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I am a victim of these "lessons." I run several email newsletters. One of them consistently gets marked as a "phishing" attempt by Gmail. They do not get marke

I am a victim of these "lessons." I run several email newsletters. One of them consistently gets marked as a "phishing" attempt by Gmail. They do not get marked as phishing if the email includes no links – but if I include a link, it immediately gets marked as phishing. This disables all of the links in the emails. I regularly get emails from subscribers complaining that the links do not work. I once sent an email to all of the Gmail subscribers, asking them to explicitly mark my emails as trusted. Many of them did. But, it did not help – they still get marked as phishing attempts. I've implemented SPF and DKIM. It still didn't help. The problem: Once an email is flagged as "phishing", the links are not clickable. On mobile, there is no way to make them clickable. Most users don't know how to make them clickable, even when it is possible. All of the emails come from the same domain and the links are always to the same domain. All of them have the same basic format. Other email from this IP address gets through no problem. Google's Postmaster tools give the IP address a 100% reputation. I tried switching to a new sending service, to no avail. Nothing seems to work – no matter what I do, Gmail marks my emails as phishing. I've contacted Google's postmaster, to no avail. Basically, Gmail has made it very difficult for people to read the content I send them. There seems to be no way to convince Gmail that my emails are not phishing.

seanzieapples 11y ago
If you've implemented DKIM and SPF I'm surprised this is happening. Of course there are other factors but I'd be interested to see what the email looks like. Can you send an example to sean@catch.seanzieapples.com, please?
fapjacks 11y ago
To be honest, I would rather some people have trouble emailing me than basically any spam getting through to my inbox.
- bcook 11y ago
  My concerns are the opposite. I'd rather see a few Nigerian scams get through than completely miss an old friend's email.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    You do have a point.
  - onli 11y ago
    Moved away from Gmail, to a big part because of that. Almost did not get my current job because the spamfilter blocked the mails of my future boss to me, after some month of email ping-pong to get all the documents sorted out. I thought they were not interested anymore. They thought I were not interested anymore, since I stopped replying.
    - trymas 11y ago
      so you 'ping-ponged' for some time and suddenly emails from your future boss became spam? If the answer is yes, is it viable to sue Gmail of lost business/job? p.s. if talking about the topic, I have also seen quite drastic measures on emails which are not Google's and pray to god if you CC bunch of GMail addresses. You can be flagged as spam, phishing or whatever pretty quick.
      - eru 11y ago
        They probably have some licence boilerplate about how gmail comes with no warranty or fitness for any purpose.
      - onli 11y ago
        > so you 'ping-ponged' for some time and suddenly emails from your future boss became spam? Exactly. > If the answer is yes, is it viable to sue Gmail of lost business/job? In my case definitely not, it is the job I currently have :) Everything worked out after I had an epiphany and checked the spam folder.
solotronics 11y ago
there are plenty of examples and at this point it seems that Google has a vested interest in making life difficult for independent or self hosted email providers
- techsupporter 11y ago
  This has been my experience. I run a very small email setup for a few friends and a couple of tiny businesses. (Yes, we should just pack it in and move to Fastmail but I am hard-headed and have been around the Internet long enough to still be idealistic about these things.) Every couple of months, Gmail starts depositing any email from my users into spam. No warning, no rejection, just a vague yellow banner on the recipient's view that says "this message has the characteristics of spam." The message could be in plain text with no links, still the same. I have SPF, DKIM, and rDNS all configured. I send from a single IPv4 and single IPv6 address with matching records. No RBL entries. Even the headers on a "spam" message say that everything passes and is fine. Oh, and it isn't a domain reputation problem: only one of the domains I host even has a web site and all of them are at least five years old. Two of my domains predate Google itself. :P The real kicker? I can't use their postmaster site, either. Why? We don't generate enough email to rank a report! Meanwhile, no problems at all from any other receiving hosts. I have to log into several Gmail accounts and click "this is not spam" on some test messages and then it is fine for another 50 days. After that, back to the bit bucket. Grr.
- JacobJans 11y ago
  I don't think it is a problem with independent or self hosted email. I have this problem sending through: * An email service such as Mailchimp * My own server with SPF / DKIM and good reputation / deliverability for other domains * Amazon AWS Simple Email Service I think it is something on the domain level – perhaps they've flagged the domain.
thrownaway2424 11y ago
The phishing for URLs in mails has little to do with the reputation of the sender, and everything to do with phishing reports for the links in question. It's quite likely that whatever site you are trying to link to is serving malware unbeknownst to you.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  The GP should try this site on the URL in question: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagnostic/ https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagn...
  - JacobJans 11y ago
    > Current status: > Not dangerous > Safe Browsing has not recently seen malicious content on

seanzieapples 11y ago

If you've implemented DKIM and SPF I'm surprised this is happening. Of course there are other factors but I'd be interested to see what the email looks like. Can you send an example to sean@catch.seanzieapples.com, please?

fapjacks 11y ago

To be honest, I would rather some people have trouble emailing me than basically any spam getting through to my inbox.

bcook 11y ago
My concerns are the opposite. I'd rather see a few Nigerian scams get through than completely miss an old friend's email.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  You do have a point.
- onli 11y ago
  Moved away from Gmail, to a big part because of that. Almost did not get my current job because the spamfilter blocked the mails of my future boss to me, after some month of email ping-pong to get all the documents sorted out. I thought they were not interested anymore. They thought I were not interested anymore, since I stopped replying.
  - trymas 11y ago
    so you 'ping-ponged' for some time and suddenly emails from your future boss became spam? If the answer is yes, is it viable to sue Gmail of lost business/job? p.s. if talking about the topic, I have also seen quite drastic measures on emails which are not Google's and pray to god if you CC bunch of GMail addresses. You can be flagged as spam, phishing or whatever pretty quick.
    - eru 11y ago
      They probably have some licence boilerplate about how gmail comes with no warranty or fitness for any purpose.
    - onli 11y ago
      > so you 'ping-ponged' for some time and suddenly emails from your future boss became spam? Exactly. > If the answer is yes, is it viable to sue Gmail of lost business/job? In my case definitely not, it is the job I currently have :) Everything worked out after I had an epiphany and checked the spam folder.

solotronics 11y ago

there are plenty of examples and at this point it seems that Google has a vested interest in making life difficult for independent or self hosted email providers

techsupporter 11y ago
This has been my experience. I run a very small email setup for a few friends and a couple of tiny businesses. (Yes, we should just pack it in and move to Fastmail but I am hard-headed and have been around the Internet long enough to still be idealistic about these things.) Every couple of months, Gmail starts depositing any email from my users into spam. No warning, no rejection, just a vague yellow banner on the recipient's view that says "this message has the characteristics of spam." The message could be in plain text with no links, still the same. I have SPF, DKIM, and rDNS all configured. I send from a single IPv4 and single IPv6 address with matching records. No RBL entries. Even the headers on a "spam" message say that everything passes and is fine. Oh, and it isn't a domain reputation problem: only one of the domains I host even has a web site and all of them are at least five years old. Two of my domains predate Google itself. :P The real kicker? I can't use their postmaster site, either. Why? We don't generate enough email to rank a report! Meanwhile, no problems at all from any other receiving hosts. I have to log into several Gmail accounts and click "this is not spam" on some test messages and then it is fine for another 50 days. After that, back to the bit bucket. Grr.
JacobJans 11y ago
I don't think it is a problem with independent or self hosted email. I have this problem sending through: * An email service such as Mailchimp * My own server with SPF / DKIM and good reputation / deliverability for other domains * Amazon AWS Simple Email Service I think it is something on the domain level – perhaps they've flagged the domain.

thrownaway2424 11y ago

The phishing for URLs in mails has little to do with the reputation of the sender, and everything to do with phishing reports for the links in question. It's quite likely that whatever site you are trying to link to is serving malware unbeknownst to you.

thrownaway2424 11y ago
The GP should try this site on the URL in question: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagnostic/ https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagn...
- JacobJans 11y ago
  > Current status: > Not dangerous > Safe Browsing has not recently seen malicious content on