Dear Google Mail Team • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#191

Post by reitanqild » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 4:13 AM UTC

fweespeech wrote: post #54

mordocai wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use DKIM and have Reverse DNS + SPF and gmail likes my email just fine. However, previous to setting all that up gmail would commonly mark my messages as spam. I haven't tested it in the last few days.

And the moment someone accidentally clicks the SPAM button you'll find yourself with weeks of pain on a low volume mail server. Because, as an individual, you won't qualify for their FBL service and "mysteriously" you'll have weeks of everyone saying you end up in their spam folder.

I've seen otherwise intelligent people (not native English speakers but still) use mark as spam as an alternative to delete.

This was years ago but I guess that person was not alone.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#192

Post by avinassh » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 4:15 AM UTC

Every week I usually get about ~200 spams. However last week the number was really high, some ~600. And without checking I deleted all of them. Now I am getting worried, if I deleted any legit email :(

Gmail is not my primary email, but still I do get important emails.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#193

Post by snissn » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 4:19 AM UTC

All of the emails my mom sends me are tagged as spam. I have a label that forces them to go to my inbox, but I still get a warning that gmail identified her emails as spam, and there's no clear way of over-riding it.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#194

Post by wutbrodo » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 4:31 AM UTC

e12e wrote: post #162

austenallred wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to do a quick check of my gmail; there were 151 emails in spam, and literally not one I would want in my inbox. It seems entirely likely that Google is weighting whether something comes from a private mail server very heavily, and Linus, being who he is, gets a lot of email from private servers. Not saying this isn't a problem, but it probably doesn't affect 99% of email users.

> Not saying this isn't a problem, but it probably doesn't affect 99% of email users. So, with a conservative one billion email users, only 10 million users see this problem.

This is pedantry, but 1 billion isn't all that conservative. GMail announced ~425M users in June 2012 and announced 900M a month and a half ago.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#195

Post by bigiain » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 4:38 AM UTC

Lunatic666 wrote: post #157

mordocai wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use DKIM and have Reverse DNS + SPF and gmail likes my email just fine. However, previous to setting all that up gmail would commonly mark my messages as spam. I haven't tested it in the last few days.

I had exactly the same setup, but I had to create 10 fake Gmail accounts, add the email address to the address book and flag several emails as "not spam" before it was useable. Google Mail just ignores the fact that there are private people who want to have their own mail server to be independent from Gmail.

Not "ignoring", more "actively penalizing"…

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#196

Post by bigiain » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 4:54 AM UTC

peeters wrote: post #37

rodgerd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect the people emailing Linus are 200 times more likely to be running their own mail server than the general public. Assuming non-gmail servers are spammers is a pretty epic fail.

What about using it as one of many criteria (maybe whether the email seems to contain gibberish being another, which patch files might be classified as).

Out of all the people in the world who regularly get mailed "gibberish" patchfiles, and not only fail to mark them as spam, but continue to interact regularly with the senders - do you not think it's reasonable to assume Gmail might notice Linus has been doing this for two or three decades?

I wondr what other forms of "gibberish" Gmail classifys as spam? GPG encrypted mail? Mail containing public ssl keys or CSRs? ANy foreign language not regulalrly hard in Bro-ville, South Bay?

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#197

Post by wahnfrieden » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 4:57 AM UTC

leonatan wrote: post #106

nchelluri wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens to it? It gets blackholed somehow?

Mail relay servers deny its acceptance.

Google can also decide it's not even worth showing in the spam folder - the spam folder is for things it's less certain of.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#198

Post by baudehlo » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 4:59 AM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #109

austenallred wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to do a quick check of my gmail; there were 151 emails in spam, and literally not one I would want in my inbox. It seems entirely likely that Google is weighting whether something comes from a private mail server very heavily, and Linus, being who he is, gets a lot of email from private servers. Not saying this isn't a problem, but it probably doesn't affect 99% of email users.

"I would want in my inbox" Unfortunately that's not the definition of spam.

But that is his/her definition of spam. And as someone who has worked in the anti spam field, I'm ok with that.

However I have the same problems Linus has so I am not excusing gmail one bit in this.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#199

Post by milspec » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 5:02 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #90

I am subscribed to the wine-devel, wine-bugs and wine-patches mailing lists ( https://www.winehq.org/forums ). Having the exact same issue. It seems to very easily flag discussion about .exes as spam, it's really disappointing. It's been several years and the filters haven't improved, despite me religiously flagging spam/not spam in those lists. In the end I just gave up and set up filters to specifically prevent mar…

You are "flagging spam/not spam in those lists" but Google may then associate that list (not the content) as being spam or not. Google sees that mail comes from the list and decides based on that.

This is why I never mark mailing list email as spam, even if it is in fact spam.

Re: Dear Google Mail Team

#200

Post by noer » Sat, Jul 18, 2015, 5:03 AM UTC

I looked at my own spam folder, there were 51 messages. ~15 of them were from recruiters and probably meant for me, ~20 of them were newsletters I had probably signed up for, but didn't miss at all and the rest were split evenly for people trying to sell me prescriptions and people trying to use my bank account to hold money. Overall, 50% of the messages were actually FOR me, but it's totally fine that I didn't see them. I'm definitely wondering how many of Linus' messages were actually important enough to not belong in spam. I understand that he probably receives a lot more mail than I do, but I'm wondering how many of those messages he actually missed. Other than the ones that are part of threads he's replied to.