[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?
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       Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?
        
       This week I had 7 spam E-Mails actually hitting my Gmail inbox.
       Obviously reported them all and they are still coming through. Now
       the theme changed from FedEx to Viagra and it keeps coming. I was
       with this service for 15 years and can not recall a year I had as
       many spam Mails hitting my inbox in the whole year. Is this an
       isolated incident or does anybody else have problems. I can not
       find anything reporting this so maybe I fucked up and spilled my
       address to one of the more skilled networks.
        
       Author : simlan
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2023-02-03 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
       | sp332 wrote:
       | Yes.
       | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
       | 
       | And it has spread to malware in ads as well.
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34641025
        
         | simlan wrote:
         | Thanks for that. There is some mention of spam but others
         | complaining that Gmail is too tight with their filters... Maybe
         | they are re-adjusting.
        
           | sp332 wrote:
           | Being tighter or looser doesn't help much if the filters
           | aren't tuned right. You can get too much spam in your inbox
           | _and_ too much good email in your spam folder at the same
           | time.
        
       | IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
       | I have seen this.
       | 
       | The issue is that you get added to some sort of list. The sender
       | is from a spam domain that keeps changing so it cannot be
       | blocked.
       | 
       | Im not sure how it happened. But a loved one is affected. I have
       | the persons email open on my pc so I monitor it. My loved one
       | receives phising emails from Norton , FedEx etc impersonators
       | constantly. Script is "his subscription (package) etc will not
       | renew unless he pays". If he replies, then they call and take the
       | cc over the phone.
       | 
       | The person is very gullible to these sort of emails. Ive tried to
       | get them deleted before they hit the inbox.
       | 
       | It is relentless. Ive set up a long list of email filters... but
       | some still get thru.
       | 
       | Im not a developer but i did take many CS classes at school and
       | coded in java. I know how tonuse filters . I've tried to whois
       | and tried going to the hoster, or the email provider, to get this
       | sender banned. Its usually an entity in Poland or Ukraine that
       | chooses to let this happen.
       | 
       | id love to known What else I can do
        
         | mikequinlan wrote:
         | I have set up a whitelist for a friend. Only emails from people
         | she expects to receive emails from end up in her inbox;
         | everything else goes into a 'to be reviewed' folder.
        
       | IceHegel wrote:
       | Has been bad for the last 2 years for me. Used to have 0 and now
       | I get 5 or 6 obvious spam messages in my inbox a week.
        
       | alexgrover wrote:
       | Yep, been having similar issues for ~6 months.
        
       | shortcake27 wrote:
       | Yeah I've been getting loads of spam hitting my inbox. It's
       | actually hilarious, email addresses such as
       | "whhdjsjwjsjbxjejwjabdjeje@mail.ru" with the subject "Free Yeti
       | Hopper" and yet Google can't identify it as spam.
       | 
       | The good news is that in my case, there are patterns I can
       | filter. I've set up about 30 filters so far to automatically
       | delete such emails. Works great. I recommend using exact matching
       | (double quotes) to avoid false positives. I really need to move
       | away from Gmail, but filters are _awesome_.
        
         | simlan wrote:
         | Interesting my cases supposedly came from some .edu or other
         | educational related TLDs at first then it devolved into
         | randoms... Well I will need to monitor and maybe do my own
         | rules as well.
        
         | IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
         | Can you pls explain how you filter? In my experience the sender
         | 
         | whhdjsjwjsjbxjejwjabdjeje@mail.ru
         | 
         | Is never the same. Not the domain. Not the sender. How do you
         | filter a sender that keeps changing into random characters, if
         | the subject or content is also changing?
        
         | Euphorbium wrote:
         | I too am getting the same kind of spam in my inbox. And it is
         | coming from gmail addresses, or at least appears like that.
         | Seems like hello world difficulty machine learning filter
         | should be catching those with 99% success. My theory is that
         | google decided to boot me off the service as I am unprofitable
         | and use up their free resources to the fullest.
        
       | moosedev wrote:
       | Something radically changed for me 7-10 days ago, wherein certain
       | non-spam but clearly not-inbox-worthy emails are now consistently
       | hitting the Inbox, often with the "Important according to Google
       | magic" flag set.
       | 
       | Examples: A clearly promotional email from a manufacturer
       | announcing new products, a special offer from a hotel I stayed at
       | once 7 years ago, _every single breaking news email from the
       | Seattle Times_.
       | 
       | FWIW, I'm not seeing proper spam by the old-school definition
       | breaching the Inbox (Viagra, replica Rolex, et al). I guess
       | that's good.
       | 
       | Still feels like something significant broke very recently, but
       | tbh I'd already lost faith in Gmail's classification after seeing
       | how many genuine emails end up in Spam the last 3-5 years. It's
       | particularly painful to watch in light of how far other
       | applications of ML have advanced since ole' Gmail was state-of-
       | the-art. In other words: shouldn't Google (disclosure: my former
       | employer) be much, much better at this?
        
       | Operyl wrote:
       | Yup, I have seen a significant uptick of spam on my Google
       | Workspaces accounts.
        
       | blakesterz wrote:
       | Nope, not any changes here, but I'm on the paid thing, Workspaces
       | or whatever they call it this month. I've seen other people
       | writing about it, but I'm not seeing any misses at all.
        
       | sysadmin21 wrote:
       | Yes, quite a few emails which are exceedingly clearly spam.
        
         | simlan wrote:
         | "fedex" by any chance ?
        
       | josefresco wrote:
       | Seems like an uptick. I'm getting 4-5 now daily that are passing
       | the spam filter whereas previously it would be 4-5 a week. Use
       | both Google Workspace and _free_ Gmail.
        
       | nubinetwork wrote:
       | I don't get a lot of spam to my Gmail surprisingly, but I had one
       | 3 days ago in my inbox with only a picture attached inline...
       | based on the filename, it sounds like an invoice scam (I didn't
       | open it).
        
         | simlan wrote:
         | That is exactly my experience as well. Nothing noticeable for
         | years and then a quite obvious one and it kept coming after
         | that.
        
       | pcdoodle wrote:
       | And yet we run into situations where customers gmail us and we
       | can't reply. Gmail is not email.
        
       | wetpaws wrote:
       | A huge burst of spam recently, although it got a bit better for
       | the last couple of weeks. Even had to file a bug report/complaint
       | to G.
        
       | juliennakache wrote:
       | Same here I keep getting the same spam from ACE Hardware. I've
       | been reporting it a couple of months now but they keep coming in.
       | It's weird.
        
       | manuelabeledo wrote:
       | Geek Squad "invoices", anyone?
       | 
       | It is mildly infuriating that I have to periodically check my
       | spam folder, looking for things like insurance claim updates,
       | credit card bills, etc., yet the filter is bad enough to let
       | emails from addresses like "whatever_somenumber@gmail.com"
       | through, with the most outrageous PDF documents attached.
        
         | nubinetwork wrote:
         | I get those on my ISP email, but sadly nowhere else.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-03 23:02 UTC)