How &why did this happen again?

[Beckie1956]

@everyone, okay im on the ledge,  somebody calm me down.  This is the 2nd time this happened. 

1st time I got fed up and deleted my email and Gdrive. These same type of emails appeared again and guess what? 

I CAN ONLY REMOVE MYSELF, I AM NOT THE OWNER!!!!! HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? I BLOCKED 🚫 THE PEOPLE ON THESE AND REMOVED MYSELF,  BUT I CAN'T DO ANYTHING ELSE TO STOP THIS.  I run scans daily,  I found this yesterday when I was looking for a file.  Im ready to toss this phone in Lake Murray.  I don't ever have a day of peace. 

Can someone please help me? TYIA 🌴 Beckie 

[maird]

That's just the Google Account Management rather than a view of the Drive app. Fair enough. Anything that gets added there will stay there unless it's removed.

[Beckie1956]

I don't know about building rules. Omg 🤯

[Beckie1956]

I did block 🚫 the email addresses, removed myself from them, that's how I saw message about collaboration is NOT OWNED BY ME. I'm not stupid I don't understand the how and why.

[maird]

It's probably a waste of time to block or unsubscribe from any of that content. Given the type even identical content is likely to come from a different email address every time and they are unlikely to honor any attempt to unsubscribe.

Don't worry about building rules, there are only about three things you need to enter for most cases and one is your own email address.

Since you said it's not in the gmail app but the Drive app then let me say that the screenshot you give looks nothing like any view I see in the Google Drive phone app. Mine has two non-scrolling areas, one at the top with a Search bar in the middle, has a three stacked horizontal bars icon at the top left and a circular icon for my Google account on the the right. Plus a non-moving area at the bottom above the phone task bar that has four icons each allowing me to select different views. The content you show looks a bit like the Google suggestions in my "Home" view (though I have no spam in mine) but I prefer to use the "My Drive" view rather than the suggestions view. It lets me browse only files I've created or accepted shares of.

Even the web based UI for Drive looks different on all my devices, though the content looks a bit like the "Shared with me" view from the web UI, but even scrolling in it would leave the text "Shared with me" at the top of the screen in the handheld device web UI and show the view selections on the left if it was displaying the desktop web UI on a handheld.

I'm surprised you have so much Drive spam. I have had gmail and drive since they were introduced used gmail for most of my email correspondance, given it to at least hundreds of random web sites but have no spam in my Drive's Home view. Plus I have nothing in the spam folder that keeps content for only the last 30 days.

There are two things that might help in the Drive app (if you can find them).

1. In the Setings (Click the three stacked horizontal bars in the top left for me) make sure that transfer files only over wifi is enabled (unless you have no wifi and only use your phone service provider for Internet).
2. Also in the Settings click on "Clear cache". It will ask if you are sure but it won't delete any documents on Google Drive, just any local copies of them on your phone. That should remove anything shared with you that you haven't accepted.

I might be able to help more if you can tell me what app you are using in the picture because it doesn't look like any view I can cause to appear in the actual Google Drive phone or tablet app.

Some versions of Google Drive support adding "extensions" that might be able to show different views from those you can see in the default app features. If I was seeing what's in your picture next to another device that couldn't show the same view I'd at least disable all the Drive extensions and probably uninstall them. Then re-build looking for the sudden apppearance of spam with each and stop using the one that caused it.

[maird]

BTW, believe me I don't think you are stupid and I'd like to help. I've been a professional software engineer for about forty years. I don't know everything and I'm not better than all others but I am very good. The biggest concern for me is that what you show looks so different from any gmail or Drive app or web UI views I can display on my Samsung phone or tablets or on my PCs.

The point collaboration is not owned by me means you don't have permission to change who it's shared with (including yourself). You would have to have a different email address to prevent them from being shared with you(r new email address). You can delete your view of each one using your current email address but that wouldn't prevent them from being repeatedly shared with you. You can disable suggestions entirely in the Google Drive Settings. Or, if you keep suggestions enabled then using drive on a computer you can right click each and use the option "Not a helpful suggestion". Hopefully Drive uses content more than filename and sender for that and reduces the unwanted suggestions in a "smart" way. You can also flag shared content as spam (which probably improves the ability to detect future examples). The following link is to Google's own documentation on how to use it: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/13305033?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=1

If that spam method was how you blocked the sender it may only help if the sender doesn't use a new email address to share content with you.

[maird]

The Drive app and web UI from Google do a really good job of letting you switch between accounts with just a few screen touches. So you could use a second email address just for Drive and move all your personal content to it. You probably don't get a lot shared with you that you do want, so could treat the old drive as a "dump site" you just ignore. It might be a problem if you have purchased a storage size upgrade from the free default also, apps like Gallery, Photos, etc. backup pictures to the drive associated with your active gmail account. But, as long as you only view them in such picture apps it won't matter that they go to the Drive that's being spammed, they shouldn't be in your image backup. Google Photos is quite good in that you can set it to backup to and show account B then you can leave gmail viewing account A or switch to B and back to A but the Google Photos backup and view should stay at account B until you change it. The same is true with the Google Drive app. switch it to account B and it will stay viewing there every time you run it unless you deliberately choose to view account A in the Google Drive app. There's something quite pleasant about knowing the spammers are wasting their energy and time sharing content with you but that you are never seeing or caring about.

[maird]

FYI, if you do create a second google account to use for drive, choosing a username can be annoying. Something I know some people do to remember the account name is to expand any shortened version of their name in the first account, e.g. create I might use something like brian.smith@gmail.com as account B if my account A is bsmith@gmail.com. other things you can do is double one or more initials, so for the same bsmith@gmail.com you could try to get bbsmith@gmail.com; bssmith@gmail.com or bbssmith@gmail.com. or add a middle name or initial. Or, replace i or l with1, o with 0 (zero), g with 9. There are so many gmail accounts already created that much of the possibilities will already be in-use, you can add something like .5 to the end of any new account to get a better chance of it not already being used, bbsmith.5@gmail.com. These might look easy to guess if a spammer already knows bsmith@gmail.com but two or three combined changes makes the effort to guess a new email address very high, bssm1th.5@gmail.com for example. Use a password that's a short phrase that means something to you. Don't use spaces in the password replace o characters with @, i characters with !, l characters with 1. There are a few more cases that could be replaced but if the password was based on: No more phishing, then it's unlikely anyone would guess it's really N@m@reph!sh!ng. You'd rarely have to enter it directly after the first time because it would go into the password managers and be automatcally used from there, perhaps requiring you to provide a thumb print. As I said this would just be an account used just for Drive based on the spamming you describe. You might have to send or receive one email every month or two for Google to treat it as an active account but that takes a moment to do in gmail as it can easily switch between accounts.

[Beckie1956]

I actually had a tech get in my phone and they are gone. It also said:Never and then listed the emails. Never means I never opened them. It was weird but it's shiny clean!★★★★★