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Gmail marking email from me as spam

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Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#361

Post by natch »

lonelappde wrote: post #360
gm wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

Why don't you build your solution and show it to HN and Google or Microsoft? I'm sure someone at a big company would convince an exec to pay you at least $10M for your improved spam filter.

Not at Google. The Google one is so bad there’s pretty much no explanation I can think of for it other than nepotism. Which means it isn’t getting displaced any time soon.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#362

Post by natch »

mav3rick wrote: post #211
natch wrote: post #165

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…

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".

Solving it perfectly is very hard, you are right on that.

But solving it better than Google has? Not hard at all. A high school programming class could do it better.

Unlike other parts of Google, which are doing amazing things like beating human masters at Go, something is seriously fishy in the spam filter tool department.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#363

Post by natch »

mav3rick wrote: post #211
natch wrote: post #165

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…

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".

Scale is Google’s go-to excuse for some things but in this case it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Having in my sent mail and inbox a traceable record of me, authenticated with a Google login, subscribing to a mailing list and then getting a subscription request acknowledgment back and then sending a further confirmation email, should be enough to tell the spam system that yes dammit I am interested in mail from this list and it is not to be considered spam, assuming it is on topic (a determination that is like ML 101 first quarter stuff and has been for some time, even across languages, like going back to, say, Damashek). That heuristic is so simply basic that I would be embarrassed for Google if I had to explain it to them. And yet there it is. Just one of many possible examples of how lame their spam filtering system is.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#364

Post by 8bitsrule »

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…

> I can't have it both ways. I would not be on Gmail if it was like yahoo.

I still use Yahoo e-mail for chit-chat (I doubt that it's less secure). Recently it started spam-boxing e-mails from a person I've corresponded with for years (without trouble). Since I have them forwarded to T-Bird, it does mean I have to visit Yahoo more often.

Maybe that's the goal?

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#365

Post by ebcode »

dajonker wrote: post #46

Email is not the same it has been for years/decades. These days you need to use all the security tools available, most notably TLS and DKIM, set a strict DMARC policy, and don't do anything unexpected such as sending lots of emails out of the blue. Email is all about reputation: it can take a lot of effort to build trust, but just one bad move and it's all gone.

> Email is all about reputation: it can take a lot of effort to build trust, but just one bad move and it's all gone.

In my experience, the email blacklists and filters are somewhat forgiving. I accidentally configured my email server as an open relay (didn't know what that was at the time), and for a brief period was sending a not insignificant percentage of spam worldwide.

Once I discovered my mistake and corrected the issue, I was able to submit domain removal requests to the various blacklists, or just wait for my domain to fall off the radar. I expected it to be worse, and was pleasantly surprised to find that this kind of "forgiveness" is really an industry standard.

But then, that was just one bad move. I'm not so sure about two bad moves, and I'd rather not find out.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#366

Post by dang »

cnst wrote: post #341
LeonM wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by your username I don't expect you to share the domain name here, but if you need a second opinion, send me a PM and I'll analyse the domain for you. There is usually some misconfiguration somewhere that goes overlooked. Happens to the best of us :-)

If this is the kind of technical advice you provide, which merely assumes that Google can do no wrong, and the user on the other end is incapable of pressing a button on a yet another website that checks email configuration, merely to confirm that the configuration of their mail server is not in any way incorrect, then it's not a surprise that you get downvoted into oblivion, according to your own statement earlier i…

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#367

Post by dang »

mav3rick wrote: post #354
cnst wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the kind of technical advice you provide, which merely assumes that Google can do no wrong, and the user on the other end is incapable of pressing a button on a yet another website that checks email configuration, merely to confirm that the configuration of their mail server is not in any way incorrect, then it's not a surprise that you get downvoted into oblivion, according to your own statement earlier i…

I can't provide any technical advice unless the op shows their config. I am downvoted because this community is already biased thinking Google must be at fault and the configuration can't be wrong at all ?.

You were surely downvoted for posting unsubstantive and bilious comments, which don't belong here.

Please make your substantive points more thoughtfully.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#368

Post by user32556 »

A few weeks ago, we organized a competition and we asked the top 3 participants to send us their solution to our gmail. Two were using their own domains (.io and .su) and one was using Gmail. The two with their own domains just got in the spam folder, and without surprise that Gmail one survived.

"If you want to set up your own email domain rather than using Gmail, good luck."

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#369

Post by tambre »

Scramblejams wrote: post #321
tambre wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually are looking for advice, then in descending importance order: * Enforce a DMARC policy instead of explicitly disabling it. * Enforce a strict SPF policy instead of ~all. * Send over IPv6. Usually stricter rules are applied and not-up-to-snuff emails are rejected at the SMTP level. * Your provider hosts lots of spammers for their size. Consider switching. * Enable MTA-STS. The first two I'd consider obv…

Thanks for giving it a look! Enforcing DMARC and strict SPF tend to screw up mailing lists and forwarding. I don't see how I can enable them without causing a lot of other problems for me and my users. No arguments about my provider. Any tips on how to select a better one? I'm thinking someone who adds some friction to unblocking outbound port 25, e.g. Vultr, might be better.

DMARC shouldn't be an issue for mailing lists, as long as one of DKIM/SPF passes. Are you seeing reports of both DKIM and SPF failing for mailing lists you use?

Properly configured mailing lists shouldn't modify contents of emails causing DKIM to fail.

I personally use Linode and would recommend them. But basically any tier 1/2 provider, i.e. too big/popular to block, will do. However, I would avoid DigitalOcean per my experience due to them completely blocking SMTP on IPv6 in addition to badly implemented IPv6 support and seemingly subpar support.

Re: Gmail marking email from me as spam

#370

Post by mav3rick »

natch wrote: post #362
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".

Solving it perfectly is very hard, you are right on that. But solving it better than Google has? Not hard at all. A high school programming class could do it better. Unlike other parts of Google, which are doing amazing things like beating human masters at Go, something is seriously fishy in the spam filter tool department.

If it was this easy, please write your own ?
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