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Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

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Re: Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

#31

Post by temp_account_32 »

moosedev wrote: post #3

Something radically changed for me 7-10 days ago, wherein certain non-spam but clearly not-inbox-worthy emails are now consistently hitting the Inbox, often with the "Important according to Google magic" flag set. Examples: A clearly promotional email from a manufacturer announcing new products, a special offer from a hotel I stayed at once 7 years ago, every single breaking news email from the Seattle Times . FWIW,…

I've had the exact same experience in the past few days, and often the attachments contain malware

Re: Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

#33

Post by cmeacham98 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #18
shortcake27 wrote: post #4

Yeah I’ve been getting loads of spam hitting my inbox. It’s actually hilarious, email addresses such as “whhdjsjwjsjbxjejwjabdjeje@mail.ru” with the subject “Free Yeti Hopper” and yet Google can’t identify it as spam. The good news is that in my case, there are patterns I can filter. I’ve set up about 30 filters so far to automatically delete such emails. Works great. I recommend using exact matching (double quotes)…

Can you pls explain how you filter? In my experience the sender whhdjsjwjsjbxjejwjabdjeje@mail.ru Is never the same. Not the domain. Not the sender. How do you filter a sender that keeps changing into random characters, if the subject or content is also changing?

They're not filtering based on sender, they're filtering based on words/phrases in the spam itself that do not appear in legit email.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

#34

Post by shortcake27 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #18
shortcake27 wrote: post #4

Yeah I’ve been getting loads of spam hitting my inbox. It’s actually hilarious, email addresses such as “whhdjsjwjsjbxjejwjabdjeje@mail.ru” with the subject “Free Yeti Hopper” and yet Google can’t identify it as spam. The good news is that in my case, there are patterns I can filter. I’ve set up about 30 filters so far to automatically delete such emails. Works great. I recommend using exact matching (double quotes)…

Can you pls explain how you filter? In my experience the sender whhdjsjwjsjbxjejwjabdjeje@mail.ru Is never the same. Not the domain. Not the sender. How do you filter a sender that keeps changing into random characters, if the subject or content is also changing?

I just meant it's funny Gmail can't identify an email address where the spammer has just mashed the keyboard. Usually there's some kind of pattern in the senders name, subject, or content, and you can match on multiple fields. For example, here's one of my filters:

  from:("Dicks sporting goods"|DicksSportingGoods|"Dicks SportingGoods") (yeti|makita)

Re: Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

#35

Post by khaki54 »

It seems like they string together a whole bunch of evasions.

1. insert a bunch of antispam headers like they've been "ok'd" by microsoft

2. Large sections of the decoded message are in french, sometimes even if the message appears to be russian

3. They pass DKIM

4. All the links use URL shorteners, but that contain unencoded special characters that probably break any attempt at following the links

5. I think this is the key one: they seem to base64 encode sections of the emails, but mark them as hex. So perhaps the browser / mail client can render despite the error but the spam detector has a more strict interpretation and it just looks like junk and gives up.

6. Some of these you can't actually even filter against because the searchable text (pre decode) is near minimal and there is nothing to key off of.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

#36

Post by pifm_guy »

khaki54 wrote: post #35

It seems like they string together a whole bunch of evasions. 1. insert a bunch of antispam headers like they've been "ok'd" by microsoft 2. Large sections of the decoded message are in french, sometimes even if the message appears to be russian 3. They pass DKIM 4. All the links use URL shorteners, but that contain unencoded special characters that probably break any attempt at following the links 5. I think this is…

All of those things look pretty 'fixable' in the game of cat and mouse ...

Re: Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

#37

Post by pifm_guy »

shortcake27 wrote: post #4

Yeah I’ve been getting loads of spam hitting my inbox. It’s actually hilarious, email addresses such as “whhdjsjwjsjbxjejwjabdjeje@mail.ru” with the subject “Free Yeti Hopper” and yet Google can’t identify it as spam. The good news is that in my case, there are patterns I can filter. I’ve set up about 30 filters so far to automatically delete such emails. Works great. I recommend using exact matching (double quotes)…

I just filtered for the word yeti.

I don't want a yeti hopper...

Re: Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

#39

Post by abnercoimbre »

Jeremy1026 wrote: post #32

We’re having the opposite problem. Our confirmation emails are getting marked as spam, despite them very much not being spam, nor having their content change over the last few years.

This happens with our indie conference [0] every year! It's so frustrating! Our domain passes all DKIM and SPF record checks. If you inspect the email headers it's all valid.

Our stuff gets sent to Gmail spam and the business suffers for it.

[0] https://handmade-seattle.com

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