I get spam emails in my normal inbox titled "confirmation" with a body made out entirely of images, addressed to " @aol.com" but also sent to me.
I get those but with my name.
Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
171–180 of 286 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I'd gotten out of the habit of checking my Spam folder, having trusted Gmail to get it "correct enough" for years. But I looked recently and was amazed/horrified how much legitimate email was in there, including a friend's birthday event invitation that I would otherwise have missed. 20% of what is in my "Spam" folder today is what I'd call "spam" in the classical 90s/2000s-internet sense. Obvious trash/scam st…
I receive a fair amount of legit appearing promotional email from real organizations, but organizations that I have not dealt with. In most cases the recipient appears to be a real person. In one case, I was able to verify the person is real, lives and operates a small business within a couple of hundred kilometers of where I live, and regularly frequents my city. Yet I refuse to use unsubscribe links in those cases…
I have a first.last@gmail.com and get plenty of legitimate promotional emails, one weakly-passworded credit card statement from an Indian bank each month (whose only support is an Indian phone number which I won't call), and occasional photos of "relatives" from across the world. There are about 3 or 4 people around the world with my name in various professions. I could probably do some nice identity theft if I wanted.
For the promotional stuff it's the report spam and unsubscribe button every time. I've worked in a small business that bothered to do double opt-in signups, so don't waste my time because you can't be bothered due to some vague metrics. It's spam from my POV.
For the rest it depends on my mood. If you have a noreply and it's going to take effort to reach customer service (more than an email), spam. I'm of the opinion I should be able to reply to any email and it's rude to shout at someone and then block your ears, but maybe that's old fashioned.
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#173I've seen a few more recently. Some seem to use a hack of using a List-Id: header, which may reduce the spam score.
I also have to rescue valid List mail from the spam folder though.
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#174For the last year or so I've noticed an increasing amount of my legitimate professional interactions going into my "Promotions" tab in Gmail. The effect of which has been, after discovering a few mishaps of this sort, to now regularly and meticulously go through a massive pile of "Promotions" just to make sure I haven't missed something legitimately urgent or important. Prior to Google's classification errors produci…
This HN submission is getting spam from gmail accounts, not to your gmail account.
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#175YES! I posted about this two weeks ago, one person agreed but the post never got any traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28437472 I haven't heard anything about this when I asked colleagues / IRL friends... I wonder what is going on over at Google
> I wonder what is going on over at Google
Probably a whole lot of dont-give-a-darn-about-e-mail, because it's not new and sexy, and likely doesn't drive revenue.
Also, the people who suffer from gmail spam are often non-users of gmail. I.e. neither customers of Google, nor targets of its advertising, nor sources of personal information.
Google doesn't care if is getting Gmail spam, because that's an outside entity whose existence does not benefit Google.
Plus, Google knows that Gmail is so huge, that nobody can just block all of Gmail. Unlike some small-time mail domain, they do not feel any risk that, if they don't take action to combat spam, they will be blocked as a whole.
If a small-time domain's machine gets listed in some DNS black-hole lists or other dynamic anti-spam databases, they have to care, or they don't get to send mail. It's a dire situation to which they have to respond.
If a Google machine gets listed in these databases, Google doesn't have to care. Anyone actually blocking Gmail machines is essentially just cutting themselves off from a huge e-mail communication hub. It's almost as if that operator were blacklisting itself.
Small fry: OK, that does it, I shall not receive Gmail!
Google: Hahaha; say bye bye to more than half your contacts, then!
In other words, Google knows that e-mail operators who are using blacklists have to pretty much whitelist Gmail servers, and so it doesn't care about blacklists.
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#176I have been getting them daily and just got one like you mentioned 13 minutes ago.
Most are German, but now a lot of non-english letter based ones in last few days.
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#177I have exactly the opposite problem: tons of legitimate email is getting flagged as Spam by GMail. It's now happening regularly with emails from people in my contacts with whom I regularly exchange messages . Mind-boggling. I know spam filtering is a hard problem, but these are just obvious misses.
Yes. It's so bad that I find Google's own messages like Google Alerts ending up in my Spam folder. You'd think they'd whitelist their own emails.
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#178Yup, been marking them as SPAM and reporting to SpamCop
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#179Yes, it's getting more common.
Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?
#180For the last year or so I've noticed an increasing amount of my legitimate professional interactions going into my "Promotions" tab in Gmail. The effect of which has been, after discovering a few mishaps of this sort, to now regularly and meticulously go through a massive pile of "Promotions" just to make sure I haven't missed something legitimately urgent or important. Prior to Google's classification errors produci…
This also happened to me. A very important email was put under the promotions. Usually I just kept the gmail tab open and didn't check my phone. Fortunately for me, I noticed this mail on my phone when I was clearing the unread status.
At the same time, all sorts of ads fall into my inbox repeatedly, even I deliberately mark them as spam or junk.
( Being cautious, I just checked the promotions again. And there is another important email lying. WTF!)