Gmail marking email from me as spam • Hacker News Board

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#291

Post by gothroach » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 5:53 PM 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've run my own personal email for around 20 years at this point using the same IP address, and have set up all the bells and whistles (SPF, DKIM) over the years as they became in vogue. To my knowledge, I haven't had any issues with getting caught up in Google's or MS's spam filters, but I have to wonder if that's simply because I don't send a lot of messages and for the most part reply to emails rather than being the initiator of a conversation.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#292

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #199

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…

I'm not defending gmail, but I will say that some users simply suck (unintentionally). I bet some of your peers are just hitting the spam button instead of simply deleting the email, generating a bad reputation for the sender. I've seen this with my SaaS. We ONLY send transactional emails like purchase receipts and login links (using postmark). We're very intentional about not sending anything remotely resembling mar…

You should be able to set a filter to catch these before they get spammed out of things you want to receive aren't getting your inbox.

Also, a lot of users do perceive receipts as spam.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#293

Post by massaman_yams » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

tomlong wrote: post #136

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…

Brandon Long, is as ever, a helpful and respectful voice of reason on the sometimes fractious Mailop list

Sometimes fractious? Ha. There's so many cranks there that 95% of the messages are not worth reading, even if most are well-intentioned.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#294

Post by winkeltripel » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

sdan wrote: post #8

Google's making us play by their rules: 1. Our ML models see that your emails spam? You're spam. 2. You're using Tor or a VPN? Here's 10 reCaptcha's. 3. Don't use Google Webmaster or use AMPs? Good luck finding your page on the 1st page. 4. Youtube video includes education hacking tutorials? Demonetized. Obviously some alternatives are moving to Fastmail and using Duck Duck Go, but we need Google to stop this "my way…

> before they become a huge conglomerate

too late?

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#295

Post by pera » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

Twisell wrote: post #140

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…

I don't think OP stop replying, he seems pretty active on another thread of the same mailing list concerning another big player (MSFT) filtering out some messages for some reasons. https://www.mail-archive.com/mailop@mailop.org/msg09066.html As a hobbit* , I'm actually pretty happy this whole conversation is starting to gain more traction. My domain is always green on every test I could run (mailtester.com & all) yet…

Check your neighborhood :) you can use Talos to see the reputation of your IP block and ASN:

https://talosintelligence.com/reputation_center/lookup

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#296

Post by oarabbus_ » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

sdan wrote: post #8

Google's making us play by their rules: 1. Our ML models see that your emails spam? You're spam. 2. You're using Tor or a VPN? Here's 10 reCaptcha's. 3. Don't use Google Webmaster or use AMPs? Good luck finding your page on the 1st page. 4. Youtube video includes education hacking tutorials? Demonetized. Obviously some alternatives are moving to Fastmail and using Duck Duck Go, but we need Google to stop this "my way…

>Obviously some alternatives are moving to Fastmail and using Duck Duck Go, but we need Google to stop this "my way or you don't exist" attitude before they become a huge conglomerate which controls major aspects of many people's lives (which they arguably already do) and leaves everyone (like small companies that don't use Google or just regular people who don't want a Google account) separated from the world they're forming.

This ship sailed years ago, though.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#297

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

blackhaz wrote: post #117

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…

But it's not about how good the Google's ML models are, you're missing the point! It's about Google being the huge many-headed monster with tentacles. You can't use part of Google service without being entangled in their new protocols, the way they code and build things, run operating systems or servers, browse the web, and so on. You have to run your business the Google way now. The most scary part of this - the mon…

Not so much "deaf" as "huge." They're supporting the needs of a billion users with sub-50,000 engineers. Anything that effects only 1 user can't pull priority from the needs of the many. Anything that effects only 10, 100, 1000 users, etc.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#298

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

gm wrote: post #252

mav3rick wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand the scale of this problem. It's such a fad to "fire" someone because you think "it's an easy problem".

I think it should suffice to know that after one repeatedly trains the google spam filter with "report not spam" and "mark as spam", it should learn that well enough, no? As an example: Some dumb ass Verizon customer gave them my email address as their own. I got a ton of communications from Verizon that I could not turn off (bill past due, thank you for you promise to pay, and all sorts of really annoying messages).…

> Google is failing at a level where even I could program it better

You should do so. You can set up filters to hook into keywords, domain names, etc., and route to spam. If the stuff you're getting is that obvious in structure, you should be able to kill it with a handful of such filters.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#299

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #269

sdan wrote: post #8

Google's making us play by their rules: 1. Our ML models see that your emails spam? You're spam. 2. You're using Tor or a VPN? Here's 10 reCaptcha's. 3. Don't use Google Webmaster or use AMPs? Good luck finding your page on the 1st page. 4. Youtube video includes education hacking tutorials? Demonetized. Obviously some alternatives are moving to Fastmail and using Duck Duck Go, but we need Google to stop this "my way…

> but we need Google to stop this "my way or you don't exist" attitude I think that's exactly opposite. We need more competition, not forcing a private company to behave in some way that "we" (and who is "we"?) find acceptable. It's time to break them up.

Why is it necessary to break them up when the alternatives are right there?

Google can exist, and people can choose to use Bing, DDG, Fastmail, etc., right?

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#300

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #42

loose_pants wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need Google to stop this "my way or you don't exist" What about stop being so entitled? Google is offering free awesome services for very little and you’re saying these things. It’s so demoralizing. Get off your high horse.

What about stop being so entitled? Google is offering free awesome services for very little and you’re saying these things. It seems you're not getting the point. The problem is not for users of those "awesome" Google services the problem manifests itself for people sending legitimate emails from legitimate email accounts to a Google account. Google tags those as spam and refuses to deliver them, while always shiftin…

> the problem manifests itself for people sending legitimate emails from legitimate email accounts to a Google account

It's funny to me that people in this thread are complaining about Google being large enough to serve as a de-facto authority, when the only way one could solve a "legitimate emails are being blocked" problem is to have a definition of 'legitimate' that would come from... an authority.

Google is dropping the ball but I don't know what the solution would look like that isn't just "Someone else be Google now." ;)