Google is finally doing something about Google Drive spam

Enlarge / Blocking individual users in Google Drive! Finally! (credit: Google)

A notification pops up on your phone: "Click here for hot XXX action!" It's Google Drive again. Someone shared a document containing that title, and now your phone is begging you to look at it. Even if you ban Google Drive from generating phone notifications, you'll still get emails. Even if you block the emails, you'll still have to see the spam when you click on the "shared" section of Google Drive. The problem is that Drive document sharing was built with no spam-management tools. Anyone that gets a hold of your email is considered to be an important sharer of valid documents, and there has been nothing you can do about it. Until now.

Google officially acknowledged the problem all the way back in 2019, and the company said it was making spam controls "a priority." Now, more than two years later, Google is finally rolling out the most basic of spam tools to Google Drive sharing—you can block individual email addresses! Google announced this feature in May, but the feature is rolling out to users over the next 15 days. Soon, once the spam arrives in your Google Drive, you'll be able to click the menu button next to the item and choose "block user."

Drive sharing works just like email spam. Anyone can share a drive file with you if they know your address. Documents that have been shared with you still automatically show up in your Drive collection without your consent. There's no way to turn off sharing, to limit sharing to approved people, or to limit it to existing contacts. It's a free-for-all. It's like email, but the difference is that Gmail has piles of spam controls, while Drive has historically had very few. Gmail gets AI-powered, Google-side filters for obvious scams, a "spam" inbox for questionable items, and advanced filter rules that anyone can write. For years, Drive has been an uncontrolled mess of spam for some users, and the only solutions have been to use the entire service less and block it from sending emails and notifications.

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