Gmail marking email from me as spam • Hacker News Board

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#161

Post by roblabla » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:21 AM UTC

boudin wrote: post #114

the_pwner224 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's ML mail spam models are that way because there's too many bad actors. Email, even in 2019, still extremely valuable. Google's spam models freaking suck donkey dick. I use Fastmail but my university uses Google for email. A service we use (Piazza, class Q&A) sends notifications via email. Over the years I have gotten probably about 1k email notifications from them, and replied to a few of them too. Google h…

Yeah, gmail is really not great. I host my own email but use gmail for work. I hate everything in gmail, from the UI to the lack of really simple way to filter thing (like sieve) and to the totally random behaviour like you described. In the end, I don't really read emails on gmail anymore because it's just a huge pain. My own server has a good reputation, but it meant setting up SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc.... Where it was…

I have exactly the same problem on my personal email server, ms silently drops my email! Their server replies with OK, but the email is nowhere to be found in the recipient’s inbox. Even if the conversation was initiated by the microsoft account and I merely reply to it, the email still disappears.

I’ve got everything setup properly, all test websites come up green, and google receives my email just fine. SPF, DMARK, DKIM, PTR, HELO are all setup correctly. This isn’t an isolated problem either, the ms forums are filled with people reporting similar problems.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#162

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:22 AM UTC

irjustin wrote: post #79

I would argue in this narrow case - I would not point to nefarious undercurrents. Google's ML mail spam models are that way because there's too many bad actors. Email, even in 2019, still extremely valuable. If you can get into people's email inbox, there's still quite high conversion rate - better than clicks/videos on a pure percentage basis. Even the author wants to reach out to people in a cold fashion. As a gmai…

There is no way that Google would suddenly start to mark as spam continuations of threads that were perfectly fine between senders that have been in contact for years unless their spam filters were either seriously broken or they tweak them to cause more people to switch to gmail.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#163

Post by _wldu » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:23 AM UTC

Plain text email with no attachments is almost never marked as spam from what I have seen (unless there are several spammy keywords). I wonder why people don't use plain text email to ensure more reliable delivery of important messages?

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#164

Post by sneak » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:25 AM UTC

Avamander wrote: post #148

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's incorrect to say that running an email server requires just "a bit more work". Google basically no longer allows low volume servers to send mail. I wrote more about this here: https://www.attejuvonen.fi/dont-send-email-from-your-own-ser...

My low volume server can send mail very nicely. You can't however do your job half-assed, lack of strong SPF/TLS/DKIM isn't okay from both Google's and anti-spam perspective.

Doing all of that from a popular low-cost hosting provider like Hetzner is still insufficient to be able to send emails to new contacts. You still end up in spam.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#165

Post by natch » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:26 AM UTC

Yep the person in charge of this at Google should be fired.

And I say this as someone who has no reliance on or use of outbound email marketing whatsoever.

In other words, I’m not an embittered emailer who thinks their email is being unfairly treated as spam. I’m just a user who sometimes looks in the spam folder and is aghast at some of the false positives Google has. And yes some of the false negatives in the inbox as well.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#166

Post by sneak » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:26 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #94

cnst wrote: post #2

I'm actually having a similar problem recently, although my messages are declined at the SMTP stage, "due to the very low reputation of the sending domain", which I attribute to the output of certain cron jobs being sent towards my own Gmail account — it seems like my whole primary domain name has subsequently been blacklisted a few weeks ago: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21340460 * https://mailman.nanog.or…

The biggest problem to me with Gmails spam filter is that it is so totally hit and miss, and there seems to be no reliable way of ensuring that messages stop going to spam, even from other Gmail accounts, from people on my contact list, that I've persistently marked not spam. At this point the only reason I'm still using Gmail is sheer inertia, and it's a question of when I get time to start untangling myself from it…

Have you tried filter rules?

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#167

Post by LeonM » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #158

LeonM wrote: post #118

I run an email security/monitoring business [0], and we hear this issue with Gmail a lot, in fact: we have been bitten by it as well during the early days. The problem at hand is that it is really hard to debug situations like this. Google won't tell you why a particular email is blocked, because that information will be immediately exploited by spammers. We build our software suite because we found that mistakes in…

Its inaccurate to say that SPF, DMARC and DKIM setup this way is a "misconfiguration", It still allows anybody you are mailing to verify that email is from your mail server, and your domain, which is good enough for anti-spam purposes. Setting SPF to neutral (or softfail) and DMARC to none just ensures stuff like mailing lists forwarding mail from your domain aren't automatically marked as spam. In my experience it d…

> Setting SPF to neutral (or softfail) and DMARC to none just ensures stuff like mailing lists forwarding mail from your domain aren't automatically marked as spam.

Not exactly. DMARC inspection passes if either SPF or DKIM validation passes. A mailing list forwarding mail will break SPF, but retain the DKIM signature. So you can definitely use strict SPF and DMARC with mailing lists. In fact, retaining mailing list compatibility had priority when the DMARC RFC was drafted. See the RFC.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#168

Post by vizzah » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

Google Cloud Platform - just found in my Gmail Spam folder! =D

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#169

Post by pygy_ » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:29 AM UTC

LeonM wrote: post #152

guizb wrote: post #119

The email landscape is substantially more complex now than it was three decades ago. The poster seems to be frustrated that he is mostly getting technical explanations to his rather emotionally fueled question. He is literally phishing for an argument on the morals of a big company deciding he is a potential spammer without absolute proof. He made it clear that his opinion is that there should be a system in place at…

Rarely have I seen such concise and respectful way of describing the typical rants I see on HN way to often, bravo! I can only wish I had your writing skills. > It's insulting to the folks that are pouring their time replying to what they think is a user in need of technical assistance, only to eventually stop replying when it becomes obvious that he only replies with questions of morality and treats most answers as…

That can be annoying...

Pro tip: start by briefly acknowledging the frustration, then offer the technical solution/workaround.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#170

Post by megous » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:36 AM UTC

guizb wrote: post #119

The email landscape is substantially more complex now than it was three decades ago. The poster seems to be frustrated that he is mostly getting technical explanations to his rather emotionally fueled question. He is literally phishing for an argument on the morals of a big company deciding he is a potential spammer without absolute proof. He made it clear that his opinion is that there should be a system in place at…

It doesn't really matter if he or the gmail user initiates the conversation, in my experience. Probably the only reliable way to communicate with gmail users is to send them 5xx response right away when they first contact you, and inform them there about the situation, and that they should check spam and why, tell them to resend, and let the other messages from the same gmail address through (maybe repeat this from time to time so they will not forget to use their e-mail properly and check spam folder). Let them have some of the fucking time waste their provider causes others.

Because it's really infuriating if someone writets to you, you put time to help them with something, and their demented (did I say it's infuriating? :D - also what kind of company can't detect something is a response, if you even quote the original email, it's ridiculous) e-mail provider trashes your response.