Gmail Auto-Complete Feature Malfunctioning for Some Users

You may want to be a bit careful when sending out emails using Gmail for the time being. The problem isn't affecting all users of Google's popular mail client (no problems to report from this correspondent), but there have been complaints coming in over Twitter and other forums of users accidentally and embarrassingly sending emails to the wrong people.

Users have complained that Gmail's auto-complete feature is showing a tendency to suggest less frequently mailed contacts when the first letter is typed in the 'To' field. A lot of people who are used to typing quickly and sending mails to frequent contacts are accidentally sending mails to people they may not have communicated with in a while. A lot of the complaints have users sending embarrassing or confidential information to the wrong people.

A simple fix to this problem would be to watch what you type, spend an extra couple of seconds on keeping your eyes on the screen and double-check all the fields before you actually hit the 'send' button, as should be the case with any potentially sensitive information that you send through Google's email service.

The Gmail team has tweeted that they are aware of an issue with auto-complete problem and are investigating. This was followed by another tweet early this morning mentioning that the issue has been identified and a fix is being worked on.

As of now the problem is sporadic, but it should be fixed soon and Gmail is expected to be back to optimal functionality in the coming hours.