A weird Gmail bug has tons of people sending emails to the wrong contacts

JILLIAN D'ONFRO

Feb 24, 2015, 01:03 IST

Business Insider

Double-check the "To" field in the next email you send, if you're a Gmail user.

Google's mail service seems to have a bug in its auto-suggest feature that's causing a bunch of people to send messages to the wrong contacts. Instead of auto-completing to the most-used contact when people start typing a name into the "To" field, it seems to be prioritizing contacts that they communicate with less frequently.

New York City venture capitalist Fred Wilson just posted about the problem, writing that he got a bunch of emails yesterday that were clearly not meant for him, but people are complaining about it all over Twitter, too.

Complimentary Tech Event

Transform talent with learning that works

Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

Gmail autocomplete fails today? It's serving up least used rather than most used as suggestions. Already emailed the wrong people twice.
- Chloe Albanesius (@ChloeAlbanesius) February 23, 2015

has anyone else noticed that the autocomplete for addresses in gmail has gotten horrendously bad recently?
- Sam Altman (@sama) February 23, 2015

Gmail address autocomplete is totally whacked out. I keep emailing the wrong Amanda when I want to email my assistant! How to fix?!?
- Ann Miura-Ko (@annimaniac) February 23, 2015

This Gmail email address autocomplete bug is killing me. Is Google's new social strategy to have me email people I don't remember?
- Ryan Singel (@rsingel) February 23, 2015

Hey @gmail PLEASE fix autocomplete for email addresses ASAP. This is causing so much inefficiency and errors when composing emails to ppl.
- Josh Kelley (@ImSeekingOrion) February 23, 2015

The bug doesn't seem to be affecting all users (I haven't noticed anything funny, for example), but it's definitely not an isolated problem, based on the Twitter response.

Google just acknowledged the problem via its official Twitter account:

We're aware of an issue with Gmail and auto-complete and are currently investigating. Apologies for any inconvenience.
- Gmail (@gmail) February 23, 2015

Business Insider reached out to Google to get more details about what's going on, but in the meantime, take it slow!