I’m not sure if I’m the only one who noticed (I hope not!), but recently, the Gmail spam filter started marking as spam a lot of messages that were NOT spam.
Here’s the ones I found, while looking at only the first two pages of my Spam folder (about two days worth of spams):
- A Logitech.com shipment notification;
- My monthly Yak invoice;
- My monthly ‘your invoice is ready’ from Citibank;
- The OpenDNS newsletter;
- Two commit notifications from Google Code;
- Three ‘your password has been reset’ emails, from WordPress.org, and other less known bulletin boards.
This makes me sad for multiple reasons. One is that while I have been able to catch some of them easily enough (the various reset password systems I used did point out that their email could end up in our Spam folders), I just found the others. That means I probably missed at least some other emails.
The second reason I’m sad is that now, I’ll need to go through all those spam messages to find the ones I care about! Not something I expected to do this morning, nor something that is particularly pleasant… Plus, I’ll need to repeat that every day now!
And finally, this make me sad because I trusted the Gmail team. I understand that spam filtering is not simple, but I would have greatly preferred for them to tweak their algorithm to push the balance in the other direction. It’s much easier for us to flag the occasional spam emails that would end up in our inboxes than to have to go through thousands of emails to find important messages!
Let’s hope the Gmail-Spam-Filter team hears this, and works toward a good resolution in a timely fashion.
What about you? How many not-spam messages can you find in your Gmail Spam folder in the next few minutes?
I did a quick perusal of my spam folder after reading this, but all my spam is quite correctly marked. My suggestion is to setup a filter with the domains you know are impacted (i.e. enumerate the goodness) and check the handy “Never send it to Spam” option. You shouldn’t have to do this, but at least a few minutes doing so will save you the from the daily drudgery of unspamming important email.
I found a total of maybe 20-25 threads in my spam folder, once I scanned all of it. I did create filters for all the spam I found, on either the sender domain, or address, or the address it was sent to (I create a lot of aliases on my own domains).
My wife found about 10 in hers.
Maybe this could be related to a language issue; we receive emails in French and English (and my wife receives Armenian emails too).
Maybe that nudges the Gmail spam filter to be more aggressive somehow, or maybe it looses some of it’s efficiency since it can’t use language as a good indicator of spam. Who knows…
Fiouuu… I almost missed that offer to enlarge my penis!
Thank you!
Seriously, no problem in my account, but I’ll keep an eye opened.
Hello, our company uses an email marketing solution to send out our newsletters and as of last week they announced that most or all emails sent to gmail (from them and supposedly other senders/ip addresses as well) have been going to the spam box; gmail changed something and they are “working on a solution”
Tom
Hello. WheresMyMail.org is an initiative to solving the problem of missing emails. Technically, legitimate emails lost in spam folders are called false positives. We have been collecting stories of lost emails and showing them to all free email service providers.
We’re in the midst of creating a free app for Gmail users to simply log-on to and the software will automatically search through your spam folders for legitimate emails and notify you.
follow us on twitter (http://twitter.com/WheresMyMail) for more updates!
I have the same problem here. It seems to affect some accounts but not all accounts. Very weird. At this moment, practically all emails end up in the spambox.
Yes I am having the same problem. E-mail updates or newsletters I have been getting for year can not be found in spam folder. Gmail has screwed this up to the point that I thinking about moving, losing this long time e-mail address.
I did a bit of research and found a post that said Opera was the trouble. After I had gone through my Gmail Spam folder and sent all the messages that were not spam back to my Inbox, I started Opera and watching my Inbox from Outlook I saw those messages disappear again to the Spam folder after Opera had been running a few seconds.
So if you use Opera and it has access to your Gmail account, this is most likely the problem. But it seems only a problem if you have allowed it to update itself to the latest release Ver. 11.10
I’m having similar issues & use Firefox, not Opera.
Gmail is sending emails to spam folder if up to 30% emails are not opened from any URL or IP address at least 2 to 3 times. This is the way to eliminate competition for Google’s daily deal sites and also Google’s small business advertising service.
This will also kill mainly small businesses that rely on emails to send out their messages to their subscribers or clients.
I think Google will bully and kick everyone out in order to dominate wherever or however they can. We need antitrust department to intervene.
Yeah, I used to marvel at how accurate Gmail’s spam filter was, but now I’m getting false positives. I think they announced something a while back about analyzing user habits (e.g., noticing that you always delete mail from a certain sender without reading it), and indeed most of my false positives are newsletter-type things. It’s still pretty frustrating, though.
We are having major problems with Gmail. We are a small Maids / house cleaning service and our direct emails to customers are going into their Gmail spam folder. We only send 40 to 50 emails per day for confirmations and 68% of our clients have Gmail accounts.
This problem is costing us customers who are not checking their spam folders regularly.
My latest spam box had 15/100 mislabeled emails! Most from twitter, some from mailing list subscriptions, even from google itself! I have been considering signing up to use gmail for my business, but am having second thoughts.
I am now getting 75 legitimate emails per 100 – pushed into the spam box. It’s outrageous! Even emails that Google itself sends me get placed in the spam box! But worse, personal emails from friends – that in no way could be considered spam are getting put there. A recent email from my girlfriend asking what time I wanted to have dinner got sent to the spam box. Even emails I send to myself – from my google account – to my google account are getting marked as spam!
It is literally no longer possible to take gmail seriously as an email solution. It’s just not possible. I go out – I’m expecting an email on my phone and it never comes because it got sent to the spam box. And my phone doesn’t allow me to see the spam box! UNBELIEVABLE.
Google is attempting to create a monopolistic approach, they do not even provide FBL (Feeb Back Loop) to email service providers so that we can study the pattern and act accordingly. I was shocked to see my LinkedIN updates and Facebook mails also in Gmail spam folders. We have a web based mailing platform mailconnect.in which provides service for sending newsletters to the subscribers. everything was working fine all of a sudden the emails started going into spam folders. We have all the necessary requisites like proper RDNS, SPF records, DKIM signatures in place but still mails deliver into spam even when IP’s are completely clean.
Really they have to get some pressure from the online community and users so stop acting in such pattern where they feel that they rule the internet world.
Regards
Nirav Shah
Mazeweb Technologies Pvt Ltd
http://www.mazeweb.com | http://www.mailconnect.in | http://www.spamrazor.net
In the last week, I experienced a lot of false positive, messages that usually were in my inbox and I found in the spam box.
I am having the same problem and even though I have clicked the not spam button more than 10 times or each of these messages, I am still getting important amazon, ebay and banking messages in the spam folder. I think I will need to switch to another email provider.
Rob
What makes it worse it that it is impossible to disable the spam filter to let your email program take care of it.