Google seems to have broken email forwarding • Hacker News Board

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#151

Post by npsimons » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:15 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #116

ibz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always mark Amazon mail as spam. Could it be that if a lot of people mark a certain kind of email as spam, Google just treats it as spam?

To all the people that say "don't do this" - I don't do this with Amazon, but I do that with LinkedIn and any company that starts to, well, spam me with e-mails. And I think it's totally fair. It's a way for people to send a message to the companies that don't respect their customers time, because some bean counter realized that they can wast X hours of people's time and get Y amount of additional sales from it. I'm…

This is a difficult balancing act, to be sure. I firmly believe two things would help:

1) Unsubscribe should be one click, no confirmation. In the case of accidentally unsubscribing, if it's really that valuable, the person will re-subscribe, and I guarantee it's easy to subscribe because that's already optimized, for obvious reasons.

2) GMail shouldn't give you the option to choose; if you mark something as spam, it should silently attempt to unsubscribe in the background, then keep track of which services don't actually support unsubscribe, and mark those as spam. Far too many people are vindictive and lazy and will intentionally mark things as spam either because they don't want to go through the process of unsubscribing, or they forgot they subscribed, or think they've been "wronged" by getting an email they opted in to.

For the record, I too despise the oblivious email marketing stories on HN, eg the "cold emailing" C level execs whose addresses aren't publicly available. Dirty, dirty, dirty.

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#152

Post by reitanqild » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:17 PM UTC

fifthesteight wrote: post #146

jmount wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already downvoted below zero (about 2 seconds). I'll stand by what I said/implied: it is hard to co-exist with Google systems (and apparently also with pro-Google shills/apologists). I know this post violates HN standards, but I didn't think the parent did.

I've found that this community is beyond unwelcoming, bordering on toxic. I no longer see the merit in contributing, and furthermore I find that reading these comment threads has become less and less valuable.

Then I suggest you take a break yes.

I find hn a really to be a really good combination of intelligent, grown up discussion with little name-calling etc.

That said, I think on hn one must be prepared to be corrected, -that's just part of being scientifically minded. As the old saying goes: "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another."

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#153

Post by copsarebastards » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:27 PM UTC

tie_ wrote: post #95

copsarebastards wrote: post #46

I've long supported a proof-of-work concept augmented with whitelisted keys for email spam filtering. There are basically two cases here: 1. The sender is sending one email to one receiver. The sender computes the proof of work and sends it along with the message. This takes some time, but typically it can be done in the background. Waiting few seconds between sending and receiving an email is typically not an issue,…

> Doing things this way would mean we can drop these terrible DKIM and SPF systems that both fail to prevent spam and make it difficult to send legitimate mail. I can understand your feelings about SPF, but why is DKIM a terrible system in your opinion?

Because we still have spam and it's difficult to send legitimate email. It doesn't achieve its goals and gets in the way of achieving other core goals.

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#154

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:51 PM UTC

johnduhart wrote: post #149

thaumasiotes wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, emails that you ask to receive are the definition of solicited email. When was the last time the grocery store emailed you confirming that you'd just paid for your groceries?

> When was the last time the grocery store emailed you confirming that you'd just paid for your groceries? Never because my grocery store isn't a website.

OK. When was the last time facebook emailed you to confirm that you liked a comment?

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#155

Post by gaadd33 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:53 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #136

nitrogen wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emails in response to you direct action (placing an order) are the very definition of solicited email.

No, emails that you ask to receive are the definition of solicited email. When was the last time the grocery store emailed you confirming that you'd just paid for your groceries?

Every time I order groceries. Then again my grocery store is online.

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#156

Post by pyrocat » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

jimrandomh wrote: post #24

jmount wrote: post #5

Obviously good email (deep in a conversation) being declared "spam" has been a problem with my business for some time also. I figure Google takes all email in a 2 step process (either intentional or accidental) 1: get a good fraction of the world on GMail 2: intermittently declare any non GMail mail spam ( greatly lowering the utility of non GMail). This isn't about any mass mailings or even mailing lists. This is ab…

For some reason, gmail classifies nearly all of the transactional email I get from Amazon (order acknowledgements, shipping notifications, etc) as spam, and no matter how many I catch and un-mark, it won't stop. Spam classification is a hard problem, but I don't think they've put the false-positive/false-negative tradeoff in the right place, and they really need some safety valves like offering to whitelist an addres…

add a filter. From: *@amazon.com -> never mark as spam.

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#157

Post by michaelt » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 9:21 PM UTC

jimrandomh wrote: post #24

jmount wrote: post #5

Obviously good email (deep in a conversation) being declared "spam" has been a problem with my business for some time also. I figure Google takes all email in a 2 step process (either intentional or accidental) 1: get a good fraction of the world on GMail 2: intermittently declare any non GMail mail spam ( greatly lowering the utility of non GMail). This isn't about any mass mailings or even mailing lists. This is ab…

For some reason, gmail classifies nearly all of the transactional email I get from Amazon (order acknowledgements, shipping notifications, etc) as spam, and no matter how many I catch and un-mark, it won't stop. Spam classification is a hard problem, but I don't think they've put the false-positive/false-negative tradeoff in the right place, and they really need some safety valves like offering to whitelist an addres…

Is your amazon account on a personal domain e-mail address, forwarding to your gmail?

Apparently forwarding can sometimes invalidate the SPF or DKIM [1] depending on the settings involved.

[1] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/175365?hl=en

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#158

Post by Steko » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 9:47 PM UTC

Why is it every time I see an article critical of Google it has invariably been vote flagged down?

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#159

Post by prawn » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

jmount wrote: post #5

Obviously good email (deep in a conversation) being declared "spam" has been a problem with my business for some time also. I figure Google takes all email in a 2 step process (either intentional or accidental) 1: get a good fraction of the world on GMail 2: intermittently declare any non GMail mail spam ( greatly lowering the utility of non GMail). This isn't about any mass mailings or even mailing lists. This is ab…

Most of the spam I get through to my Gmail inbox is from SEO spammers using Gmail. They keep sending the same material with the same username formats and same names, I mark hundreds of them as spam, and they still make it through.

Another large portion of my spam is from Chinese product spammers using Picasa albums and send to a friend feature. There are limited ways you can report this and despite marking almost every Picasa email I've received as spam, every single Picasa email still makes it through.

Re: Google seems to have broken email forwarding

#160

Post by throwawayaway » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 10:10 PM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #150

throwawayaway wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it should be opt in instead of opt out then shouldn't it? maybe you should be directing your passion at those who feel opt out is appropriate.

And that's why I said: " but if you signed up for it, at least put in the same amount of effort to get out of it first. " If you signed up, then you opted in. Don't be lazy and mark things you signed up for as spam. I'm not understanding how people get email from Amazon that aren't customers, and how customers can't turn off everything but confirmations, which I know is possible, because I have.

> how customers can't turn off everything but confirmations

I'm a customer, I consider that opt out. You don't? I signed up for amazon, not their bullshit emails. That you consider the situation opt in shows they have you trained well.