Dear Google Mail Team • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#21

Post by billconan » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:38 PM UTC

very funny, right after I saw this, I decided to check my spam folder just to see if anything important has been filtered out, and I saw an email sent by google marked as a spam:

this email is sent by google when logging in google account from a new machine. they tag their own email as spam ...

Hi xxx, Your Google Account xxx@gmail.com was just used to sign in from Chrome on Windows.

Don't recognize this activity? Review your recently used devices now.

Why are we sending this? We take security very seriously and we want to keep you in the loop on important actions in your account. We were unable to determine whether you have used this browser or device with your account before. This can happen when you sign in for the first time on a new computer, phone or browser, when you use your browser's incognito or private browsing mode or clear your cookies, or when somebody else is accessing your account. Best,

The Google Accounts team

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#22

Post by skrebbel » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #14

I could see 20% false positives on spam for Linus equating to 0.1% of false positives across the board since I suspect the people emailing Linus are 200 times more likely to be running their own mail server than the general public.

yeah, things would be way better if everybody just used gmail!

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#23

Post by EStudley » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #14

I could see 20% false positives on spam for Linus equating to 0.1% of false positives across the board since I suspect the people emailing Linus are 200 times more likely to be running their own mail server than the general public.

I agree completely. Wasn't there a thread here a just few days ago discussing Gmail consistently marking personal mail servers as spam?

EDIT: Found it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9855030

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#24

Post by ivank » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

Funny, I used to get a ton of false positives in my gmail Spam folder (mailing lists, marketing I subscribed to, forwards from another address) but with the recent changes, I have just 1 false positive of 476 in Spam.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#25

Post by berberous » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:40 PM UTC

I had a similar issue at some point, where for a month or two, quite obvious "not spam" emails were getting caught in the filter. Nobody else on the internet seemed to be having the issue, and then it suddenly one day stopped happening again. I rarely mark emails as spam/not spam, so I don't think it was anything I did.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#26

Post by rectangletangle » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:40 PM UTC

Been having similar issues as of late. A few very important emails got classified as spam; not nearly 20%, but still enough to compromise my confidence in the system.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#27

Post by notahacker » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:40 PM UTC

cybojanek wrote: post #3

How much of this is caused by people marking mailing list emails as SPAM instead of properly unsubscribing?

Relatively little. Gmail's filtering system just seems to be increasingly erratic, so one Meetup group email ends up in the Spam filter whilst another appears with high importance. If anything, the problem appears to be the opposite: de-emphasising the sending organisation.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#28

Post by therealarmen » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:42 PM UTC

cybojanek wrote: post #3

How much of this is caused by people marking mailing list emails as SPAM instead of properly unsubscribing?

I don't blame them when the Unsubscribe link is buried at the bottom of a 8MB marketing newsletter in 4px font.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#29

Post by fweespeech » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:43 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #14

I could see 20% false positives on spam for Linus equating to 0.1% of false positives across the board since I suspect the people emailing Linus are 200 times more likely to be running their own mail server than the general public.

Yeah, its part of why I gave up on running my own mail server and signed up for Google Apps back when it was free. Its just not worth fighting the spam filters for side projects.

It was probably something along the lines of "Well consumers are what matters and they all use major services".

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#30

Post by troymc » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 9:43 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #16

I fear SMTP is going to go the way of RSS at the hands of these giant corps. Closed protocols within machine gun lined walled gardens are the future. Sorry old idealistic computer hipies, we've failed you.

What does this have to do with SMTP?