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Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

#201

Post by nikau »

dfdz wrote: post #181
lunatuna wrote: post #140

I have two accounts with google, one is personal and the other is through work. My personal account is pretty clean and rarely does anything get through that shouldn't. Occasionally I find something in the spam filter that shouldn't be there, usually password resets. My work account is seeing a big increase in "professional" spam. "Hey Guy, did you see my last email I sent . . .", "Hey Guy, we are the top network sec…

I’ve also been getting subtle professional spam consisting of very short emails, something like: from: kate.random.but.reasonable.name38 @ gmail . com Sorry for the delay, here is my email. Best, Kate Sometimes they are more obviously spam, but other times it seems nearly impossible for a spam filter to stop, like the example I provided.

I've gotten those, assume they are to try and train gmail to think they aren't spammers for future spam messages.

Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

#202

Post by User23 »

natch wrote: post #160
encoderer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You live in a different universe than I do. Fascinating. In my world, spam was a true problem that was killing email. Truly killing it. You would have to create a new address every 6 months to stay ahead of the spam and have a functioning inbox. Very different world. Gmail fixed that. And for me, there have been issues from time to time and in fact i am getting this very spam myself, but gmail permanently stopped the…

>Gmail fixed that. Hardly. They didn't invent the tech. And they didn't perfect it. They haven't even tried. The evidence is in my Spam folder. I mean they mark messages they themselves originate as dangerous spam. "Dangerous" being their word, not mine. Screenshot from within the last hour: https://imgur.com/IjQUGaY I was in that earlier world too. They papered the problem over, a little. But no, they didn't fix it.

I really want an inbox where i never see what anyone wrote if they don’t pay me the current price of a first class letter.

Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

#203

Post by jazzyjackson »

jimmaswell wrote: post #154

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.

Me too. I wonder if having another email account "forwarding" to my address manages to sneak around the spam filter.

Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

#204

Post by nikau »

eh9 wrote: post #41

I’ve honestly been wondering if IT has started testing my personal email account to make sure I don’t fall for fishing scams.

Multiple previous companies I've worked for have done phishing tests run by 3rd parties.

Fortunately they typically set a "X-phishing-testing" type header so you can make a rule to get rid of them automatically.

Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

#206

Post by dahart »

nikau wrote: post #200
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #21

For 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…

The only reliable low maintenance solution is to get your own domain with a catch all mail service. Then for every email interaction with a 3rd party you make a unique address like amazondotcom3823@yourdomain.com. You can then just add rules for each incoming mail domain to send them to a junk folder, especially if it was was a one time transaction and subsequent emails are just going to be marketing junk. It also le…

> Then for every email interaction with a 3rd party you make a unique address

Does that work for you? Have you caught many companies sharing your address?

I’ve been making unique addresses for a decade, and it has been a complete failure. I haven’t caught any companies sharing them, and it hasn’t stopped spam in the slightest. I’m not sure where spammers get my mail email address from, but they do, and so far I’m not seeing them get the individualized addresses, like ever.

Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

#208

Post by nikau »

dahart wrote: post #206
nikau wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reliable low maintenance solution is to get your own domain with a catch all mail service. Then for every email interaction with a 3rd party you make a unique address like amazondotcom3823@yourdomain.com. You can then just add rules for each incoming mail domain to send them to a junk folder, especially if it was was a one time transaction and subsequent emails are just going to be marketing junk. It also le…

> Then for every email interaction with a 3rd party you make a unique address Does that work for you? Have you caught many companies sharing your address? I’ve been making unique addresses for a decade, and it has been a complete failure. I haven’t caught any companies sharing them, and it hasn’t stopped spam in the slightest. I’m not sure where spammers get my mail email address from, but they do, and so far I’m not…

Yep I've noticed a few, most of the breaches were disclosed to the public which is good. I've stopped using those services so I've just send them straight to trash now as they get non stop spam.

Before setting up a catch all domain I had 3 distinct email addresses I used as high/medium/low priority which helped, but its much simpler with the catch all domain as it goes into the same inbox, just with different "To:" addresses that you can easily filter on - I just right click in outlook and select move all mail to recipient to junk.

To be fair most of the mail I get is marketing and I could probably unsubscribe, its just easier to make a rule to filter them to junk.

Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

#209

Post by socialtopher »

moosedev wrote: post #101
jmcphers wrote: post #46

I 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.

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…

So glad I stumbled down this rabbit hole and found your comment; a fulfillment email on a Kickstarter project I backed was flagged as spam! I haven’t checked my spam folder in years, but that unfortunately changes as of today.

Re: Ask HN: Are you also getting extremely obvious spam bypassing Gmail's filters?

#210

Post by superasn »

jmcphers wrote: post #46

I 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 unbelievable that gmail would send an email to spam when it's from a person with whom i have had prior correspondence with.

Clearly shows they give more weight to things like scanning, IP reputation, etc vs common sense.

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