Google disabling Form Mule-enabled GAFE accounts

[Tom Foust]

I have had two GAFE accounts be restricted or disabled for violating the Google Workspace Policy in the past 8 weeks (screenshot attached). The only commonality I can find between both accounts is that they use Form Mule to email students (within our domain) and occasionally parents (external). I've reviewed the FAQ and known issues. Additional information includes:

• Both accounts were well under the daily send limit
• One account did not even send to external domains, and hadn't emailed or utilized a Form Mule send within days of being disabled
• There were no scheduled sends on either account (learn why that's relevant below)
• Both accounts cleared all security review; neither had been compromised
• All sheets currently using FM either use "send on form submit" or manual "preview and send all" by the user. No time-driven triggers.

According to Support, the action that caused the most recent account issue was a message flagged by their system as spam—a message with a timestamp eight hours in the future. Support couldn't explain how a message with a future timestamp could have been marked as spam and caused the account to disabled. 

Can anyone thing of any reason, any possible line of code or process that Form Mule utilizes could have caused Google's automated system to think the account had sent a spam message in the past but eight hours in the future? 

I love Form Mule, but I'm concerned since Support couldn't explain why this has happened twice, and since the only thing these accounts have in common is their use of the extension, that it will happen again to more of our accounts that use FM. 

Lincolnwood SD74 Mission:

One campus, One community

Preparing, inspiring, and empowering learners;

One moment at a time.

[Joseph Schmidt]

See https://www.gleeda.net/articles/add-ons-and-workspace for details about how an Add-on must be configured.

I'm not an expert but your system administrator should be able to make sure the domain is setup correctly.

Not to worry about the time in the future.  That just means that a Google computer in a different time zone processed the job.

To get triggers to work again, the account that set the trigger must be able to sign on.

If that account isn't available, the only thing I know to do is go to the Google Form Responses and select a new destination.

I'm working on the process to do that but for now, it is not ready to share. 

Joe Schmidt

https://www.youtube.com/c/JoeSchmidt

 GLUA...@gmail.com

New Visions Blog Entry - Joe Schmidt

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[Bart van Dalfsen]

Hi Tom,

If the spamfilter says it is spam and that's enough to disable your account then that's a harsh reality.
Any false positive is ofcoarse FALSE and the automation process could easily put these accounts on a whitelist to reduce the scrutiny level to which they are subjected.

Now, for sending something 8 hours in the future....
There are a lot of ideas i can think of when this might be convenient but according to Einstein it cannot be done.

What can be done is send something too late...
...but in all cases when you send something...
...it's sent at that moment, on that exact time.

But why the false positive of the spamfilter?
It is very likely the sheet in which FM runs has been configured to use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) but the spamfilter demands the configuration to be set to the PST timezone...

Check: https://24timezones.com/difference/los_angeles/utc

Unfortunately, simply adjusting the timezone-settings for the sheet may cause havoc with the triggers, so be sure to check this and restart them.

If both disabled GWfE (f.k.a. GAfE) account are funtional (e.g. lib...@school.top) and not personal (mary.p...@school.top) then report back to your admin the changes made with the formal request to have these accounts audited a couple if times per year to ensure they are used for their intended purpose and should be whitelisted in return or a least a way less strict policy.

Warnings via email to the supervisor instead of automatic disable.

Anyway, something for you to do next week ;)

Enjoy your weekend!

Cheers, Bart

Op do 30 jan. 2025 23:03 schreef Joseph Schmidt <glua...@gmail.com>:

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