Spam invites for Google Classrooms are out of control and unstoppable
Spam has a way of getting around to all the platforms we use online. Whether it’s good ol' fashionedphone callsoremail, the comments section ofanything, or automated content generation polluting the tubes of YouTube, it’s all unpleasant and messy and the only real saving grace we have is the ability to ignore it. But for Google Classroom users who are dealing with a wave of fresh textual horrors, they might not even have a valid way of doing so.
In the annuls of the Google Classroom Help forums, you’ll see a few spare threads such asthis onedating back to April 2021 where complainants detail an invitation to a classroom from a dubious source on a dubious topic such as an entitlement scam. The user then asks if there’s a way to block these invitations. In later threads — likethis onefrom last week — you’ll usually find Mark Loundy, a Diamond Product Expert, replying in one way or another to say that unless users set up a filter on their email client, there’s no way to block this spam.
Unfortunately, spammers have discovered Google Classroom and have been using it for distribution. The emails are not coming from Google, but from the spammers using the Google platform. Your only option is to block them.
Loundy also makes the point that the Classroom Help forums are moderated by community managers and product experts — implying there’s not much of an escalation path from that point.
Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii has eventweeted(NSFW) about receiving a spam invite and notes that the notification settings for Google Classroom aren’t at all fine-grained with a single toggle for all email notifications.
Those who use Google Classroom for scholarly education or training and have to deal with these seedy invitations are left between a rock and a hard place.
On January 24, Google told Android Police it was aware of the problem and is working on a solution. The company updated us on January 27 that a fix was being distributed, but we have not been able to spot any noticeable changes on the user interface — we’re aiming to get clarification on what it entails.
UPDATE: 2023/01/31 12:45 EST BY JULES WANG
Google statement
We’ve updated this story to include a late statement from Google.
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