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Ask HN: Is Gmail spam out of control for everyone else too?
I’ve been seeing steadily more spam in my Gmail inbox for a long time now but the past couple weeks it has been on another level completely. At least 3 or 4 emails a day going to my inbox that follow the same pattern of gibberish subject line with a PDF attachment. I asked some coworkers and I don’t think it’s just me. Is there some subtlety to this situation or has Google just completely dropped the ball here? How are emails from strangers with PDF attachments not subject to a level of scrutiny that would catch this easily?
- ezekg 5y agoSame here. It was very frustrating. I switched to Protonmail and now I rarely find real spam in my inbox or real mail in my spam.
- 3rdparty 5y agoMine have no subject with a PDF attachment and seem to be getting through on a daily basis. Might help to get some more upvotes here: https://support.google.com/mail/thread/150229727/getting-a-new-type-of-no-subject-pdf-attachment-spam?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/thread/150229727/getting-a-n...
- taubek 5y agoNo, no spam in Inbox on free and on Workspace account.
- vpt 5y agoLooking through my spam box for the ones I had to manually report it looks like maybe close to one a week, and they tend to be very similar, usually wrapped around a popular pharmacy store chain (no attachments). I also have noticed they tend to be sent from gmail.com addresses, which may suggest why they're not getting trapped by the spam filter.
- butz 5y agoYes, same thing started happening here about two weeks ago. No idea if something has changed on Gmail side, like spam filter update, but reporting such messages as spam does nothing. I also fear that legit email messages containing important attachments from gmail.com domain might end up in spam after spam filter learns that "attachment = bad". Tried reporting few as phishing in hopes to get some attention, but that probably ain't doing anything at all.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- spxd 5y agoSame for me, at least for one month. I remove all manually. Its time to drop Gmail and use something else.
- rurban 5y agoNope. No changes to the worse for me. Happy for decades, compared to previous solutions
- PascLeRasc 5y agoNo, I haven't had a problem with it. I also haven't had a problem with Fastmail's spam filter, it works fine. And their search is fine too.
- hedora 5y agoI have a gmail account that forwards to my fastmail account. The only problem I've had is that gmail routinely sends non spam messages to my spam folder. You can't actually disable gmail's spam filter, but it's possible to trick it, rendering it ineffective. (There are many guides available online.)
- addingnumbers 5y agoYes, right this minute the most recent three messages in my Gmail inbox are extremely obvious spam with titles like "YourCVSrewards HavejustArrived" and one is full of white-on-white text, which I thought was an easy giveaway for their detection systems.
- umtksa 5y agoNope, no spam in Inbox using free and paid accounts
- soared 5y agoReporting these as spam does actually help and will solve the problem over time.
- jfoster 5y agoWe're coming up to Gmail's 18th birthday.
- 988747 5y agoI received one email that I had to manually mark as spam recently. It was probably the first one in the past 10 years.
- andrewmcwatters 5y agoYes. Something has changed internally allowing for some obvious spam to get past their filters.
- tomudding 5y agoIt has been an issue since September/October last year, but occasionally it seems to get worse (and then suddenly no spam mails).
- haggard_tuning 5y ago
- cryoz 5y agoIt's time to drop GMail.
- thawaya3113 5y agoYes. Absolutely. And the worst part is that the spam I’m getting are emails that are almost exactly the same. I have no idea how the GMail spam detector is unable to filter these out.
- nemetroid 5y agoI have also been receiving a lot of these to my inbox lately. Usually the sender is a creative version of some common name. Some examples from the last three days: Mariya Lorreyn Kerol Medison Silviya Primrouz
- xsc 5y agoYes. Seems like a lot of it is coming from outlook.com
- xsc 5y agoAlso seems that messages land in the inbox first, and then are sometimes filtered, making the gmail web ui jump around as whatever filtering mechanism catches up.
- secondcoming 5y agoSpam is one thing, but the amount of email I receive that's intended for other people is very worrying. I think it has to do with gmail ignoring periods in the username. It's definitely not spam or phishing either, it's really genuine emails that have either been sent to the wrong account or multiple accounts. I've received a draft divorce settlement of an apparently high-profile NY couple, police reports, US Sea Cadet itineraries, bills among other things. I worry about emails intended for me being sent/copied to other people. It's a definite GDPR violation at least.
- morsch 5y agoI'm confused, how is it a definite violation of GDPR and who do you think is doing the violating? How would the handling of periods be relevant? Why wouldn't it just be user error? People send emails to the wrong address all the time. They'll keep doing it, unless you tell them, which you may or may not want to, because they might be embarrased or angry. Here's Google's relevant support page: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10313 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10313
- secondcoming 5y agoI'm in the EU and it's GDPR violation to send someone else's personal info to a third party without permission. Regarding the usernames, for example gmail seems to treat 'firstname.lastname@gmail.com' as being the same as 'firstnamelastname@gmail.com' Further than that I don't know. All I do know is that I occasionally get legitimate emails intended for other people, and I suspect others may be getting mine.
- drc500free 5y agoYes, gmail treats those the same. Which means there is no valid email address belonging to someone else that is the same as yours other than periods. People are just mistyping email addresses, it happens all the time.
- Tagbert 5y agoYes, I get mail all the time for people with similar name Who register for services using my email address. I’m sure that they want dinner of those accounts but it is lost to carelessness
- stevage 5y agoI virtually never see spam in Gmail, and this is no exception. Had my account since the start, my email is used in many places, easy to find, etc. To me, Gmail's spam filtering is nothing short of magical. Weird that it isn't the same for everyone.
- haswell 5y agoI got my address in the invite only days, and historically, what you describe was true for me. Almost magical. But recently (~3 months?), I’ve been experiencing something very similar to what the OP described.
- warrenm 5y agoAnyone else remember going to the GMail homepage and watching your available storage climb upwards like the national debt clock?
- sylware 5y agoStrange, because gmail is still putting in the spam box the emails from my custom and own email server (a rasberry pi sitting next to my IAP modem)... and ppl removing them from their spam box does not seem to have any impact.
- MerelyMortal 5y agoOn average I get one or two spams per day that make it to my Gmail inbox, consisting of: those PDF spams, or emails with subject lines misspelled or spelled with numbers, or obvious spam for dating stuff. On average once a month, a legitimate email will be in the spam folder. For me, Gmail's spam filtering is somewhat helpful and thus decent, but I would not consider it good.
- MerelyMortal 5y agoIn case anyone is still reading this: I just received an email from the sender name of "L0an C0nfirmati0n" with a subject of "**_ C0nfirm Y0ur Request: $9,525 L0an °®° ..." There are images which by default are not displayed, Gmail thinks it's in French and is offering to translate the message. The visible message says ".time is running out - get your $10k" How the F is that not recognized as spam? Beats me…
- 4oo4 5y agoIn case this is partially my fault: I started using Tutanota as my primary email provider a long time ago and just let Gmail fill up with garbage that I'm too lazy to delete (and also in hopes that all the garbage/spam messes with the email scanning that Google does, and wasting their storage space out of spite). There might be others like me that have similar Gmail inboxes, that may be due to making it so hard to bulk delete emails in the app. So I'm sorry, maybe?
- 1_player 5y agoI certainly receive a lot of spam _from_ gmail accounts. 99% of the spam I see has a gmail.com address.
- moralestapia 5y agoMine is backwards, literally. Almost all my legitimate email goes to spam, while hyper-obvious 2000s type of spam "Hello sir, I want to send you 20,000,000 dollars" is common on my inbox. I now have the habit to check my Spam folder first. It has become so stupid that even emails from THEIR OWN DAMN SERVICES, like transactional messages from GCP, go to Spam.
- bamboozled 5y agoYou don’t k know this yet, but the Google AI has foreseen all of this and is trying to get you to click on the emails you need to click on, the ones it knows are good for you.
- mimsee 5y agoYes! I get these messages as a notification to my phone. The message body of the email seems to contain some messages normally sent to people that they really expect, like a github password reset, an email verification link, or a university email directed towards students [0][1]. [0]: https://pastebin.com/kfWTLMjz https://pastebin.com/kfWTLMjz [1]: https://pastebin.com/NmPK2dVY https://pastebin.com/NmPK2dVY Edit: found a second email
- bravetraveler 5y agoI've noticed this as well, it's disappointing because for a while I was using gmail as a sort of 'first pass filter' It's nowhere near as good as it once was
- jfoster 5y agoGoogle claim they're working on it: https://twitter.com/gmail/status/1491495105123045376 https://twitter.com/gmail/status/1491495105123045376
- MerelyMortal 5y agoI think the Twitter reply is probably more accurate: > Is there actually a particular issue behind these that Google is aware of & working on, or is this just a generic response?
- jfoster 5y agoYeah, I really can't figure out whether they actually believe they have an issue with this or not. Nonetheless, they do claim to be working on it.
- drc500free 5y agoYes, especially ones with AI-generated gibberish that mimic transactional (as opposed to marketing) emails.
- winternett 5y agoIt's just a hunch, but I think almost every major change Google has made to the service for many years is in hopes of reducing active users. It's why I hung onto my hotmail account as well, even though MSFT is doing the same thing in slightly less agresive and dramatic ways. Gmail storage being reduced with a subscription service suddenly being in place, when it's vitally linked to years of saved user data on phones is a clue, so is the fact that both Gmail and Hotmail don't clearly show originating emails fully on messages so that users can double check identities of email senders. We're in an age of extortionware with absolutely no consumer voice nor congressional defense, and even though subscription fees seem low right now, they'll only increase as users complain, and there will be no choice but to submit to it all. I don't really get spam, because I signed up for their advanced storage feature, God have mercy on me if I ever decide to switch to iPhone, because most phones no longer support SD cards. I think my next move will be to downgrade to older hardware, and to avoid all of the great new tech that serves their interests more than me. I'm really worn out on the festering parasitic behavior of these companies, it's a trap.
- Goety 5y agoI wholeheartedly agree and have experienced what you are presenting.
- dvxvd 5y agoYes, I noticed more spam last weeks. Also noticed in the last years, that all important emails goes to the spam folder. Compensated by advertisment emails which always goes to Inbox folder.. Everytime i need some confirmation or some gov email or something what is really important to me it is in Spam folder. What's the purpose of the spam folder?..
- coaksford 5y agoThis has been happening to me for the last few months. What gets me is that my email address is not even in the recipients list most of the time. Much of it was sent to my email userpart @aol.com and somehow I'm receiving it in gmail. It seems like if you send a valid gmail userpart with an AOL domain to a gmail server it's just not bothering to spam check. The filter rule that's doing the best job of weeding out this spam is that the email doesn't have my email address in any recipient field, but does have an AOL version of it. I have no idea why gmail would be accepting these messages though.
- eloisius 5y agoI’m getting an increasing number of fishing emails _from_ gmail addresses. I got a fake Amazon order confirmation yesterday, and get fake Norton subscription receipts monthly.
- tluyben2 5y agoBeen using it since it was first announced (had an invite quickly) and have 100s of email addresses going there. The spam filtering is perfect: zero spam and zero false positives. I tried to move but two issues: too much email (other systems immediately choke when I try to transfer; I would have to start from scratch) and spam filters for the ones I try simply do not work: my box fills up with 1000s of spam emails per day and after training for a few weeks that does not get better.
- onphonenow 5y agoSeparately but political spam seems to get through. I was a max dem donor last cycle - never again! You cannot stop the ngp van or whatever spam. There is no global unsubscribe. Jo Biden keeps on emailing me supposedly. Along w every other dem they seem to share heavily. That, extended car warranty and google business listing spam calls
- throwaway135711 5y agoYep - same thing here. It's really, really odd because much of the spam that's arriving in my inbox is the sort of stuff that even a 'hello-world' level spam classifier would catch. Meanwhile, legitimate and non-spammy-looking emails are getting put in spam or literally not even arriving at all.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rcconf 5y agoYes, wow, glad to see this. I have so many spam emails it’s crazy. All fake invoices / hr emails and meetings that are all fake. I’ve been reporting so many that Google sent me a high spam report alert… Not sure what to do, I was going to open a ticket with Google. I haven’t experienced any spam with google for over 10 years, something changed for sure.