GMAIL - emails being sent for no reason.... Google Classroom?

[Koldov]

We don't use GMAIL here for our students or teachers and yet I have noticed a decent amount of mail on the dashboard.

 

Digging a bit deeper most were rejected due to our rules, so in that respect it is working as expected.

 

Occasionally some were spam, a few were to do with apps that the users had signed up for and one or two were not sent (rejected - again due to our rules), there was also some sort of phishing attempt that was rate limited - hundreds of email addresses (not actual users, but random list generated first half of address then @OURDOMAIN).

 

However, looking through the emails that were sent, by far the majority (thousands) in the email log search were as follows:

 

joebloggs@ourdomain added a comment to 3D shapes

joebloggs@ourdomain submitted 'what is electricity'

 

mostly from students (automatically generated maybe) about their homework etc...

 

Most of these come from '@chime-notifications.bounces.google.com'.

 

Is there anywhere I can turn of these notifications emails?

Edited April 12, 2021 by Koldov
Thread title changed to include 'Classroom' for more engagement...

[TechMonkey]

Something must be setup somewhere for emails to be attempted to be routed to or sent from Gmail. I just checked our admin console and there is nothing there at all.

 

Is Gmail set as Off for everyone?

[Koldov]

GMail is on at the 'domain' level but off for the 'students' OU.

 

It would appear that none of the emails are being delivered and are rejected (REJECTED: Your email has been rejected because it violates school policy).

 

In that regard I guess it's nothing to worry about, but for reporting and safeguarding I would like to be able to look at the dashboard or log and see very minimal activity (and once drilled down into the logs see those one or two failed spam events or app sign-ups) not thousands a day.

 

The 'sender' appears to be '@chime-notifications.bounces.google.com' (or is that mail to tell the user it has failed?) and not an actual user as such (possibly why it is rejected as I'm sure it would have been set to domain only), so I wonder if there is something in 'Classroom' where there is an option to 'notify teacher' or something?

 

Unfortunately I don't use it so I don't know...

Edited April 12, 2021 by Koldov

[TechMonkey]

I'd turn it off at the domain level. Though I'm not sure if there would be any other fragments left anywhere.

EDIT: just looked at mine again and in the GMail options there is an option to add hosts so maybe check that is clear also?

[fiza]

Do you use Google Classroom? These sound like notifications from Google Classroom.

[Koldov]

I'd turn it off at the domain level. Though I'm not sure if there would be any other fragments left anywhere.

EDIT: just looked at mine again and in the GMail options there is an option to add hosts so maybe check that is clear also?

 

Hosts is clear, but we have enabled email for teachers and admin (just in case - we didn't know what we were doing in the beginning - and it's not much better now).

 

We do have it set to 'internal mail (domain only though)'...

 

 

Do you use Google Classroom? These sound like notifications from Google Classroom.

 

Yes, I'm pretty sure they are absolutely from Google Classroom, so I don't think messing about with GMail options is going to help (unless turning it off for everybody nukes the whole system).

 

They appear to be 'automatic system generated' emails, yes they are being rejected by other GMail rules but it does seem they 'exist' albeit briefly and appear on our 'dashboard' and in the logs...

 

Doing a bit of research, it seems you can turn off receiving different types of notifications such as emails (individually via each teacher/class settings), but I'm not sure this will stop them being generated and sent... if that makes sense?

[Koldov]

I mean this is the graph for a period when it was being used for homeschooling...

 

 

Obviously they are all being rejected, but that's a lot of static to be trawling through in the logs.

 

I can't go that far back in the 'Email Log Search' but judging by what is in there currently it is all 'Classroom' notification emails.

[TechMonkey]

If you are not using GMail at all, I would turn it off. I would lay money on it being because you have it turned on for Staff, services are set to use GMail for emails by default, or by having it on it has generated some DNS or Internal pointers.

[Koldov]

If you are not using GMail at all, I would turn it off.

 

Yes, I guess as we aren't using it I suppose I could turn it off for everybody and see if it makes a difference.

 

Thing is, as we only really use 'Classroom' for distance learning in lockdown so I'm not sure if I will see anymore emails going through anyway.

 

Would just liked to have found a way to stop it sending email notifications from the Admin console... although thinking about it logically it's not really for the admin to turn off!

 

Pity the teacher who uses GMail and has notifications on, we only have a few hundred children so to generate over 6k emails a day it must be emailing notifications for every single action by every child in Classroom... who in Google thought that was a good idea?

 

It's hard enough to drill down into email usage without having to wade through thousands of lines of jobloggs submitted homework. joebloggs submitted homework late, joebloggs commented on homework....