Google Apps bug: You've got (my) mail

As a result of a bug in a Google Apps e-mail migration tool, some students at Brown University found other students' e-mail in their in-box over the weekend as Google was moving their e-mail from Exchange to Gmail, Google confirmed on Friday.

The problem affected a "handful" of organizations that use Google Apps, a spokesman said. He declined to specify how many were affected or how many individual users were affected.

Brown University newspaper the Brown Daily Herald reported that e-mail for 22 students was misdirected starting on Friday, that the university notified Google about it on Saturday, and it was fixed on Tuesday.

However, the Google spokesman said the company found out about the problem on Monday, disabled the affected accounts within hours, and then restored the accounts within a day.

"A very small number of Google Apps domains using the IMAP migration tool last weekend encountered a bug that caused a handful of their users' mail to be migrated to the wrong accounts," the spokesman said in a statement. "We quickly identified and fixed the issue, which affected less than 0.002% of users, and worked with the organizations to restore the affected accounts to their original state. We have extensive safeguards in place to ensure that users' mail is safe, and we're confident this was an isolated incident."

Donald Tom, director of IT support services at the school, complained to the newspaper that the school was not notified before the affected e-mail accounts were suspended. However, he did praise Google for moving swiftly to fix the problem.

Asked to respond to that criticism, the Google spokesman said: "In this case we made the judgment call that the safest and most expedient course of action for the affected users was to suspend affected accounts as soon as possible. In our conversations with our customers, they've appreciated our prompt actions and have been satisfied with the outcome."

[El_Gringo_Guapo]

My university uses Gmail....it's glitchy, occasionally will get username/password failures on IMAP.

[cvaldes1831]

Yet another strike against cloud computing.<br /><br />Simply isn't ready for primetime... Maybe in five or ten years.

[Random_Walk]

...to be honest, I can see some sysadmin goof and do the same thing locally. The impact would be smaller, but it would still be just as likely. <br /><br />As someone who is the primary email admin @ work (yes, I'm apparently a masochist), you always triple-check everything you do on your setup - even if you built it yourself. Problem is, sometimes sh*t happens. <br /><br />I will grant you this, though - especially with email, even if it's the user's fault (e.g. they accidentally set their own client-side Outlook spam filter to hose up their entire mailbox), you're going to eat the blame for it, especially if that user is a VP or CxO. <br /><br />In-house, no big deal - they know you're a human being too, and can eventually admit that they screwed up if it truly is their fault. OTOH, with outsourced or cloud-computing, the user suddenly thinks that the provider is simply not human, and will proceed to abuse them just like any other vendor. If the CS department is adept enough (and tough enough), no problem. IF not, they will collapse at even the slightest goof.

[PhaseDMA]

I agree with Random_Walk. This isn't really a "cloud computing" issue. It's a administration problem. Anyways. This exact problem could have happened a long time before the term "cloud computing" was even a thought in some one's head.<br /><br />I mean isn't email cloud computing by it's very nature?

[gggg sssss]

@Random_Walk if its local at least yu can tell where teh leak pops up. If its google and your business plan pops up in China, or you WMD plans pop up at DHS what do you do?

[screamapillar]

@gggg ssss wouldn't DHS already have a copy of your wmd plans if you're using gmail? :D [giggle]

[42istheanswer]

We're talking about switching to GApps next year at our U. Hopefully all this is worked out by then. Regardless, it's a better way to go than M$ Exchange which is what we use now.

[rsucre]

Software will always have bugs. It does not matter if it runs on the cloud or on your own infrastructure. This thing that happened is serious, don't want to minimize that, but has nothing to do with the fact that it is running on Google's Cloud. Cloud makes a lot of sense and is very viable today.

[bonesbautista]

I'm on Premier Apps, so is one of my clients - two of her messages to a couple of government agencies and emailed to them showed up in my inbox two days ago. We thought we were losing it, but this explains everything now... Google's slipping up, and it's starting to **** me off.

[gggg sssss]

is she on the side getting earmartks or the other side

[kalabawpiper]

If you read the blogs and tech support complaints, Google has MANY known issues (bugs) with their various apps, to include mail service; that never seem to get resolved. It is as if they do a big "splash" release of a new feature or app, then stop supporting it when the first complaints start rolling in (i.e. calendar sync, mail sync, contacts, etc.). Unless it could have legal ramifications, they don't seem to care. No way for a company with a stock price of just under $500 / share to act.

[slickuser]

All their crap is skunkworks. what you pay (free) is what you get

[cvaldes1831]

@slickuser:<br /><br />The problem here is that Google is trying to build their cloud computing business by selling Google Apps at $50 per year per user.<br /><br />These service snafus not only hurt the users, they greatly deteriorate public perception of Google's ability to run enterprise-grade cloud services. The damage is cumulative because the people whom Google is trying to sell cloud computing (IT managers, etc.) remember previous outages.

[Vegaman_Dan]

is Google offering identity theft protection/credit monitoring services for all those involved? Considering the number of confirmation emails you may get or if you have password change requests in your mailbox saved away, there's a lot of liability involved here. <br /> <br />Those affected could possibly have a case against their university for legal action if they so choose.

[edentifier2]

I notice Google Apps offers a 99.9% e-mail uptime guarantee. Doesn't say anything about whose mail you'll actually be able to access... it will be interesting to see what happens when Los Angeles tries to move 30,000 workers over to the platform, complete with sensitive healthcare, legal and financial data. <br /> <br />Scary. <br /> <br />Frankly I would like to know which companies are using / thinking of using Google Apps that are currently holding my personal details... so I can remove them.

[mcka0471]

Ouch!!!... I guess its nice to know that even Google makes mistakes :)

[make_or_break]

Really? You're only NOW finding that out?

[tenc21]

IMHO it's neither a cloud problem nor administration problem...it's a Brown Univ problem. Did this happen at Harvard, Yale or even Princeton?

[ropo153]

Google admitted to the mistake you snobby idiot!

[musicfumez]

Another Cloud Problem! by google....unbelieveable<br /><br />Signature: &lt;a href="http://www.musicfumez.com/"target="_blank"&gt;Ultimate Entertainment Website&lt;/a&gt;

[Internet-Lawyer]

These type of email issues are likely to come up once in a while. Except of the obvious email privacy issues, let's not make too big a deal our of it. &lt;a href="http://www.web20lawyer.com/page0/page46/email-law.html"&gt;Email Spam Lawyer&lt;/a&gt;.

[gggg sssss]

ROTFLMAO <br /> <br />Fear the cloud

[JCPayne]

I get other people's mail all the time in GMail. If you try to call Google to speak to their techs they tell you "We're not able to transfer the call because our techs aren't setup to speak to the public." I once even got someone's Army Interview addressed to a completely different email address in the email headers but luckily the email was marked as "unclassified" within. DON'T use Gmail for anything very personal that you wouldn't mind other people possibly getting.