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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#521

Post by rhizome »

Leace wrote: post #20
macspoofing wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even after all that, there's some chance that an email from my server will be marked as insecure/spam Don't I know it. This happened to us but not with Google. We use Exchange Online (Office365) and have DKIM, SPF headers configured. At some point our emails stopped being received by bell and cox emails addresses ... sporadically but sometimes for days at a time. It turned out that the spam filter provider (used by…

To be honest I don't like this confidentiality notes and from what I've read (not a lawyer) they don't have any practical effect either.

Forget it, Jake. I have a doctor who has a big old footer, "If you have any questions, reply to this HIPAA-compliant email." I explained the problem with this in detail, but it's still there.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#522

Post by masukomi »

prlambert wrote: post #183
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…

I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. This is my personal take, not an official reply. It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this. Here are a few: Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects (unlike FB, messengers, any other comms tool of Gmail's scale). Email itself, of course has a…

a) thanks for the response b) do you have any clues why this failure is so sporadic? That is to say, why does an email from domain/server x get blocked on one day but get through a few days later (repeatedly)?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#523

Post by inopinatus »

prlambert wrote: post #183
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…

I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. This is my personal take, not an official reply. It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this. Here are a few: Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects (unlike FB, messengers, any other comms tool of Gmail's scale). Email itself, of course has a…

Hey, thanks for replying. Just sticking your head over the parapet is pretty brave.

I have a contra story. One of no delivery issues to Gmail or Hotmail, none, zero, nada. I've run a private email server (friends/family/small business/private mailing lists) for two decades. It's kept pace with every possible factor for reliable delivery - SPF/DKIM/DMARC/ARC, valid client SSL, IPv6, correct PTRs, DNSSEC etc and have no sketchy affiliates. In that time the IPv4 address changed exactly once and has never been RBL'd. Our mail gets delivered AOK.

And yet, even though I think my compliance level is good, I still feel like the blind man groping an elephant. I'm hoping I'm perceiving things correctly; I have no idea if I'm missing something. It helps that I'm an old-school ISP engineering inmate and contributor to well-known MTAs and MDAs, but few folks are lucky enough to have exposure to so SMTP radiation.

My take on the Postmaster Tools is that they've been created entirely to serve Google's purposes, and thereby serve no-one well because (as you point out) it's ecosystem engagement that makes a difference. If you sincerely have an incentive to improve, there is an awful lot of work to do there. It's okay to push the burden of compliance back to the sender, but the Postmaster tools offer only the most rudimentary levers to pull and provide almost no useful information, particularly for smaller/indy senders.

The message that comes through is that Google only really gives a shit about other large scale entities and struggles to see other points of view. This stands in quite stark contrast to Google's effort level over HTTP certificates and webmaster tools.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#524

Post by lone_haxx0r »

kreetx wrote: post #400
russh wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add me to the "I've run mail servers since the mid 90's and the experience above exactly mirrors my experience." list.

I think all of you should start some kind of a movement so that this could be heared better at GMail's end.

Or even better: so that people stop using Gmail.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#525

Post by skookumchuck »

prlambert wrote: post #183
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…

I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. This is my personal take, not an official reply. It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this. Here are a few: Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects (unlike FB, messengers, any other comms tool of Gmail's scale). Email itself, of course has a…

Google could fix this rather simply. Have an opt-in system whereby anyone sending you email is charged a penny. (Of course, this will initially mean the sender will need to get a google account, but as this catches on more email providers will provide this service.) Split the revenue between the recipient and Google.

I don't mind spending a penny to send an email, I don't send enough to make any difference. But to spammers, it makes abusing the email system unprofitable. And if I receive half the revenue from people sending me email, it'll likely work out to costing me about nothing.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#526

Post by jrnichols »

pfranz wrote: post #441
preinheimer wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Email coming from Google itself. If email coming from google itself got special treatment there would be masses with pitchforks complaining about that. You've made a lot of good points, but I don't think that's one of them.

I don't think that has anything to do with Google needing special treatment. It shows that the company who made the rules and has every privilege to follow them isn't able to.

Valid point. They've become so large and synonymous with email that many people I encounter are actually unaware that there is other email besides "Gmail."

It feels like Google no longer has any incentive to follow the rules, and they feel that they are going to be the ones to make the new rules. The rest of us end up having to implement workarounds.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#527

Post by jrnichols »

ghostly_s wrote: post #251
prlambert wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. This is my personal take, not an official reply. It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this. Here are a few: Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects (unlike FB, messengers, any other comms tool of Gmail's scale). Email itself, of course has a…

> There are going to be false positives, we will make mistakes, but we certainly care a lot about fixing issues like this when we hear about them. Oh really? Then what is the mechanism by which an affected user can report an issue like this and receive individual, accountable response? Because that is what a company that cares about fixing issues does. As far as I can tell, the only redress available for any issue li…

… or 3) "if you can't beat them, join them!"

It feels like Google hopes that you just give up on self-hosting your own email and simply move over to Gsuite. It certainly feels that way. Especially when it feels like Google/Gmail/Gsuite are commonly recommended nowadays.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#528

Post by dest »

vbezhenar wrote: post #378
erikbye wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why free? Do you not pay for your internet connection? Water/electricity? A good email service is one worth paying for.

I'm hosting my mail on $1 VPS right now. It's hard for me to justify paying more. I hate to setup that mail stuff, it's too tricky and takes a lot of time, but still not worth paying extra.

Pro-tip: do some backups. Cheap VPS can disappear overnight.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#529

Post by fgonzag »

xtiansimon wrote: post #456
dingus wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the response. From someone who has operated a mail server since 2002, it comes across that Gmail does not care about cooperating with small but legitimate mail servers. SPF, DKIM, reverse DNS, no blacklists, no open relay, longtime ownership of IPs, etc etc. Using various mail testers returns a 10/10 deliverability score. And yet, messages sent to Gmail always go into the spam folder, or are never delive…

Just to be clear, your comments are refering to problems with Gmail's Spam filtering. Isn't that a different issue than what the OP is saying--that his mailserver is being blocked? In other words, emails from his mail server wouldn't even make it to Spam folder.

Gmail spam filtering and it's mail server are two sides of the same coin. The mail server itself is blocking believed spam messages as a first layer, then the spam filter acts a second layer that marks messages as spam. I guess they don't want to save messages that they are completely sure are spam, the problem seems to be their false positive rate or simply their approach against small operators.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#530

Post by mathattack »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #322
dingus wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the response. From someone who has operated a mail server since 2002, it comes across that Gmail does not care about cooperating with small but legitimate mail servers. SPF, DKIM, reverse DNS, no blacklists, no open relay, longtime ownership of IPs, etc etc. Using various mail testers returns a 10/10 deliverability score. And yet, messages sent to Gmail always go into the spam folder, or are never delive…

I've had gmail send the following to the spam folder: - Legitimate class action notices related to Amazon purchases. - Email coming from addresses to which I had already sent email. (!) - Email from my landlord. - Email coming from Google itself. Based on the contents of my spam folder, which I have to check fairly often because of the extreme overaggressiveness, I would be vastly better off if nothing ever got filte…

I had a communication from a Google recruiter go to my Gmail spam folder.

But it still beats no filtering.

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