Google Talk Users Reporting Messages Being Sent to Wrong Recipients

Google Talk seems to be having some issues this morning, according to some users reporting that their messages are being delivered to the wrong recipients. Some users have reported that messages are being sent to other contacts in their contact list, while others say that messages are being sent to recipients outside of their contact list.

The issue seems to be affecting Google Talk users who haven’t upgraded to Hangouts yet, but Google isn’t really telling us what the issue is. It was first reported early this morning at around 4:30 AM ET, and three hours later, Google reported back saying that “the issue has been resolved and all services are gradually returning to normal. We will update when full service is restored.”

Currently, Google’s Apps Status Dashboard still lists Google Talk as orange, meaning that it’s not working properly and is experiencing some hiccups, so while Google says they’re currently working on a fix, we’d suggest refraining from using Google Talk until chaos is brought to order; you don’t want to send a piece of personal information to someone, only to have it send to a complete stranger.

This comes just days after Gmail went down for a large number of users for most of the day. Google initially said it only affected less than 0.1% of Gmail users, but later found out that over a quarter of all Gmail users were experiencing some type of issue with the email service. Gmail went down on Monday throughout most of the work day — probably the most inconvenient time for email to stop working. Several of us at GottaBeMobile were also experiencing issues.

It’s certainly not common for Google services to go down, but an issue like the one Google Talk is experiencing is quite interesting, and not one we see every day. It’s definitely a major bug that most likely caused a lot of confusion among users, especially those receiving the random messages that were meant for someone else.

Again, while Google says they’re working on getting it all back up and running smoothly, we’d suggest refraining from sending any Google Talk messages until the issue has been fixed, and of course, we’ll let you know when it’s back up and running so that you can continue your daily chatting activities.