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Why Spam and Phishing Emails End Up In My Google Gmail Sent Mail?
Why Spam and Phishing Emails End Up In My Google Gmail Sent Mail?

Question: I never open attachments, and usually just delete spam messages right away. I get many spam messages of a variety of subject headings that are obvious spoofing attempts seeming to come from my own account. I've recently received one of those "Hi Prnt" phishing emails, but it was in my "Sent Mail" box, which is a little bit concerning because I didn't sent it. My question for you is: have you seen this before? Is that normal for spam or phishing scam to end up in Sent Mail?

Answer:

It is not normal for email messages to show up in your "Sent Mail" or "Sent Items," unless the email messages were sent by you.

But, this is what may have happened to you. If a spammer/cyber-criminal sets an email message's "From" address the same as the "To" address (in this case your email address) Google/Gmail doesn't filter it as spam; instead, it sends it to "Sent Mail" automatically, even though you didn't send the message.

You can set up a filter to delete all messages that have the same "To" and "From" address, but that will mean you will not be able to send yourself an email message, because the filter will delete it. But, use the filter until Gmail fixes the problem.

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