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Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

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Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#181

Post by renewiltord »

JimDabell wrote: post #101
jcrites wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re sending transactional emails like password resets or MFA, then the emails will have close to a 100% open rate. This is (likely) an important factor that Google uses to judge whether email is transactional, or more generally whether it is desired by recipients, alongside other factors like having a very low complaint rate.

> If you’re sending transactional emails like password resets or MFA, then the emails will have close to a 100% open rate. So I can disable a competitor’s email functionality by triggering a whole bunch of password reset requests for all discoverable usernames?

If they support SMS 2FA they need to be prepared for this too because it costs a lot. Yeah, so people need to ensure that reset is at least a little hard to abuse. After all, it's a bad experience for their users if they receive a shit ton of reset emails anyway.

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#182

Post by wakeupcall »

jwr wrote: post #112

I get plenty of spam through Gmail, and there is no easy way to report it, it also doesn't seem like they are the least bit interested in tackling the problem. I wish they took a closer look at themselves and also applied these kinds of rules to themselves.

I get >50% of my spam from legitimate hosts such as gmail and yahoo, which tick all the spf/dkim/dmark boxes.

spf/dkim/dmark helps with phishing/forgery, it does little to nothing for spam, even though this policy change makes it look like it's connected.

If I send spam through gmail, the spam is "authenticated".

spammers were among the first to implement these in an attempt to get higher score in spam filters. For quite a while dkim was positively correlated with spammyness for me.

Meanwhile.. does google even respond postmaster@ or abuse@ requests?

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#183

Post by jodrellblank »

ndriscoll wrote: post #177
jwr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is pretty accurate in figuring out transactional versus marketing. They don't tell their heuristics, but you don't think engineers who build web crawlers cannot build email classifiers? Yes, I definitely think that. The engineers can build anything, but where the company focuses matters. I've seen transactional E-mails get sorted into people's spam/junk/newsletter folders too many times.

I also get tons of spam to my inbox despite regularly marking it as such, so if they are classifying marketing emails, they're not doing anything with that information. How hard is it to classify a message that literally contains the string "this is an advertisement"?

Your comment literally contains the string "this is an advertisement" but I can't tell what you are advertising?

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#184

Post by zie »

gwbas1c wrote: post #153

I can't wait for this to take effect. It seems that every time I buy something or someone gets ahold of my email address, I get added to a SPAM list. I can't wait for all of these to be blocked. For example: I recently elected a benefit, and the company added me to a SPAM list for weekly deals 100% unrelated to the benefit. They even ignored the fact that I unsubscribed.

I promise, these changes won't fix that.

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#185

Post by gbalduzzi »

kragen wrote: post #126
Thiez wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, there is no plausible scenario.

if you think these are unrealistic, i've got news for you; the world is a lot bigger than you think it is

What kind of newsletters are you subscribed to

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#186

Post by ndriscoll »

jodrellblank wrote: post #183
ndriscoll wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also get tons of spam to my inbox despite regularly marking it as such, so if they are classifying marketing emails, they're not doing anything with that information. How hard is it to classify a message that literally contains the string "this is an advertisement"?

Your comment literally contains the string "this is an advertisement" but I can't tell what you are advertising?

It's also not an email. I've never seen a legitimate email with that string, and all of the illegitimate ones should be triggering other heuristics, such as the existence of an unsubscribe link, or things like "$x off".

In any case the false positive rate on that would likely be incredibly low, so it's a good heuristic considering how bad the false negative rate is right now.

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#187

Post by mgkimsal »

andersa wrote: post #123
wl wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe transactional emails don't need an unsubscribe link like marketing emails, but they do need a "not my account; please stop" link to avoid the spam button.

Why would you be receiving transactional emails for an account that isn't yours?

my wife gets these regularly. there's a few people in the UK (we're in the US) that have similar gmail addresses as hers, and use her email address often. she'll get restaurant reservation notices, dr appt confirmations, tv repair schedule confirmations, delivery notices, etc. She's called the vendors a couple of times, and also called the people directly a a couple times. "You've entered your email wrong, please stop using my email".

One person, one time, understood the situation, thanked her, and updated things. And a year later, we got email for them. There's lots of mischief we could get up to, if so inclined, but we're not like that.

Someone last year accused her of 'hacking' in to their computer and stealing emails, so she's basically given up. But these people are missing their dr appointments, delivery change notifications, etc. And by 'these people', I'm meaning - it's perhaps 4 other people with slight variations of the same spelling.

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#188

Post by 93po »

LoganDark wrote: post #67
orliesaurus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about Transactional emails? You cant unsubscribe from TRANSACTIONAL emails. That's why they're transactional...not marketing. It's really important to differentiate that.

Well, I wish my ISP would stop marking ads and promotions as "transactional". Just because they have a system that prohibits unsubscribing, doesn't mean they should be allowed to abuse that system.

I've had a website that sent me no fewer than 6 emails over the course of 10 days for a single transaction, 5 of which were full of ads and links to their website and products. I emailed them and asked them to stop and their response was there was no way to opt out, they were transactional for new accounts.

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#189

Post by Manouchehri »

PennRobotics wrote: post #149
JimDabell wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't think engineers who build web crawlers cannot build email classifiers? Don’t put Google on a pedestal. I’ve seen Google Workspace classify an individual email sent from one colleague to another as spam. Both perfectly legitimate users in the same account / domain. No weird trigger words like Viagra. Just a run-of-the-mill email about work, between two colleagues who had been emailing each other for months…

Yeah, something wrong with the filter. Google marked several Samsung mobile phone order confirmation emails as phishing messages a week or two ago. Nobody sells more Android phones than Samsung, so they should be one of Google's top partners to accommodate correctly 100% of the time.

Without knowing anything about the details, is it possible Samsung leaked their SMTP credentials, and Google was seeing phishing to a few of their users?

Re: Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for email programs

#190

Post by superhumanuser »

freddieleeman wrote: post #93

For those interested in testing their email for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC compliance or eager to learn about these mechanisms that enhance email security and prevent spoofing, check out https://learnDMARC.com . This is a site I developed to promote adoption and share knowledge. It includes a challenging quiz, tough even for professionals. I'd be keen to know your scores on the first attempt – honesty counts!

This is beautiful and fun to use!

Thank you thank you.

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