...
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=9008&topic=12852.
If you find a message wrongly classified as spam, you can unmark the message. Just select the message, and click Not Spam along the top of your Spam label. Unmarking a message moves it to your inbox. If you find that some senders' messages are consistently being mislabeled as spam, you can prevent this by adding their email addresses to your Contacts list. Gmail will deliver messages from members of your Contacts list to your inbox, unless they meet these criteria.
My message: http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/8bb8523affac721d
I first found out about 2 weeks ago that some messages from my friend were not getting through to my inbox. It wasn't until today that I thought to search my Spam folder for messages from this contact. Sure enough -- there were 9 messages that Google's spam filter incorrectly flagged as spam!! This friend's e-mail address *IS* IN MY CONTACT LIST, so why would her messages be marked as spam?? They should be white-listed, according to <http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10514&topic=12852> and according to common sense! Some e-mails from her DO get through (including when she forwarded the ones I didn't get the first time), but some do not. It's rather frustrating, because her messages never should have ended up in the spam folder to begin with. There's absolutely NOTHING spammy about them. <http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=9008&topic=12852> says: Gmail will deliver messages from members of your Contacts list to your inbox, unless they meet <http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10514> these criteria:
While adding a sender to your Contacts will typically prevent their messages from being classified as spam, this rule does not apply when: A) the message is not authenticated AND B) the 'To:' and the 'From:' fields contain the same address.
When I looked at the message headers, the sender most certainly was NOT sending with the To: and From: fields set to the same address, so (A) should be false, so (A) AND (B) should also be false, so it should NOT mark it as spam.
(Also, I don't see this 'mailed-by' field when I click 'show details'. I assume that means their message IS authenticated?)
By the way, I would have posted this message in an existing thread about this problem here: <http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/d9ffe1e6fd7f34e9> but it didn't show the option anywhere to "reply". Does anyone know why this is? Is it because the thread is too old (2007-06-12) and you can't reply to old threads or something??
Here's a suggestion for the Gmail developers: Make your spam filter more transparent. For example, let us click a link "why was this marked as spam?" to show a list of factors that led to the super-threshold spam score: bayesian filters on words in the body? to: and from: addresses the same? message from a blacklisted sender? etc. ... like SpamAssasin and friends do. I think the spam scoring details should be stored in the message headers. Anyway, I have NO IDEA why these messages were marked as spam, and increasing the transparency of the spam filter would be one solution to that. It would also provide useful information for troubleshooting whenever the filter didn't work as expected.
Please let me know if there's anything I can do about this or if Google is going to acknowledge this as a bug.
Thanks in advance!
http://theubergeeks.net/2006/06/26/on-gmails-spam-filter/.
Today, I realized there was something wrong because a buddy had just emailed me a song and I didn’t get the email, I checked and checked my inbox but there was nothing there, so I decided to take a quick look at the Spam folder. As expected, all the emails I’d marked as spam on my inbox were there, but to my surprise so were tons of emails from my contacts, and two job offers from days ago. What the hell? I reported everything as Not Spam and now the emails are in my inbox, but I’m days late to reply to my contacts, and the job offers once I replied told me they hired someone else due to my “lack of interest”. Why thank you Gmail.
2007-06-12
I have a specific address added to my contact list... but emails from this address are still being sent to my SPAM folder. Shouldn't an address that is on your contact list NEVER be labled as spam? This would make sense to me.
According to Google's own help section, mail from someone in your contact list will not go to SPAM. However, I am having this exact same issue. My contact's mail is going to SPAM, I've added him the the contact list and it's still going to SPAM. I've been directed by Google's help section to this Help discussion as support for the issue. Anybody have any insights as to how to whitelist an address?
2007-06-13
So far, there is no way to do that. Why this continues to happen is very unclear, and it's sure annoying. Maybe we should be reporting it as a bug: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=bugs&ctx=bugflow_receivenewbug
2007-05-22
My contact's email is being treated like spam. I have done everything by the book so that my contact's email is sent to my inbox but it seems as if Gmail have decided that his email address is spam no matter what. I have added the email address to my contact list. Also the promise by gmail below "Gmail will always deliver messages from members of your Contacts list to your inbox". is a lie... Please help
I have the same problem. Sender is in contact list, but e-mail goes to spam. One twist -- the e-mail is machine generated - don't know if that would matter....
Others have had the same problem; it is frustrating, and nobody knows why it happens.
2007-06-28
A lot of people have been seeing emails in their contact list going to spam. I'm one of the victims. Earlier someone suggested we should report it as a bug to Gmail and the more people report it as a bug, the more likely they'll fix it. So report! Tyler,
I would if they actually had a way to submit bug reports!
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Message-Delivery-en/browse_thread/thread/37badb5ba8159d53/.
My blogger account is set to send me e-mails when people post comments. However, Gmail constantly puts those e-mails in the spam folder. I already have a filter for those messages to label them correctly, but is it possible to make sure they aren't classified as spam? Of course, the e-mail addresses don't come authenticated when they originate from a blog post, so I guess that's why Gmail marks them as spam. If there is no way of doing this yet, this is a feature I would love to have: a filter option that would be "Bypass spam filter", when I'm sure I don't want e-mails corresponding to a particular criteria to be classified as spam.
2008-02-27
I'm having the same problem. I receive mail from my church, the e-mail address is in my contact list and I also have a filter set so it is automatically labeled, but it goes into my spam folder. I would also like to know if there is a way to stop mail for which you already have a filter set, from landing in the spam folder.
If you find that some senders' messages are consistently being mislabeled as spam, you can prevent this by adding their email addresses to your Contacts list. Gmail will always deliver messages from members of your Contacts list to your inbox.
2008-01-08
There seems to be a bug in the current spam detection procedure. As stated by Appliantologist earlier, in some cases even when a sender is properly identified in Gmail's contact list the email is placed into the Spam folder anyway. If the developers cannot figure out how to correct this obvious problem, a workaround could provided to extend the filter capability to add the label of "inbox" as one of the label options. Then one could individually create filters for the problematic addresses and force them to be placed in the Inbox where they should be. This is assuming that the user filtering can override the system's spam filtering i.e., the user filtering is invoked before the system's spam filtering.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/9a864ac1adaa035d.
2007-08-14
check out the multiple threads on this. And adding the address to your contact list will NOT stop it from being treated as spam. I am hand monitoring multiple accounts now and its sucking a ton of time. :-(
2007-08-21,
Add me as a 3rd who's had many emails from folks who ARE in my contact list show up in my spam filter. I get way too much spam in the spam folder as it is so it's very easy to miss valid ones..except that out of the 100 on the first page "today", there were 15 from valid addresses that are in my contact list.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/5a818be98cf9e8e9/.
2007-10-19
How long has this been going on? I have been getting less and less email from the gmail account in the last three weeks or so but didn't really get concerned until a forward *I* sent from a remote account was just refused by gmail and a response from a friend never got through in the last few days.
Same stuff happens to me. Messages from a person that IS IN MY CONTACTS keep falling into SPAM folder for unknown reason. This happens to about 80% of her messages. The oddest thing is that her mail account is ALSO hosted at Google Apps, so I just can't understand why regular Google-to-Google mail from a person in my contacts keeps being marked as spam.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/e522bb05c2b11089/.
I'm getting a false positive. I'm subscribed to a yahoo group and the sender (group email) is in my contact list, but every email sent to the group ends in my spam folder... no matter if i press "this is not spam".
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/45289dd06a437f68.
2008-03-14
Since starting with gmail over a year ago, I've been very satisfied, especially with the accuracy of the spam filter. Starting about a week ago, I've noticed that more and more legitimate pieces of mail that I get from mailing lists have been ending up in the spam folder. However, this morning was just awful -- there were 15 pieces of legitimate email in the SPAM folder! This was a huge qualitative change. Has google recently (very recently) introduced a new algorithm for spam filtering? If so, please roll it back!
I agree Victor. I have been on vacation for the last week and came back to find loads of mail which usually finds its way to my inbox suddenly being caught by the spam filter. Today 8 emails so far. Not good.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Message-Delivery-en/browse_thread/thread/1396d2cc042b0311.
Every day I get an email from my ISP telling me what my ADSL usage for the month to date is. In recent weeks Gmail has changed its behaviour and now keeps shooting these emails into the spam box. I have tried everything I know how in the hope of fixing this, but STILL it goes on!
the sender, another one for the subject line, etc.) Yet Google STILL does not GET it that I do NOT regard those emails as spam. Every *** day I must click in the check box and click on NOT SPAM before I delete the remaining hundred-plus spam mails for the day. These emails used to come through without a hassle, every day. Now they get filtered as spam EVERY day! It's CRAZY!
- I've clicked on NOT SPAM.
- I've added that sender to my Contacts list
- I've created filters to label those emails "ADSL" (one filter for
2008-04-29
I have the same problem. Emails I've marked as "NOT spam" and applied filters & labels, etc. keep ending up in the Spam folder. Why can't Gmail add a optional filter rule that puts an email into the Inbox after applying the label? As it stands, the filters & labels are applied and the email still ends up in the spam folder.
I've got the same problem for a some newsletters I would like to receive. Probably a lot of people rather hit the 'report spam' button then to unsubscribe themselves. Why isn't adding the sender to my contacts enough to stop these mails being considered as spam?
Sarah: My spam/phishing problem is very specific: I forward emails from my school email address to my Gmail account and read them there. Because of this, both the From: and To: fields contain my name... Gmail constantly treats these messages as either spam, phishing attacks, or both. How do I fix this, and why is Google so against a whitelisting feature that would solve this problem instantly?
2008-05-20
I have the exact same problem as Eric. Up until about a month ago I had been successfully forwarding my messages from a grad school e-mail account to my gmail account. It's clear that Gmail has recently changed its spam filter program, and it is royally messing things up. I find it frustrating that none of the posts from Gmail has apologized for this. Every message from my school account now has a big red label that says it may be phishing. A second after I open this e-mail in my inbox, it is moved over to my spam folder. I have labeled it "not spam", I have told it it's not a phishing mail, and have the address in my contacts. None of this has worked. I've even tried to forwarding my school mail to a second gmail account, and having that forward mail to my main account. This is also unsuccessful. I've unspammed over a hundred e-mails now and getting really frustrated. What should I do?
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/657a226507972f16.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Message-Delivery-en/browse_thread/thread/1396d2cc042b0311.
who wants to add newsletter subscriptions to their contact list? I have about 25!
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Past-discussions/browse_thread/thread/adaef9d84586e528/.
Yeah, those are the workarounds that I am using now. But unfortunately I receive emails from quite a few different people and don't want them all in my contact list. I especially receive plenty of emails from Yahoo groups and Yahoo always adds short advertisements to those emails. And thus those get marked as spam... [Never thought of that consequence of this practice of Yahoo. I guess it's another good reason that they should stop adding ads to people's messages!]
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/2f44edfc7c004281/.
since the beginning of gmail [I have been receiving] the qt (trolltech) developer mailing list, and of course nobody of that list is in my contact list as 'friend'. now for about the time it is already mentioned here every day 2-10 mails from this mailing list get marked as spam.
I also use POP and I also have had legitimate messages trapped in the Google spam filter. I have a perfectly good spam filter on my client, and I never check my e-mail on the web. I was trying to turn off spam filtering entirely, so I wouldn't miss out on important messages, and was disappointed to find out that this is not possible.
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=9009&query=whitelist&topic=0&type=f.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/feb1f353bc715039/.
(Problem: E-mail forwarded from one Gmail account (Google Apps) to another has to pass through Gmail's spam filter twice -- should be able to turn off the first one, so that one only has to check the Spam filter of terminal account) Hi, I also need the feature to turn the spam filter off. I am using google to deliver email to my domain and then forward them to my regular gmail account. I have teached the spam filter at my gmail account to work fine. However, now, as the emails are going through the gmail for the domain, dozens of messages are ending in the spam folder. It would be enough to just add an option to move the messages from the spam folder to inbox and then forward them. Or just forward all the messages including the spam. I cannot just move to this "gmail for domain", as I am already using my regular gmail account for many things. So now I need to regularly log to two gmail accounts and check the spam folders. It's very annoying. And I believe there must be a way to easily solve this problem. Note: the problem isn't with just a few addresses. It happens with almost all people that reply to me for the first time.
[Gmail / Accessing using POP (category)] iv) I recently sent a test message an email account which I don't use very often, [username]@hotpop.com The message was Subject: "This is a test to my GMail account" Body: "1234567" This was interpreted by GMail as spam and placed in the spam folder. The SMTP server used to send teh message was that of my ISP here in Australia. Why would the spam filter make this error? v) I send many emails to many people. It is not very convenient to have to go into GMail's spam folder every 30-60 minutes to correct the filter's mistakes. ... Possible solutions: a) Allow the user to turn off the spam filtering, as requested numerous times before b) Include messages in the Spam folder in POP3 downloads AND give the the option to have messages in the Spam folder forwared as for messages in the Inbox. One thing I might try I suppose: I have a feeling that, if the external POP3 client is configured to use GMail's SMTP server, then GMail will keep a copy of that outgoing mail. This might mean that the 'To' addresses are whitelisted. However, this does not get over the problem of email generated following the filling in of a web form e.g. even if I fill in a form enquiring about how to become an Amway or Herbalife rep., then that is my choice and I really would liek to have their auroresponder opt-in confirmation message delivered to me and not filtered off by GMail. If that message really is too 'spam-like' then it should be left to my client-side filter to move it to the Outlook spam folder where I can easily see the message, and not require logging it to a web-based user interface to make the correction. To sum up: by all means, have a spam filter, but don't make it compulsory and especially don't make it so that it greatly reduces the usability of POP3 access by people using Outlook and other email clients.
... Downloading spam to POP3 boxes sounds a very, very bad idea. When I say I get a lot I only mean maybe a hundred or so a day. Even that would be a lot of bandwidth if everyone had the same and downloaded to POP3. But on other email addresses I get several times that. I don't want to see problems with Gmail because of downloading to POP3 huge quantities of spam, and this is just another way of cluttering up the Internet with spam. Which in turn makes me think no, don't make the Spam filter optional.
All I can say, Doug, is look at the many requests from other frustrated GMail users who had important legitimate messages mis- classified by GMail's spam filter. If most people find GMail's filtering not to be a benefit rather than a problem, then they will doubtless leave the filter on and accept whatever decisions Gmail makes on their behalf. They will therefore not add to the volume of junk being downloaded to POP3 email clients (I think that's what you mean when you say 'boxes'). Those people who are finding the GMail filter to be a nuisance can turn it off and deal with any spam at their PC with suitable software. Take this analogy: Imagine if the Post Office went through your incoming stamped mail and removed anything it thought was 'junk' (e.g. competitions from Reader's Digest) and, without telling you, they retained it at the sorting office. Now and again, they do this with personal letters from people such as your sister overseas (especially when she writes to you about the raise she got at work and how she's thinking of starting a business at home); they also particularly like to intercept some greetings and Christmas cards, apparently at random. If you don't collect them from the sorting office within 30 days, they will be destroyed. This is the policy, and there is nothing you can do about it. Now, when you've picked up these items from the sorting office, you've told them that mail from those people is OK, but still, occasionally, they intercept and detain some items, but things are a lot better. But also imagine that you are someone who likes to put yourself on mailing lists and enter prize draws etc. in shopping malls and the like - you want to get those mailings, especially when they have a prize cheque! But almost without fail, those mailings about the competitions you entered are intercepted by the post office and detained, according to their policy. You plead with them them: "I'm so sorry, but it's really quite inconvenient to have to drive to the sorting office every day to see if you've accidentally detained some of my mail that I actually want - please just deliver everything addressed to me and I'll sort it myself." "Sorry, rules are rules, no exceptions" is the answer you get. "We're doing it for your own good, and we're much better at detecting illegitimate mail than you are. If you want to have everything delivered, get people to send it to you by courier." How do you feel now?
Those people who are finding the GMail filter to be a nuisance can turn it off and deal with any spam at their PC with suitable software.
Which is fine so long as it doesn't impact with anyone's use of GMail. But I'm not convinced it won't, can you quantify it?
Take this analogy:
I've heard it before. It isn't really a very good one. Not only does it ignore any possible effects on others, it isn't accurate anyway. GMail's filters can be trained. GMail's spam folder can be easily searched. I get all sorts of email and GMail rarely makes a mistake.
But if it can be turned off with guaranteed no impact on other users, then that's fine. But I do not see how removing it won't add to the amount of spam eating up bandwidth on the net.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Past-discussions/browse_thread/thread/273f71fcbc5af476/.
My main issue with gmail spam filter, beside its poor results, is its utter redundancy. My email client filter is already fully trained. There is no point for me to toilet train gmail filter as well. Therefore I simply would like to disable it altogether.
Too late =:
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/msg/1870d78dd9fbffae.
Most use POP3 as I do, so they never see their spam trap unless they think to go looking.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/197713aba7b2cb3c.
Thanks for the tip, but this would mean that I have to keep updating the contact list on Gmail [web client] just to avoid legit mails being taken as spam. Isnt there a way to disable or at least modify / adjust the Gmail spam filter?
I have pop3 setup and I don't want to have to come and sign on to the webmail just to check my spam folder. Can we at least have all mail folders including spam be picked up via pop3 or disable the spam at all so we don't miss "ANY" email in our pop3 in-boxes? This seems would seem to be a dumb oversight in gmail. I see how it could help but it is getting to many legit emails and I can't like the OP control when and who is going to send me an email.. and if I miss it withing the first 24hrs then they are pretty much a lost customer.. so adding the address after the fact is a lost cause in most cases and again is a waste of our time if we are choosing to bypass the webmail for pop3. 2cents lets get this working!
You are absolutely right Fuzzed! I love Gmail and I love that I can setup the mail addresses from all my .com domains, but like you say, I don't want to log in just to view spam mails. I just tried to set up a Gmail rule that for each mail that enters my spam mailbox will be moved back to the inbox, but it doesn't seem to work like I want to. But perhaps there is a trick of some sort to use the Gmail rules to fix this?
...
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/msg/75284697f805ffc5,
I suggest that you set the SPAM filter on as default. But not being able to receive them in out pop3 in-boxes is still a problem. Regardless of the content. Ultimately if I want SPAM in my inbox then that is my choice. We are just asking Google to give us that choice. Like we said above we dont want to have to log in to the web version to check our mail.. that's what the pop3 is for.
I agree; I'd like to have a way to turn gmail's spam filters off, but have it on by default, which would fit most users. I've set my own rules/filters in gmail to catch definite spam and delete it (a lot of backscatter). I've been logging in and training gmail's filters every few days, but still get up to 5% false positives. I'd rather have that come to my pop3 inbox and get dealt with by more extensive rules I've been able to create there.
I wonder if there's any update on this. If not, does anyone know how to contact google about the issue? I have a similar problem; Needing to have pop access to the spam folder. Thanks all.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/39503a7fe583a93f.
Since the other thread has apparently been closed by a Google manager, without reply or fixing the problem, I would like to readdress the major lacking in ability of the Spam Filter on the GMail. I would personally like the option of removing the spam filter completely, since there is no control over it to improve its false positive filtering, and no way to insure that messages will not be put in there from the same source, again in the future. I have a form on my web site which I use for contacts. Any message coming from this form is put into the spam folder. Any message from anyone. I have marked all of them "NOT SPAM" for the last year (seriously, a whole year), and have looked for other ways for the filter to recognize that these are messages I want, such as Staring them as they come it. They get starred... and put in the spam folder. .. /sigh. I know that Google has been asked several times for the option of turning off the filter, especially for POP accounts. I love the Gmail service, but this spam filter area is simply horrible. We need help here. Simply can not risk the business loss from a contact form message not getting through to me.
Google spam filter is way too aggressive. I had a domain name expire because I could not receive any e-mail from the registrar. The mail does not even show up in my spam folder. I am not receiving a lot of other important e-mail because of Google's broken spam filter. I don't receive any e-mail from two banks where I have accounts, even though they both send me e-mail at least monthly. It is no use to join any sort of mailing list, because my gmail account simply does not accept mail from them. All this legitimate e-mail is being discarded outright --- it does not even appear in my spam folder. I realize that GMail is not a paid service, but even so, there is a certain minimum level of service that should be upheld when members of the public sign up for it and come to depend on it for their day-to-day business. I look forward to seeing a response from Google. But I will have no choice but to stop using GMail if my important e-mails continues to be discarded.
I too have been having this problem, to the point where I've almost sent an email to a company complaining their distributor ignored me. Just before hitting send, I got the idea that maybe google's spam filter was to blame (again) and indeed... I've now decided to stop using my gmail account entirely, and I won't be giving out my gmail address anymore, since I don't get the mail sent to it in too many cases. It really sucks, because it's great otherwise: free pop access, and (a backup of) all the mail available online... but if the mail does not arrive, what good is all that?? And what good does pop access do me if I have to go through a website after all, to check if it gave me all the mail I received?!? I can only hope a few of the bigger customers using this through the 'apps for your domain' program will lose enough important email for them to complain, and then perhaps this will get fixed. There's so many ways of fixing it easily, from an option to turn it of, to just passing a spam report to any pop request (limited to say, 1 per hour or so, if needed) listing sender names and subjects, etc etc.
Since the other thread has apparently been closed by a Google manager, without reply or fixing the problem,
That is sad and does not bode well for getting this fixed...
sigh.
You can say that again :-(
Simply can not risk the business loss from a contact form message not getting through to me.
Sad as it is, I can only hope enough people have similar experiences for this to start mattering to google.
I have the same problem too, and i'm loosing business now cause my clients think i'm a goof. [...] It's easy to say "add your friends to contact list", but that's quite a narrow solution considering you're introducing yourself to new clients all the time; you have to accept their main, and then act. It's just not right. We should be able to have a bit more control over spam settings.
http://netzreport.googlepages.com/gmail_the_problem_with_spam_mails.html. [very well-written (category)]
Gmail: The Problem With Spam Mails Although Gmail is convincing in many regards, it has not found a user-friendly way to handle spam mails yet. Google's free email service Gmail [...] has some shortcomings in the way it handles spam mails. At first glance, Gmail seems to have found a good solution: A spam filter examines all incoming mails. If a mail is believed to be a spam mail, it is moved to the spam folder. Mails that have been moved to the spam folder are automatically deleted after 30 days. As no spam filter is free from errors, it can happen that legitimate mails are marked as spam and thus are moved to the spam folder by mistake. This leads to the potential risk that legitimate mails are automatically deleted after 30 days. Gmail faces this issue in two ways: One measure is to never move mails to the spam folder whose sender is in the contact list. Another measure is to give users the opportunity to examine the content of the spam folder. If they find a mail that is not spam but a legitimate mail, they can mark this mail accordingly. It is then automatically moved back to the inbox folder. So, what is the problem? One problem is that the spam filter cannot be deactivated and that mails in the spam folder are automatically deleted after 30 days. If one wants to prevent the deletion of legitimate mails, he has to examine the spam folder at least every 30 days. However, the actual problem this article is about is a bit different. Gmail offers free POP3 and SMTP access. Therefore, users have the choice between using Gmail via the web interface (webmail) and using Gmail via their email program (e.g. Outlook or Thunderbird). If they have opted for their email program, they have the problem that mails in the spam folder will not be downloaded. They are forced to log in via the web interface at least every 30 days to check if legitimate mails have been moved to spam folder. A user who has decided for POP3 and SMTP access usually has also decided against webmail. Thus, the situation at present decreases the comfort of the POP3 access significantly. The Gmail team could address themselves to this problem in two ways: They could give POP3 access to the spam folder or they could allow users to deactivate the spam filter so that mails are not moved to the spam folder in the first place. On the other hand, it might be the case that Google wants to create certain incentives. One incentive could be that users should use the web interface at least every 30 days -- in order to present ads to the user. Another incentive could be to that users should add their contacts to Gmail's contact list. Let's assume that Google is just not aware of the issue. Therefore, we would only need to drop a hint. Gmail users who are unhappy with the present situation can help in this regard. The more users send a corresponding feature request to Google, the more likely it is that Google will implement this feature one day. Helping to convince Google is fairly easy: 1. Mark and copy the following text: Deactivating spam filter / providing POP3 access to mails moved to the spam folder Dear Gmail Team, I enjoy Gmail, but I think the POP3 access lacks an important feature: One cannot download mails that have been moved to the spam folder. The problem is that mails in the spam folder are automatically deleted after 30 days. As there will never be a spam filter that works 100% correctly, one has to use the web interface at least every 30 days to check if Gmail has moved legitimate mails to spam folder by mistake. If ones does not log in every 30 days, one runs the risk of loosing legitimate mails. The situation at present decreases the comfort of the POP3 access significantly. Therefore, I suggest a feature that enables one to download mails that have been moved to the spam folder. Alternatively, I suggest an option that makes it possible to disable the spam filter so that mails are not moved to the spam folder in the first place. 2. Open Gmail's page feature request in a new browser window/tab. (To achieve this, click on the link with the right mouse button and choose the corresponding command.) 3. In the new browser window/tab, paste the copied text below "I have a better idea:". 4. Important: Enter your email address below "Email address" so that the Gmail team can send you an answer to your request. 5. Click on "Submit". You can also help by drawing other people's attention to this issue (e.g. by setting a link to this page on your home page). Let us hope that Google is easy to persuade. By the way, if someone gets a personal reply to his or her feature request, it would be nice to drop a note (contact information).
Solution: Bug them until they fix it.
Workaround: Log into the web client every couple weeks (< 30 days) and look for spam?
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Message-Delivery-en/browse_thread/thread/1396d2cc042b0311.
2008-04-29
Emails I've marked as "NOT spam" and applied filters & labels, etc. keep ending up in the Spam folder. Why can't Gmail add a optional filter rule that puts an email into the Inbox after applying the label? As it stands, the filters & labels are applied and the email still ends up in the spam folder.
"Not Spam" is only visible if you're not doing a search?!
Solution: This seemed to only be the case when using the Konquerer browser. When I did the search in Firefox, I was able to click "select all", and then from the "more options" drop-down select "not spam".
http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html.
... Gmail users can mark and unmark any message as spam, at any time. To increase the inbox delivery rate of your messages, make sure that all recipients on your distribution lists actually want to receive the mail. Visit the following sections for some tips on how to make sure your messages are welcomed by Gmail users. ...
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/1e64ac629fcded62/
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Message-Delivery-en/browse_thread/thread/1396d2cc042b0311.
... If messages from your ISP are suddenly going to spam, then most likely something has happened recently to damage the reputation of your ISP. Please alert them to the problem, and direct them to our Bulk Senders Guide, so they can correct any errors and ensure proper delivery of their messages. Our Bulk Senders Guide is located here: http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html
I've got the same problem for a some newsletters I would like to receive. Probably a lot of people rather hit the 'report spam' button then to unsubscribe themselves.
It's not fair that a company should be punished and that other users should be affected (false positives for that legitimate, opt-in-only newsletter) just because of some stupid people who don't understand how the "unsubscribe" feature of newsletters works and thinks it would be easier just to mark as Spam!
The reason I ask is that I have seen many delivery status notifications in my Spam folder -- probably mostly backscatter from spam that had spoofed an address at my domain as the sender...
So if useless delivery status notification backscatter like that can end up in the Spam bucket, what's to prevent valid delivery status notifications from accidentally ending up there too...
Gmail's help article talks about them as if they are confident that they will arrive in your Inbox where you'll actually see/notice them...
Gmail always generates a delivery status notification, automatically, if we were unable to deliver the message to the other domain. If you didn't receive a delivery status notification indicating temporary or permanent failure, then the message was successfully transferred to the other email provider. Since temporary failure notifications may take some time to appear, please wait a few hours. If you don't receive any delivery status notifications, and the recipient still hasn't received the message, we suggest contacting the other webmail provider for further information on locating the message. If the other webmail provider is unable to resolve the problem, please ask them to visit our Help Center article on receiving from Gmail.
— Tyler (2008-05-20 21:19) (via http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest)
Make the whitelist feature work 100% of the time. People in my Contacts list should be whitelisted so that messages from my contacts *never* end up in the Spam bucket. I know that's how it's *supposed* to work currently, but I recently discovered that it does not work. I discovered a whole bunch of messages (well, 9 from this sender, but each of them was important to me) marked as spam from one of my friends in my contacts list and now my confidence in Gmail's whitelisting is pretty much non-existent. "Gmail will deliver messages from members of your Contacts list to your inbox," according to <http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=9008&topic=12852> (and according to common sense). Yet this friend's e-mail address *IS* IN MY CONTACT LIST, so why would her messages be marked as spam?? They should have been white-listed. And no, neither of the criteria listed on <http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10514> apply (the To: and From: fields were *not* the same)... Some e-mails from her DO get through, but some do not. (*Hopefully* Gmail learned when I said Not Spam and won't repeat this same mistake twice, but I'll have to keep a close watch on my Spam folder now because I no longer have any certainty that my whitelist is working. And with my Spam folder currently containing 100,000 messages (thank you, Gmail, catching those!), finding the occasional errant false positive might be a bit of a futile prospect unless I have a reason to *search* "in: spam" for a particular e-mail that I was expecting...) There's absolutely NOTHING spammy about the messages that were marked as spam, so it's rather frustrating not understanding *why* Gmail's spam filter thought they were spam. Here's a suggestion for the Gmail developers: Make your spam filter more transparent. For example, let us click a link "why was this marked as spam?" to show a list of factors that led to the super-threshold spam score: bayesian filters on words in the body? to: and from: addresses the same? message from a blacklisted sender? etc. ... like SpamAssasin and friends do. I think the spam scoring details should be stored in the message headers. Since I have NO IDEA why these messages were marked as spam, increasing the transparency of the spam filter would be one solution to that. It would also provide useful information for troubleshooting whenever the filter didn't work as expected... I don't think I'm alone when I say I'd rather have spam than false positives. False positives are just not acceptable. So please err on the side of more spam getting through and make the spam filter less aggressive (but only slightly :))... (Or at least let us configure the spam filter for our account on an individual basis... I wish we had more control over spam settings... ) Here are other people who have experienced the same problem: http://theubergeeks.net/2006/06/26/on-gmails-spam-filter/ http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/d9ffe1e6fd7f34e9 http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/b7d453a6c0e239fd http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Message-Delivery-en/browse_thread/thread/37badb5ba8159d53/ http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Organizing-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/e187e99fdb0eceb6 http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/9a864ac1adaa035d http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Organizing-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/1631fffc0fe4888f/ http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/5a818be98cf9e8e9/ http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/e522bb05c2b11089/ http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/45289dd06a437f68 Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to get this fixed or if Google is going to acknowledge this as a bug. Thanks!
— Tyler (2008-05-20 21:26) (via http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest)
In the Spam folder, I wish I could see the To: address in addition to From, Subject, and Time. The reason for this is that I have a catch-all account and the To address varies widely. If I could see that it was to something legitimate looking like sales@mydomain.com, I might take a second look to see if it's legitimate, whereas if it were to some obviously bogus address like housewarmingqr7@mydomain.com, I wouldn't even need to look at the subject, etc. because I would know immediately that it was spam...
— Tyler (not submitted) (via http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest)
Improve spam filter: 2. Please make the spam filter not a pain in the butt for those of us who access their mail via POP. I wish to give my vote of agreement with what http://netzreport.googlepages.com/gmail_the_problem_with_spam_mails.html said about Spam and POP access: I enjoy Gmail, but I think the POP3 access lacks an important feature: One cannot download mails that have been moved to the spam folder. The problem is that mails in the spam folder are automatically deleted after 30 days. As there will never be a spam filter that works 100% correctly, one has to use the web interface at least every 30 days to check if Gmail has moved legitimate mails to spam folder by mistake. If ones does not log in every 30 days, one runs the risk of loosing legitimate mails. The situation at present decreases the comfort of the POP3 access significantly. Therefore, I suggest a feature that enables one to download mails that have been moved to the spam folder. Alternatively, I suggest an option that makes it possible to disable the spam filter so that mails are not moved to the spam folder in the first place. Make a Thunderbird extension (or provide an API that enables the creation of such!) that passes on spam training information to my Gmail account for messages that somehow get by Gmail's spam filter and which I end up marking as spam in Thunderbird (after downloading with POP or IMAP). Make a Thunderbird extension (or provide an API that enables the creation of such!) that synchronizes my local contact list to my Gmail contact list so that any new people I've added to my local contact list are whitelisted by Gmail's spam filter! Allow spam filter to be turned off by those of us who use POP. See numerous requests for this in forums, especially: <http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/39503a7fe583a93f>, <http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/197713aba7b2cb3c>, <http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Reading-Messages-en/browse_thread/thread/feb1f353bc715039/>. Someone had this suggestion: "There's so many ways of fixing it easily, from an option to turn it of, to just passing a spam report to any pop request (limited to say, 1 per hour or so, if needed) listing sender names and subjects, etc." Gmail is an awesome service, in many many ways... but as someone else has stated, "if the mail does not arrive, what good is all that??" 3. Add the ability for people (both those sending to Gmail and those sending from Gmail) to be able to check/confirm/verify that their message was received. Return receipts, remote image bugs, ... I don't know what would work the best, but SOMETHING, so that people know that their e-mails got through to you and didn't end up in the spam bucket. I know, I know, you wouldn't want spammers to be able to use that feature -- so only enable it for people in your contacts list.