Ah, this is why I've been receiving a bunch of very obvious spam/scam mails in my inbox.
I got a classic and obvious 419 scam email today. Kind of felt like I'd gone back to a simpler time.
Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
11–20 of 131 posts
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#12Yes, my Gmail inbox is full of regular senders being flagged as "possibly unsafe" and I need to click a button "Looks Safe" to accept them. They are not being spamboxed, but they are definitely flagged. Even official communications from the USPS!
The reason given is that "Gmail hasn't scanned this message", so I suppose the scanners are unavailable/disabled for the time being.
They should also be tagged as "Important" but they are not. I believe this is a heuristic-based designation, and it has not been working too great lately. My most important mail is coming through as "unimportant".
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#13Any ideas on how to deal with stopping spam emails in general, scripts/tools etc?
Step zero. Never disclose your email address to anyone.
This is very easy and straightforward. I operate 6 Gmail accounts, and three are "alts" where I've basically never given the address out to anyone at all, and they receive zero spam, zero UCE, zero marketing emails.
Of course, on my "main" I've disclosed the address to many entities and I use it for sign-in and shipping and many things. And yes, I do receive spam and scam emails there, but wcyd?
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#14I feel like things have been going on a little bit longer than this indicates.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#15Any ideas on how to deal with stopping spam emails in general, scripts/tools etc?
Step zero. Never disclose your email address to anyone. This is very easy and straightforward. I operate 6 Gmail accounts, and three are "alts" where I've basically never given the address out to anyone at all, and they receive zero spam, zero UCE, zero marketing emails. Of course, on my "main" I've disclosed the address to many entities and I use it for sign-in and shipping and many things. And yes, I do receive spa…
I feel like an easier solution to having six different email addresses is to use Gmail aliases - I've caught a few less-than-honest companies either selling my email address, or been breached without disclosing such, simply by using an alias along the lines of '+service_name'. If any alias starts to receive spam you can setup rules to automatically delete everything that comes in with that. You also get the added benefit of significantly easier and more accurate search.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#16Any ideas on how to deal with stopping spam emails in general, scripts/tools etc?
I use Gmail since the beta (I got invite from a googler) and I don't remember when they began adding spam control but in my experience the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well: I very rarely need to add a custom filter.
My email, over two decades+ (2004?), hasn't been in a many public leaks (only one on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ ) but obviously has made its way to various spammy actors but thankfully nearly everything is caught by GMail's spam filter.
If anything I'd say GMail's spam filter works too well: I get more legit emails in my spam folder than spam in my regular inbox. As in: one in a rare while vs about zero spam in my regular inbox.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#17Any ideas on how to deal with stopping spam emails in general, scripts/tools etc?
Step zero. Never disclose your email address to anyone. This is very easy and straightforward. I operate 6 Gmail accounts, and three are "alts" where I've basically never given the address out to anyone at all, and they receive zero spam, zero UCE, zero marketing emails. Of course, on my "main" I've disclosed the address to many entities and I use it for sign-in and shipping and many things. And yes, I do receive spa…
I might be missing something, but if you’ve never given them out to anyone at all, then what’s the point?
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Step zero. Never disclose your email address to anyone. This is very easy and straightforward. I operate 6 Gmail accounts, and three are "alts" where I've basically never given the address out to anyone at all, and they receive zero spam, zero UCE, zero marketing emails. Of course, on my "main" I've disclosed the address to many entities and I use it for sign-in and shipping and many things. And yes, I do receive spa…
I feel like an easier solution to having six different email addresses is to use Gmail aliases - I've caught a few less-than-honest companies either selling my email address, or been breached without disclosing such, simply by using an alias along the lines of '+ service_name '. If any alias starts to receive spam you can setup rules to automatically delete everything that comes in with that. You also get the added b…
I don't think y'all understand why I have separate Google accounts.
I use them for different purposes. They are "role accounts" for projects I am doing, such as geneaology and astronomy.
In order to use YouTube sanely, and store different stuff in Drive, I separate them into unique accounts. I use those accounts for specific things, and my YouTube subscriptions, playlists, etc. are tailored for each role, for example.
This is not about email at all. Obviously, I can access all those email accounts through the one app on my smartphone or the one PWA on my Chromebook. They are easily manageable but separate.
I also run 3 Outlook/Microsoft accounts, and for the same reason. (One of them is my academic account from community college, and the other two are personal.)
I don't need to give out email addresses for the "role accounts" except where I "Sign In With Google" to various services. So I don't really send/receive email from them at all, except where I'm sharing links or documents with myself (the best way to do this cross-account is still by using email, oftentimes.)
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#19I have been receiving a large number of spam emails in my "Important and Unread" areas which is anomalous. I was wondering exactly why and this helps. thanks!
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#20Two related issues not mentioned yet:
Its really slow. Too slow to use 2FA or in some cases, verify email addresses or recover passwords.
Most people can't handle a notification on their watch every minute, or several spam every five minutes, so "large numbers of people" are shutting off notifications on their phones. And human nature being what it is, they're not going to be turned back on again. So the era of getting a notification when you get an email is coming to a close. "Important Immediate Attention Stuff" moved to text messages a long time ago anyway, at least for me. The list of technologies you can no longer reach me on, always increases over time...