6 ms·

To offer a singular data point, contrary to other posters here, I am not seeing this at all, and I pretty actively use my two Gmail addresses which have been ac

by enlyth 4y ago

To offer a singular data point, contrary to other posters here, I am not seeing this at all, and I pretty actively use my two Gmail addresses which have been active since 2005. My spam inbox regularly gets correctly categorized spam, and important emails still correctly land in my inbox.

gambiting 4y ago
Same here - I've had 6 different gmail accounts for years and years, and the frequency with which spam gets through is maybe 1-2 emails a year, if even that.
fluoridation 4y ago
Same. I haven't gotten any spam in my inbox in years. The spammiest mails I get are mailing lists that some business subscribed me to.
mFixman 4y ago
As a middle point between the main post and your comment, I have been getting 1 or 2 spam emails every week for the last couple of months. Gmail's spam filtering was perfect before, so something is going on on my account (although not as dramatic as OP's).
rconti 4y ago
It is incredibly strange to hear from you (and others in this thread) who don't have a spam problem with GMail. From everyone I've talked to, it seemed endemic. From my experiences with my own account (circa 2004), GMail has moved backwards in recent years. I'd say it became a serious problem a few years ago. Marking things as spam is useless because then you immediately start getting legitimate mail marked as spam. Marking those as not-spam just leads directly to getting more spam. It happens with a single click. It's a 2 position slider at this point.
- dwringer 4y ago
  I get an unfiltered spam message in my inbox maybe once every month on average. I always assumed these are new campaigns with the newest "zero-day" exploits of the spam filter. Much more common is getting newsletters for which I have actually signed up, and marked as "Not Spam" in the past, delivered straight to my Spam folder. The number of spam messages I get in general, judging from what shows up in the Spam folder, varies wildly from week to week. Sometimes I'll get five over a two-week period, and then get a week where I receive about 15 per day.
- nkozyra 4y ago
  It comes periodically for me - I'll get 4-5 in a week and then months or a year will go by without one. I have manually marked a large amount of prior emails as spam, not sure how personalized the filters are.
- twic 4y ago
  Zero spam in my inbox, zero items in the spam folder (where they are deleted after 30 days). GMail is not my primary email, though. I use it for Meetup.com, Slack, Steam, maybe one or two other things. A quick google search suggests that my email address does not appear on the internet. Maybe people not suffering from spam have similarly private addresses?
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    My main account is reachable from a few public places. I get spam but all of it goes to the spam folder and none of it to the inbox.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure my main gmail account has actually been dumped in a hack somewhere, it's old as time itself, and I STILL don't get any spam in it. In fact, I actually miss occasionally useful stuff because half my incoming email gets classified as "promotions" and put in a separate folder I never check that was automatically created when I made the account. It's stuff like emails from humble bundle about new bundles and GOG about sales etc, so spam-adjacent
    - devilbunny 4y ago
      That subfoldering made me miss a lot of important stuff too. I turned it off when I realized what I wasn’t seeing. Everything goes to inbox now. I heavily pruned the number of lists I’m on and just deal with the spam-adjacent stuff as it comes in; better than missing something I need to know.
- enlyth 4y ago
  I agree it seems that there is a very polarized effect happening, according to the comments some people get constant spam in their inbox and some people have never gotten anything. It would be interesting to know the cause. I have actually signed up to loads of dodgy websites over the years, my email has been "pwned" according to haveibeenpwned, etc. So there's nothing particular that I've been doing to shield myself from spam, but Google still catches it all perfectly. But then again, I completely believe all the other people saying they _have_ had spam come through, so it remains a mystery as to why. Is it some specialized spam list of a certain group that know how to bypass the spam filter? Is it Google A/B testing their spam filter? Who knows.
ChrisRR 4y ago
Same here. I've had one or two that slip through the cracks once every few months, but otherwise all spam gets sent to the spam box
noirbot 4y ago
I have the middle of this - I have a couple Gmail adddresses/accounts. One of them is reliably getting spammed, often to the order of messages every hour some days, and has been for months. The others are all clean/getting their spam caught in the filter.
1123581321 4y ago
I could’ve written your post (except I would’ve said 2004 instead of 2005) until a few months ago. Since then, about 10-20 of these types of emails get through the spam filter daily. I’ve had some luck creating filters after they hit my inbox, but about half of them don’t have predictable elements. So I do believe something has changed and I wish I was still in your situation.
crazygringo 4y ago
Same here. I haven't had Gmail let a single spam email through in years. To the contrary, I find myself going through my spam folder to mark as NOT spam things like monthly newsletters from arts organizations. There are a bunch of concerts and plays I've sadly missed because of this. (Which I can only assume comes from people abusing the mark-as-spam button instead of properly unsubscribing, which sucks because it leads to other people missing the legitimate emails.) Also things like invoices from Apple purchases (e.g. a paid app or AppleCare) show up in spam. Which isn't a biggie, but it does seem like bizarre that Gmail could ever get that wrong.
mavhc 4y ago
99% fine here too
HideousKojima 4y ago
I'm not getting as much as the OP, but I'm getting 1-3 obvious spam emails in my inbox a week, whereas it was once a month if ever before.
PascLeRasc 4y ago
Same thing here, I can't think of a single spam email I've received since before the pandemic. As a side topic, I've heard a lot of people say that the Gmail UI has changed and that it's unusable now. This is what mine looks like and I really like it, is it not how everyone else's looks too? https://imgur.com/a/3ahD0Ta https://imgur.com/a/3ahD0Ta
dpkirchner 4y ago
Same -- I have three accounts on gmail that I check regularly and I haven't seen spam make it past the filters for months. One of the accounts uses an email address that is, I think, 20 years old and that I have used publicly throughout (and thus gets a fair amount of spam).
jeffbee 4y ago
Also just offering anecdata, the last 10 messages in my spam folder have these origins: 1) 3 "legitimate" spams, i.e. unsolicited messages that the senders believe they should have sent. 3 of these. 2 via Constant Contact and 1 via Salesforce. 2) 1 random porn spam, via random spammer domain with valid SPF and DKIM. 3) 2 phishing scams with the same body arriving from random commercial domains without DKIM. These are almost certainly spread via malware/viruses/worms. 4) 1 Google promotion originating from Google with valid DKIM, because I mark all these as spam. 5) 2 phishing messages, with the phishing warning, that originated from gmail itself via HTTP. These are pwned google accounts or google accounts logged in on machines with malware (effectively, same thing). 6) 1 idiot Republican politician, via Mailchimp.
jader201 4y ago
+1. I have a ridiculous number of Gmail accounts (like 20+), and regularly monitor 5 of them, and none are seeing regular spam. I will say I’ve gotten what I consider spam from Experian where they claim to be MSAs (mandatory service announcements) on my account, but they’re clearly marketing, and I’ve just set up a rule to delete those. Done. I also have gotten on political lists where unsubscribing doesn’t seem effective, so set up another rule to block those. Done. Other than these 2 edge cases (that don’t seem to be blatant spam, just dark patterns), my inboxes are clean of spam. I also have family (wife and two older sons) on Gmail, and haven’t heard them complain about spam. One potential hint though: all of my Gmail comes through personal domains. So maybe these spam attempts are targeting gmail.com domain? I do have a gmail.com email, though, that gets forwarded to my personal domain one, and I still haven’t noticed any spam, FWIW.

by enlyth 4y ago

gambiting 4y ago

Same here - I've had 6 different gmail accounts for years and years, and the frequency with which spam gets through is maybe 1-2 emails a year, if even that.

fluoridation 4y ago

Same. I haven't gotten any spam in my inbox in years. The spammiest mails I get are mailing lists that some business subscribed me to.

mFixman 4y ago

As a middle point between the main post and your comment, I have been getting 1 or 2 spam emails every week for the last couple of months. Gmail's spam filtering was perfect before, so something is going on on my account (although not as dramatic as OP's).

rconti 4y ago

It is incredibly strange to hear from you (and others in this thread) who don't have a spam problem with GMail. From everyone I've talked to, it seemed endemic. From my experiences with my own account (circa 2004), GMail has moved backwards in recent years. I'd say it became a serious problem a few years ago. Marking things as spam is useless because then you immediately start getting legitimate mail marked as spam. Marking those as not-spam just leads directly to getting more spam. It happens with a single click. It's a 2 position slider at this point.

dwringer 4y ago
I get an unfiltered spam message in my inbox maybe once every month on average. I always assumed these are new campaigns with the newest "zero-day" exploits of the spam filter. Much more common is getting newsletters for which I have actually signed up, and marked as "Not Spam" in the past, delivered straight to my Spam folder. The number of spam messages I get in general, judging from what shows up in the Spam folder, varies wildly from week to week. Sometimes I'll get five over a two-week period, and then get a week where I receive about 15 per day.
nkozyra 4y ago
It comes periodically for me - I'll get 4-5 in a week and then months or a year will go by without one. I have manually marked a large amount of prior emails as spam, not sure how personalized the filters are.
twic 4y ago
Zero spam in my inbox, zero items in the spam folder (where they are deleted after 30 days). GMail is not my primary email, though. I use it for Meetup.com, Slack, Steam, maybe one or two other things. A quick google search suggests that my email address does not appear on the internet. Maybe people not suffering from spam have similarly private addresses?
- fluoridation 4y ago
  My main account is reachable from a few public places. I get spam but all of it goes to the spam folder and none of it to the inbox.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure my main gmail account has actually been dumped in a hack somewhere, it's old as time itself, and I STILL don't get any spam in it. In fact, I actually miss occasionally useful stuff because half my incoming email gets classified as "promotions" and put in a separate folder I never check that was automatically created when I made the account. It's stuff like emails from humble bundle about new bundles and GOG about sales etc, so spam-adjacent
  - devilbunny 4y ago
    That subfoldering made me miss a lot of important stuff too. I turned it off when I realized what I wasn’t seeing. Everything goes to inbox now. I heavily pruned the number of lists I’m on and just deal with the spam-adjacent stuff as it comes in; better than missing something I need to know.
enlyth 4y ago
I agree it seems that there is a very polarized effect happening, according to the comments some people get constant spam in their inbox and some people have never gotten anything. It would be interesting to know the cause. I have actually signed up to loads of dodgy websites over the years, my email has been "pwned" according to haveibeenpwned, etc. So there's nothing particular that I've been doing to shield myself from spam, but Google still catches it all perfectly. But then again, I completely believe all the other people saying they _have_ had spam come through, so it remains a mystery as to why. Is it some specialized spam list of a certain group that know how to bypass the spam filter? Is it Google A/B testing their spam filter? Who knows.

ChrisRR 4y ago

Same here. I've had one or two that slip through the cracks once every few months, but otherwise all spam gets sent to the spam box

noirbot 4y ago

I have the middle of this - I have a couple Gmail adddresses/accounts. One of them is reliably getting spammed, often to the order of messages every hour some days, and has been for months. The others are all clean/getting their spam caught in the filter.

1123581321 4y ago

I could’ve written your post (except I would’ve said 2004 instead of 2005) until a few months ago. Since then, about 10-20 of these types of emails get through the spam filter daily. I’ve had some luck creating filters after they hit my inbox, but about half of them don’t have predictable elements. So I do believe something has changed and I wish I was still in your situation.

crazygringo 4y ago

Same here. I haven't had Gmail let a single spam email through in years. To the contrary, I find myself going through my spam folder to mark as NOT spam things like monthly newsletters from arts organizations. There are a bunch of concerts and plays I've sadly missed because of this. (Which I can only assume comes from people abusing the mark-as-spam button instead of properly unsubscribing, which sucks because it leads to other people missing the legitimate emails.) Also things like invoices from Apple purchases (e.g. a paid app or AppleCare) show up in spam. Which isn't a biggie, but it does seem like bizarre that Gmail could ever get that wrong.

mavhc 4y ago

99% fine here too

HideousKojima 4y ago

I'm not getting as much as the OP, but I'm getting 1-3 obvious spam emails in my inbox a week, whereas it was once a month if ever before.

PascLeRasc 4y ago

Same thing here, I can't think of a single spam email I've received since before the pandemic. As a side topic, I've heard a lot of people say that the Gmail UI has changed and that it's unusable now. This is what mine looks like and I really like it, is it not how everyone else's looks too? https://imgur.com/a/3ahD0Ta https://imgur.com/a/3ahD0Ta

dpkirchner 4y ago

Same -- I have three accounts on gmail that I check regularly and I haven't seen spam make it past the filters for months. One of the accounts uses an email address that is, I think, 20 years old and that I have used publicly throughout (and thus gets a fair amount of spam).

jeffbee 4y ago

Also just offering anecdata, the last 10 messages in my spam folder have these origins: 1) 3 "legitimate" spams, i.e. unsolicited messages that the senders believe they should have sent. 3 of these. 2 via Constant Contact and 1 via Salesforce. 2) 1 random porn spam, via random spammer domain with valid SPF and DKIM. 3) 2 phishing scams with the same body arriving from random commercial domains without DKIM. These are almost certainly spread via malware/viruses/worms. 4) 1 Google promotion originating from Google with valid DKIM, because I mark all these as spam. 5) 2 phishing messages, with the phishing warning, that originated from gmail itself via HTTP. These are pwned google accounts or google accounts logged in on machines with malware (effectively, same thing). 6) 1 idiot Republican politician, via Mailchimp.

jader201 4y ago

+1. I have a ridiculous number of Gmail accounts (like 20+), and regularly monitor 5 of them, and none are seeing regular spam. I will say I’ve gotten what I consider spam from Experian where they claim to be MSAs (mandatory service announcements) on my account, but they’re clearly marketing, and I’ve just set up a rule to delete those. Done. I also have gotten on political lists where unsubscribing doesn’t seem effective, so set up another rule to block those. Done. Other than these 2 edge cases (that don’t seem to be blatant spam, just dark patterns), my inboxes are clean of spam. I also have family (wife and two older sons) on Gmail, and haven’t heard them complain about spam. One potential hint though: all of my Gmail comes through personal domains. So maybe these spam attempts are targeting gmail.com domain? I do have a gmail.com email, though, that gets forwarded to my personal domain one, and I still haven’t noticed any spam, FWIW.