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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#141

Post by _pmf_ »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #86
redm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholly agree with your statement. I would add that, sadly, its like this with most things Google: 1) vague descriptions of the problem, 2) impossible to get support or talk to anyone, 3) severe consequences (because of the ubiquity of Google’s platforms i.e. search, Gmail, Android, Chrome). Anyone who’s had a safe browsing problem, an App Store issue, or, heaven forbid, an AdSense issue will attest. As far as it re…

Break up Google/Alphabet. Way past time.

Would be a much more important case if the EU commission that cared about actual freedom instead of competitors.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#142

Post by bhauer »

awinder wrote: post #57
bachmeier wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule #1 if you're applying for jobs or graduate school - Don't use gmail for your email address. Source: Led a hiring committee this year. Interview invitations and job offers went straight to the junk mail folder. Also serve as Director of Graduate Studies. Admissions and funding offers, as well as general inquiries about availability, all went straight to the junk mail folder. We're not going to change our email se…

This may be a fair sentiment for an educational institution (you're not directly making money from email sending / hopefully admissions marketing doesn't have this problem), but as a candidate I'd be extremely concerned if a company I was going to work with A) couldn't deliver to gmail and B) held the view that it was everyone else's problem. As it is you're statistically leaving half the candidate pool at the door,…

We are a relatively small company and we operate our own mail server, mostly out of a shared belief in data privacy among myself and our staff. We self-host most of our tooling (mail, internal chat, Gitlab, CI/CD, and so on). It turns out this is all pretty simple given modern virtualization infrastructure and, in my estimation, has many upsides versus the alternatives.

That said, like the OP, despite having DKIM, SPF, proper DNS, and every other measure applied, it's conceivable that gmail might reject some emails from us. I don't have any memory of that actually happening, but I have heard stories like the OP's several times. It's a fairly common topic in conversation forums about self-hosting email servers. I don't expect the situation to change any time soon—I don't expect Google to change their ways and it would require significant pain for me to surrender to the gmail hegemony.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#143

Post by crank190426 »

In my opinion the Gmail web interface should expose a way to generate something that is similar to a password, whose delivery is then controlled via the web portal.

This is similar to the +whatevertag trick that gmail pioneered for tagging, however that can be removed by malicious parties (spammers) via a simple regex. So Google have almost all of the infrastructure but should just add a bit more to get the rest of the way there.

What I mean in specific :

1. I want to sign up to and receive your newsletter (you[re Ted) but I don't trust you yet. so I should navigate to gmail.com, click something like "generate another inbox", leave it set it to "For now deliver this mail to my inbox", add the description "for Ted's Possibly Spammy Newsletter", and then click "generate". It should give me inbox3943578423@gmail.com - similar to a phone number but a bit longer and personalized to one recipient - and then I should give that to the recipient to use, in this case the possibly spammy newsletter. It should always be delivered to my inbox, as I've set. Once one of the spammers sells my email address (for example I start getting advance payment scams) I'll be able to disable further spam from there by sending it to the trash but also know that Ted's newsletter is the one that got compromised or sold it. You can do this today by going through the steps of registering a new gmail address and turning on forwarding, but it takes like 10 minutes to do so. it should be like 10 seconds.

This should be possible because people always have easy access to the gmail web interface. There's no reason it can't be a bit more like a social network where you confirm it from the web interface as well.

that's my idea anyway.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#144

Post by jbergstroem »

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #121
jbergstroem wrote: post #59

I'm also one of those oldfarts that insists on hosting my private emails for me and a few friends. I've owned the ip since early 2000's and have had zero "spam"/blacklist incidents. One trend I've been noticing is that Microsoft/Outlook have regularly started to block me. I have to contact their abuse which takes a day or so to get unblocked. To date, I've done so >10 times: hotmail-com.olc.protection.outlook.com[104…

At >10 times I'd automate that process.

Form has captcha: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/supportrequestform/8ad56...

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#145

Post by OldSchoolJohnny »

awinder wrote: post #49
reaperducer wrote: post #8

Google has no incentive to fix these kinds of problems. It's big enough that when someone complains that a message sent wasn't received, the intended recipient will say, "I never have problems with my Gmail account. It must be you." And the sender has to switch to Gmail to reliably communicate with the outside world. I wish this was just paranoia, but we've seen multiple discussions on HN about Google programs and po…

You don't have to switch to gmail, you can pretty reliably switch to a myriad of service providers. You could even solely switch your SMTP server to something hosted and retain message storage on your end if you wanted. It has become very difficult / unwise to host your own SMTP server, though, but that's been true for ages now. Gmail's marketshare is going to make that veeeery obvious, but it really has been a bad i…

Difficult to host smtp?! That's absolutely not true and has never been true. It's difficult to configure and set up in the first place but after that it's just updating. Source: personal experience for decades.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#146

Post by elagost »

reaperducer wrote: post #8

Google has no incentive to fix these kinds of problems. It's big enough that when someone complains that a message sent wasn't received, the intended recipient will say, "I never have problems with my Gmail account. It must be you." And the sender has to switch to Gmail to reliably communicate with the outside world. I wish this was just paranoia, but we've seen multiple discussions on HN about Google programs and po…

These days many people don't know the difference between Facebook and "the Internet". We've handed the reigns to our communication and culture into the greedy palms of about five mega-corporations that put profit above all else. Much better to use community software and platforms - things that people run for people, not companies running for profit.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#147

Post by Nerdfest »

nothis wrote: post #67
reaperducer wrote: post #8

Google has no incentive to fix these kinds of problems. It's big enough that when someone complains that a message sent wasn't received, the intended recipient will say, "I never have problems with my Gmail account. It must be you." And the sender has to switch to Gmail to reliably communicate with the outside world. I wish this was just paranoia, but we've seen multiple discussions on HN about Google programs and po…

The evil part about this is that it needs no one at any step to say it out loud. It just “happens” as a result of Google being big. Whatever lead to Microsoft being sued for pushing Internet Explorer in Europe and whatnot? Shouldn’t that kick in already for at least some of the recent Google bullshit?

I think it should, or some sort of oversight should be in place. Their filters are extremely aggressive. I have a specific GMail rule in place to ensure that all mail gets through and nothing gets sent to spam, but even with that the occasional message gets sent to spam. It's generally advertising, but never actually spam.

There's definitely for GMail to become the new "Windows", with everyone else fighting to stay connected.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#148

Post by simmons »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #132

Can someone explain in simple terms why, in 2019, anyone is running their own mail server? Unless you are the sysadmin, server guy/gal, whatever, this just sounds like signing up for a world of hurt doing it yourself.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don't think the technical aspects of operating a mail server are all that hard. Perhaps I'm underestimating the learning curve since I've been doing it for 27 years. (If you're running your own mail server, you are the sysadmin.)

The frustration comes with scenarios such as the one outlined in this blog post, where small mail server operators get bullied even though they are doing everything right. I can completely understand not wanting to operate a mail server due to this situation, or not having interest in leveling-up server administration skills.

For those of us who do have expertise in running mail servers, it's a shame we have to deal with these obstacles.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#149

Post by bhauer »

sergiosgc wrote: post #108
mattkrause wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve got to meet people halfway here. While’s gmail’s filtering is obviously neither your responsibility nor under your control, you also can’t really fault people for using one of the most popular email services on the planet. I would hope that your department follows up some other way (you surely have a phone number!). Searches are crazy time consuming and expensive, and grad student recruitment isn’t exa…

> While’s gmail’s filtering is obviously neither your responsibility nor under your control, you also can’t really fault people for using one of the most popular email services on the planet. Why not? Popularity does not imply quality. If it is a poor service, you can (and should) fault people for using it.

> If it is a poor service, you can (and should) fault people for using it.

Agreed. There should be some give and take, some minor reputation at stake. It's healthy to have some people applying back-pressure against popularity. I like the idea that laypeople might hear whispers among their tech-savvy friends that it's not considered "cool" to have a gmail address. Much like having an aol.com email address was seen as uncool in years past. It's perfectly reasonable for some people to be working to give gmail.com a bit of that same reputation.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#150

Post by perlgod »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #132

Can someone explain in simple terms why, in 2019, anyone is running their own mail server? Unless you are the sysadmin, server guy/gal, whatever, this just sounds like signing up for a world of hurt doing it yourself.

Because email is one of the few edifices left of the truly open internet, and some of us aren’t ready to concede defeat of what was once a free platform to a corporate oligarchy.
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