6 ms·

> It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this I just happen to have set up an email server and encountered the same problems with Google as described

by mcsb4 7y ago

> It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this I just happen to have set up an email server and encountered the same problems with Google as described in the article. I own the IP since quite some time, it is not on any black list, reverse DNS is set up etc. but Google rejects email as spam. And this even happens when the gmail account has added the sender in his address book and has send the first email to which I replied - thus there is a message id that should already be known on Gmail's side. Use your AI to put email into the spam folder. Refusing it outright is a case for the European Commission which hopefully will slap you another few billions of fine onto the wrist until you remember to play nicely with the other kids. There is no excuse to refuse SPF, DKIM, reverse DNS, proper MX, no blacklist, sender in recipient address book and reply-to msgId email.

benou 7y ago
> Use your AI to put email into the spam folder. Refusing it outright is a case for the European Commission which hopefully will slap you another few billions of fine onto the wrist until you remember to play nicely with the other kids. I prefer getting a bounce than ending in the spam folder by far. Lots of relatives on Gmail never look into the spam folder so I never know if they get to see my email or not and I end up having to ping them on eg. WhatsApp. At least with a bounce, I know they did not get my email.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  But if it ends up in the spam folder there's at least a chance that it'll be trained out of the spam folder by people marking it as "not spam", and it provides a workaround for the people who really need it to work _now_.
  - gotenyama 7y ago
    I believe that the majority of the users are trained to ignore g-mail spam since it's been working good enough for most people. Unless we condition the customer to always view the spam folder it's asking them to do something on top of already checking their e-mail. My mother would just simply ignore the spam and often times spam catches majority of the phishing e-mails too. So it's a double edge sword educating and conditioning the users to review the spam folder. Why is it the end user's job to determine what is spam and what is legitimate ?
    - luckylion 7y ago
      > Why is it the end user's job to determine what is spam and what is legitimate? Who else could determine that? I could hire you to send me emails about Viagra sales. They would not be unsolicited, because I specifically asked you to. They wouldn't be commercials, either, so they wouldn't be Spam. An automatic filter can't determine if it's spam or not, it can only take an educated guess.
  - southerndrift 7y ago
    Then they should do both: bounce it and also show it in a folder called 'bounced'.
    - Tempest1981 7y ago
      Great idea. Since many of us rarely check Spam.
  - rdl 7y ago
    I wonder if the correct solution is "send an informative pseudobounced-as-spam message to sender AND put it in the spam folder", for borderline spam (which passes the other checks). Downside is it provides a deliverability oracle for spammers, but since gmail accounts are free, that's not too hard to establish anyway.
- luckylion 7y ago
  But you can mark it as "not spam" (and hope that it does something, I guess) while you (as the recipient) have no options whatsoever with a hard rejection.
- phinnaeus 7y ago
  It might obviate the excuse mentioned a few comments above, "I've never had a problem with Gmail, it must be on your end." If the message is ending up in your spam folder, it's harder to shift that blame off of Gmail's shoulders.
- hrez 7y ago
  That's as a sender (even that reasoning is questionable). As a receiver, would you rather never received an important email from some org instead of finding it in your spam folder?
prlambert 7y ago
I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. Our analysts are looking into the issue described in the article, hopefully we find something we can fix that will resolve this.
- joering2 7y ago
  Since you profile claims you are from Google, you should know by helping here you really doing disservice to everyone else having same problems. Hacker News is not a “gmail customer support hotline center”. You have billions of dollars to setup a system or heck the whole state of the art department to help people with their gmail problem. So you will help two people on HN bitching at gmail.. what about all those that never heard of HN? Sorry friend you doing this only because at some degree google and gmail obviously does not want to look bad to tech society. /rant
  - 7Z7 7y ago
    That all depends entirely on whether the "fix" is white-listing the two responders somehow, or flagging the larger issue to the correct team and figuring something more general out.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - amenod 7y ago
    Not sure why you are being downvoted, you have a point. There is no excuse for the way Google is operating now - poor customer support, the only recourse twits and HN posts. I think it also hurts Google themselves. There is a reason they have trouble competing with AWS. Why should developers trust Google that there will be a person on the other side helping them out when things go wrong? And they always do, at worst possible time. Amazon, for all its problems, has excellent customer service. So your parent's attempt to fix this is a PR stunt at best. If they (/Google) care about this, they should fix the problems in the process: - define, hardcode and publish rules that will lead to successfull e-mail delivery (SPF, DKIM, history,...) - establish a gmail technical customer support service And they should stop with preferential treatment of those who shame them publicly. Or do they want all of us to start doing the same?
jandrese 7y ago
It's not just small fries getting hit by this. Google regularly refuses to deliver mail from backerkit.com to my account, by far the most popular Kickstarter fulfillment support service. I frequently have to contact Kickstarters and ask them to manually send me mail because Google is refusing to accept it, which is annoying and wastes their time. I wish Google had a way you could tell it "messages from these people/domains are never spam (or I'll deal with it myself)".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Xamayon 7y ago
  Google Apps (or whatever it's called now after the last dozen name and service changes since "Postini") does offer a whitelist function, but as far as I can tell it's there only to placate users. Whitelisting domains or individual email addresses globally, or per user seems to have no bearing at all on whether they will show up in your inbox... Postini used to work flawlessly, it's hard to imagine how they could have screwed it up so badly.
  - acomjean 7y ago
    It’s AI above all else. It seems instead of a rule that says all emails from these people are ok, they’re too reliant on ai filtering based on the content. They’re probably trying to prevent spoofing. I use gmail and they know who is sending. I got an email today with a gmail flag saying “this user sent from a different email address previously”
  - sbov 7y ago
    In gmail, you can create a filter to skip the spam folder. I regularly receive emails where, at the top it says "this would have gone to spam, but you told us not to send it there". I doubt this affects things when messages are rejected at the protocol level, but if your problem is emails showing up in the spam folder, this might fix it.
craftinator 7y ago
Ah, but you forgot to send it from a Gmail address! That's the big important requirement!
feanaro 7y ago
> Refusing it outright is a case for the European Commission which hopefully will slap you another few billions of fine onto the wrist until you remember to play nicely with the other kids. This is a very interesting idea that I completely missed.

by mcsb4 7y ago

benou 7y ago

> Use your AI to put email into the spam folder. Refusing it outright is a case for the European Commission which hopefully will slap you another few billions of fine onto the wrist until you remember to play nicely with the other kids. I prefer getting a bounce than ending in the spam folder by far. Lots of relatives on Gmail never look into the spam folder so I never know if they get to see my email or not and I end up having to ping them on eg. WhatsApp. At least with a bounce, I know they did not get my email.

DuskStar 7y ago
But if it ends up in the spam folder there's at least a chance that it'll be trained out of the spam folder by people marking it as "not spam", and it provides a workaround for the people who really need it to work _now_.
- gotenyama 7y ago
  I believe that the majority of the users are trained to ignore g-mail spam since it's been working good enough for most people. Unless we condition the customer to always view the spam folder it's asking them to do something on top of already checking their e-mail. My mother would just simply ignore the spam and often times spam catches majority of the phishing e-mails too. So it's a double edge sword educating and conditioning the users to review the spam folder. Why is it the end user's job to determine what is spam and what is legitimate ?
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > Why is it the end user's job to determine what is spam and what is legitimate? Who else could determine that? I could hire you to send me emails about Viagra sales. They would not be unsolicited, because I specifically asked you to. They wouldn't be commercials, either, so they wouldn't be Spam. An automatic filter can't determine if it's spam or not, it can only take an educated guess.
- southerndrift 7y ago
  Then they should do both: bounce it and also show it in a folder called 'bounced'.
  - Tempest1981 7y ago
    Great idea. Since many of us rarely check Spam.
- rdl 7y ago
  I wonder if the correct solution is "send an informative pseudobounced-as-spam message to sender AND put it in the spam folder", for borderline spam (which passes the other checks). Downside is it provides a deliverability oracle for spammers, but since gmail accounts are free, that's not too hard to establish anyway.
luckylion 7y ago
But you can mark it as "not spam" (and hope that it does something, I guess) while you (as the recipient) have no options whatsoever with a hard rejection.
phinnaeus 7y ago
It might obviate the excuse mentioned a few comments above, "I've never had a problem with Gmail, it must be on your end." If the message is ending up in your spam folder, it's harder to shift that blame off of Gmail's shoulders.
hrez 7y ago
That's as a sender (even that reasoning is questionable). As a receiver, would you rather never received an important email from some org instead of finding it in your spam folder?

prlambert 7y ago

I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. Our analysts are looking into the issue described in the article, hopefully we find something we can fix that will resolve this.

joering2 7y ago
Since you profile claims you are from Google, you should know by helping here you really doing disservice to everyone else having same problems. Hacker News is not a “gmail customer support hotline center”. You have billions of dollars to setup a system or heck the whole state of the art department to help people with their gmail problem. So you will help two people on HN bitching at gmail.. what about all those that never heard of HN? Sorry friend you doing this only because at some degree google and gmail obviously does not want to look bad to tech society. /rant
- 7Z7 7y ago
  That all depends entirely on whether the "fix" is white-listing the two responders somehow, or flagging the larger issue to the correct team and figuring something more general out.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- amenod 7y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted, you have a point. There is no excuse for the way Google is operating now - poor customer support, the only recourse twits and HN posts. I think it also hurts Google themselves. There is a reason they have trouble competing with AWS. Why should developers trust Google that there will be a person on the other side helping them out when things go wrong? And they always do, at worst possible time. Amazon, for all its problems, has excellent customer service. So your parent's attempt to fix this is a PR stunt at best. If they (/Google) care about this, they should fix the problems in the process: - define, hardcode and publish rules that will lead to successfull e-mail delivery (SPF, DKIM, history,...) - establish a gmail technical customer support service And they should stop with preferential treatment of those who shame them publicly. Or do they want all of us to start doing the same?

jandrese 7y ago

It's not just small fries getting hit by this. Google regularly refuses to deliver mail from backerkit.com to my account, by far the most popular Kickstarter fulfillment support service. I frequently have to contact Kickstarters and ask them to manually send me mail because Google is refusing to accept it, which is annoying and wastes their time. I wish Google had a way you could tell it "messages from these people/domains are never spam (or I'll deal with it myself)".

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Xamayon 7y ago
Google Apps (or whatever it's called now after the last dozen name and service changes since "Postini") does offer a whitelist function, but as far as I can tell it's there only to placate users. Whitelisting domains or individual email addresses globally, or per user seems to have no bearing at all on whether they will show up in your inbox... Postini used to work flawlessly, it's hard to imagine how they could have screwed it up so badly.
- acomjean 7y ago
  It’s AI above all else. It seems instead of a rule that says all emails from these people are ok, they’re too reliant on ai filtering based on the content. They’re probably trying to prevent spoofing. I use gmail and they know who is sending. I got an email today with a gmail flag saying “this user sent from a different email address previously”
- sbov 7y ago
  In gmail, you can create a filter to skip the spam folder. I regularly receive emails where, at the top it says "this would have gone to spam, but you told us not to send it there". I doubt this affects things when messages are rejected at the protocol level, but if your problem is emails showing up in the spam folder, this might fix it.

craftinator 7y ago

Ah, but you forgot to send it from a Gmail address! That's the big important requirement!

feanaro 7y ago

> Refusing it outright is a case for the European Commission which hopefully will slap you another few billions of fine onto the wrist until you remember to play nicely with the other kids. This is a very interesting idea that I completely missed.