update was in beta testing from May and only recently has hit a few devices. It is expected to spread to every user within the next 14 days curbing spamming. This comes true to the fact that if there is an email that is repeatedly sharing spam content with you, this can be blocked by just a single tap. However, the users expected more from Google within these two years.
Contrary to what users were asking for, Google presented an option to the users that does not stop spam in the first place but only prevents continuous spam. This update was unworthy of the two years that Google took developing and many tech experts voiced their concerns explicitly in the aforementioned terms.
Despite the fact that this update is available to all the users and the associated applications like GSuite, it still doesn’t solve the problem where users initially cannot identify spam and misinformation or are not technologically savvy to identify how they are being robbed off. Apart from that, it also enables the spammers to scam on with a new email address rendering the blocking useless. Alongside that, Google also has disabled this feature for the same domains giving anyone the ability to infiltrate a domain and scam on without getting a notice unless the organization itself takes note. The last of these concerns were voiced by parents who said that school domains can easily be infiltrated and toddlers of young age not knowing what spam is might be affected in several ways.
Google has been asked to update this policy with more practical options and tighten security on who is and who is not allowed to share content with an email address. It is also been asked to employ a spam folder similar to Gmail with an algorithm and AI presence to push content there.
Read next: Google is rolling out a handy feature to let users know about the 'why' of search results
Furthermore, the problems were reaching the maximum in third world countries as technological illiteracy was rampant across these nations leading the users in the most populated country of India to be the most susceptible to phishing and scamming attempts. Not only that, the spread of drive links through WhatsApp as sources of false information and hate crime only spurred Google to be there to take action quickly and swiftly.
In order to stop these misinformation campaigns, spamming and phishing attempts Google has finally rolled out an option to block an email address from sharing content with you. The update was in beta testing from May and only recently has hit a few devices. It is expected to spread to every user within the next 14 days curbing spamming. This comes true to the fact that if there is an email that is repeatedly sharing spam content with you, this can be blocked by just a single tap. However, the users expected more from Google within these two years.
Contrary to what users were asking for, Google presented an option to the users that does not stop spam in the first place but only prevents continuous spam. This update was unworthy of the two years that Google took developing and many tech experts voiced their concerns explicitly in the aforementioned terms.
Despite the fact that this update is available to all the users and the associated applications like GSuite, it still doesn’t solve the problem where users initially cannot identify spam and misinformation or are not technologically savvy to identify how they are being robbed off. Apart from that, it also enables the spammers to scam on with a new email address rendering the blocking useless. Alongside that, Google also has disabled this feature for the same domains giving anyone the ability to infiltrate a domain and scam on without getting a notice unless the organization itself takes note. The last of these concerns were voiced by parents who said that school domains can easily be infiltrated and toddlers of young age not knowing what spam is might be affected in several ways.
Google has been asked to update this policy with more practical options and tighten security on who is and who is not allowed to share content with an email address. It is also been asked to employ a spam folder similar to Gmail with an algorithm and AI presence to push content there.
Read next: Google is rolling out a handy feature to let users know about the 'why' of search results
