Gmail filtering forum notifications as spam

[ocean59]

While it has been my experience that Google's Gmail service has done a pretty good job of only putting legit spam in my spam folder, this morning I noticed something different.

Forum notifications were now being sent directly to spam, for the first time ever. Even more curiously, when I opened one of the messages, it said this:

Why is this message in Spam? We've found that lots of messages from forum@cassiopaea.org are spam.

The only link it gives underneath is to Google's standard spam policies, and suggests that multiple other users have been reporting similar messages as spam.

What is also strange, is that I have a filter set up specifically for notifications from this forum (topics updates, PM, etc.). This way, all the messages go to their own folder, and everything stays organized. Normally a filter like this is enough to keep these messages out of the spam folder - but I guess not anymore. I'll have to make the filter more specific perhaps, and keep an eye on the spam folder (which is a good idea anyways of course).

Anyhow, just a head's up in case anyone else starts experiencing the same censorship. If anyone knows how I can help 'unreport' it, please share, as it isn't clear just looking at it how to do so.

 

[mcb]

Yes, for quite some time Gmail has been letting me know that my notifications were not sent to spam only because of a filter I have that says not to. I've had to turn that flag on recently for all of my filters because they were sending so many legit messages to spam.

It's too bad. Gmail used to have very good spam filtering. That was the reason I started using it in the first place. Now I am considering other alternatives.

 

[rs]

FWIW: I wouldn't put too much into Google's "explanation". I receive SPAM trying to sell me V!agra or pretending to be a pretty girl who wants to get to know me (and infect my computer...), but I also get bank updates and other mail from legitimate business contacts occasionally forwarded to the spam folder for no obvious reason. I wouldn't ascribe motive to the Google decision to mark a forum message as spam. For me, Google mail produces large numbers of false positives as well as false negatives with their SPAM filter.

Recognizing SPAM is an art, not a science, and I have never encountered a SPAM filter that is worth the effort or produces reliable results; I'm much better at recognizing SPAM myself, thankyouverymuch. My SPAM folder is Just Another Inbox IMO. In Google mail, you can press the "Not Spam" button for a selected message. What that actually does is anybody's guess... I don't know if Google mail supports "whitelisting", and I'm not sure that such support would be a good idea as the "from:" field can be easily spoofed.

 

[Sirius]

Read this _http://www.gtricks.com/gmail-tricks/whitelist-multiple-sender-addresses/ regarding whitelisting.

 

[SeekinTruth]

FWIW, yahoo mail was really nonsensical with what got put in the spam folder and what didn't. Then I had to update my yahoo mail several months ago (I kept declining but at some point I no longer had a choice) and this new version is excellent with spam. Haven't had anything that wasn't spam end up in the spam folder and haven't had any spam get through to the inbox. Don't know how they did it, but just in case anybody's looking for a mainstream free email account that handles spam really well, you might want to try it.