I'm having the exact opposite issue. 30+ emails today that clearly belong in spam (fake package delivery, "failed payment for your cloud subscription", etc) have landed in my inbox.
Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
81–90 of 131 posts
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. Can’t ignore the messages when they’re all in one place, which makes hitting unsubscribe easier.
> which makes hitting unsubscribe easier. wow, you really do that? Doesn't that just prove that the email address is read by a human and then promoted for even further SPAM to be delivered?
It works with most real companies. If you signed up for it, you can generally unsubscribe from it. It’s easy to do by mistake, and some default to yes with no option during sign up.
I don’t care about whatever new shows Netflix has. Unsubscribe.
I don’t care about my DNS registrar having a sale. Unsubscribe.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#83It's a great reminder of how good this feature is that we take for granted. I think this outage has actually improved my appreciation for Gmail (a service I normally only complain about).
Yeah i have fantasies of having my own email server and stuff but the spam detection is probably the 3rd thing that would have me crawling back
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#84It's a great reminder of how good this feature is that we take for granted. I think this outage has actually improved my appreciation for Gmail (a service I normally only complain about).
Yeah i have fantasies of having my own email server and stuff but the spam detection is probably the 3rd thing that would have me crawling back
I'm running my own mail server for longer than I'd like to admit, but not for my critical/key email addresses. Looking at the spam filtering I get in Gmail and knowing my endless fights with spamassassin and DSBLs I know I could never achieve that.
The only upside of having an actual mail server is the ability to say "this is incorrect, no one ever tried to send an email to this address/from this IP" or custom 55x messages.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#85Briefly, this morning, I had the opposite effect happen to my Gmail inbox in which things that would normally land in the social and updates folders ended up in my primary folder. I don't know which I'd be more freaked out by: a broken Gmail spam filter or 18 inches of snow.
Yes, me as well. Thought I had mistakenly changed something but I hadn't. Have also noticed that ad blockers stopped working last week; now as well as the wrong routing in Gmail, that casting to Chromecast from Chrome stopped working today.
Good job Google!
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#86Thank goodness. My Gmail address is my first name so I typically get many hundreds of spam’s a day which are almost all caught. Dozens in my inbox today so I figured something was up. Glad it’s not that the spam pedlars have suddenly gotten clever.
> My Gmail address is my first name
It's good to be you! My wife and I both have 3-letter first names so we never had that option, despite getting in on the Gmail beta 20+ years ago.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#87It's a great reminder of how good this feature is that we take for granted. I think this outage has actually improved my appreciation for Gmail (a service I normally only complain about).
Yeah i have fantasies of having my own email server and stuff but the spam detection is probably the 3rd thing that would have me crawling back
I have run my own mail server for years and I rarely see spam. I'm running a classic Bayesian filter as outlined in the legendary PG post "A Plan For Spam" and it works very well. I don't really get all the fuss about this issue. When I do see a piece of unclassified spam I simply classify it and continue. For me this is a far better tradeoff than having all my most private mail on some bigcorp server where any nerd can rifle through it.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently had a "role" Google account terminated because I was (paraphrasing) "violating Google policies" by having multiple accounts. I didn't know they were sticklers about that. (I don't much care because the account was just used for interacting with somebody else's Google-hosted junk but, if I had been using it for something serious, I have probably been frustrated.)
There is no way, no possible way that Google prohibits the use of multiple accounts. They do not. They cannot. I just asked Gemini and I checked the actual TOS. It does not, in any way, prohibit these uses. In fact, this is plainly evident by the way they give you tools to operate them in a systematic way. You can add multiple accounts to a single Android "user". You can add them to a single Google Chromebook account…
Apparently my account "violated TOS" (though I don't see how). The other account was used to interact with a Google Workspace in 2016, and hasn't been used since. I don't particularly care to waste mental energy trying to figure out the methodology behind Google's decision here.
This happening seemed kinda sketchy to me (because I've heard of people having several Google accounts) but, like I said, I didn't really care too much.
Anyway, here's how it went down:
In 2016 I was working w/ a Customer who was using some Google product (I believe Workspace) and I have to have a Google account to interact w/ it. Because I didn't care for them to see my "personal" Google account I make this one-off account.
This account is a Google account w/o Gmail (i.e. the username is not "@gmail.com"). That may be a factor.
Over the years I'd receive notifications that Google was going to delete the account for inactivity. I'd logon again to keep it active.
On 2026-01-12 I got a notification that my old "role" Google account was going to be deleted for being inactive for two years. I decided I wanted to keep it so I attempted to logon. The password in my vault didn't work. I found that perplexing, so I did a "Forgot password" workflow. As part of that I was offered an SMS option. I used the telephone number I use for my main Google account. For sure they "know" I'm the same operator of both accounts.
I don't believe somebody guessed the password on this account and was using it because (a) I was notified it was inactive, and (b) the password was a random 16 character alphanumeric string used only for this account. Something was clearly sketchy about the password being "wrong", though.
I completed the "Forgot password" workflow on the "role" account and got access. I decided to enable TOTP and my "real" Gmail account as the recovery contact. Everything seemed fine.
On 2026-01-13 I received a message as-follows:
> From: Google
> To: MyUsername@NotGmail.example.com
> Subject: Your Google Account has been disabled
> It looks like this account was created or used with multiple other accounts to violate Google's policies. The account might have been created by a computer program or bot.
> If you think your account was disabled by mistake, submit an appeal as soon as possible.
> Disabled accounts are eventually deleted. You’ll need to submit an appeal soon to keep your emails, contacts, photos, and other data saved in your Google Account.
> If you live in the European Union (EU) or are an EU citizen, there may be additional resolution options available to you.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. Can’t ignore the messages when they’re all in one place, which makes hitting unsubscribe easier.
> which makes hitting unsubscribe easier. wow, you really do that? Doesn't that just prove that the email address is read by a human and then promoted for even further SPAM to be delivered?
Google postmaster notices when you hit the one-click unsubscribe button and severely punishes senders that continue to send. It's worth using as long as you understand that some senders will never allow you to sign up again.
Re: Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
#90I don't understand why spam detection is so complicated. I can tell with high accuracy if an email is spam just by the subject line. I'd think even basic ML could do this very reliably you don't need a bleeding-edge LLM to do this. Phishing is tricker because it can be very deceptive especially if you're being targeted specifically. But also usually pretty obvious.
ORLY? * Are you available? * Paul, can we have a zoom meeting with you on Monday? * Assistance for donation * Greetings!!! * some ideas for you * Refund request * Somethings not working * Manuel Montoya for roof work contractor * proposals for print * Invite Connection Half of the above are actual spam, half are not. Tell me which is which ...
I agree with you but for the love of the game, these are the ones I'm guessing are spam:
* Paul, can we have a zoom meeting with you on Monday?
* Assistance for donation
* Greetings!!!
* Invite Connection
* Refund request