Tell HN: Gmail can mark legit mail from google.com as spam

#1

Post by salviati » Thu, Aug 27, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

I received a legit email from googledevelopers-noreply@google.com to my gmail.com account.

It landed in the spam folder.

It happened to me already, in 2012. I filled in a form at a conference to some Google recruiter, and the follow up email they sent ended up in my spam folder.

Is it common?

For work I need to deal with gmail marking some messages from my mail server as spam, and it's not fun. I wonder how much of a priority it is for them to improve on this.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail can mark legit mail from google.com as spam

#2

Post by gwbas1c » Thu, Aug 27, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

The issue is that SPAM is defined by the recipient, not the sender. Google sends out SPAM, and people marking those emails as SPAM trained Gmail to filter out Google's SPAM.

Some examples of spam from Google:

Years ago I unsubscribed to emails from YouTube, but they just kept coming. I kept hitting that SPAM button.

I get a lot of pointless informational emails from Google that I can't unsubscribe from. I hit SPAM on all of them.

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The point to remember is that there's no magic rule to follow that makes bulk / automated email "not spam." If enough people think it's SPAM, the filters will learn to filter it out.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail can mark legit mail from google.com as spam

#3

Post by GU_AI » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 12:02 PM UTC

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