Google+ disk space cockup creates notification spam-storm

Google+ blitzed early adopters of the social networking service with spammy notifications over the weekend following a technical glitch. The Chocolate Factory said the problem was due to the service having run out of disk space.
The spam messages carried some of the hallmarks of those generated by dodgy apps of the type that have become a regular nuisance on Facebook over recent months. In reality, however, the messages were the product of bugs in the Google+ code, which had kicked in because the site was unable to cope with early demand.

Vic Gundotra, senior vice-president of social for Google, apologised for the snafu in astatus message on his Google+ account.

Please accept our apologies for the spam we caused this afternoon.For about 80 minutes we ran out of disk space on the service that keeps track of notifications. Hence our system continued to try sending notifications. Over, and over again. Yikes.
We didn't expect to hit these high thresholds so quickly, but we should have.
Thank you for helping us during this field trial, and once again, we are very sorry for the spam.

Google+ is, of course, only a few days old – a newborn in the world of social networking – so problems of one type or another can be expected. Even so, and given its capacity to run its own massive data centres for core operations such as ad brokerage, you wouldn't expect Google to run into problems such as running out of disc space for anything.

First Google+ spam emerges, leading victims to Viagra vendor

Security company Sophos highlighted the scam, which takes the form of an email that looks like an invite to join Google+. If you click the links contained therein, you'll find yourself whisked off to the Canadian Family Pharmacy, an online store that sells Viagra, Cialia, Levitra and a slew of other pills for people who aren't performing as well as they'd like in the bedroom.

The scammers are hoping to capitalise on the hype surrounding Google+ as it prepares to go head to head with Facebook. Invites are hard to come by, with Google trying to keep testing of the new service to a relatively small group while it irons out flaws and gets everything ready for a public launch.

If you receive an email that looks dodgy, activate your cautious mode, and, if the links don't look like they point to Google, don't bother clicking 'em. Admittedly, the risk from the spam is very low -- you'd have to be extremely open to suggestion to end up ordering Viagra pills when all you'd initially wanted to do was get your social network on.

Scamming aside, Google+ looks impressive. One feature of note is Circles, which lets you organise your buddies into separate groups, making it easier to control who sees what, and keep those dodgy leaving-do photos away from your new employer's prying eyes. But, with Facebook boasting 500 million users, Google has a mountain to climb if it wants to tempt people to try out its service.

Our American CNETeer cousins have spotted something that may help Google's cause, though -- a Chrome Web browser extension that will let you import all your Facebook friends into Google+. We're not sure Zuckerberg and co will be too keen on this extension -- it seems to go against Facebook's terms of service, so it may not be around for long.