GMail says that "We find lots of e-mails from MacRumors are spam"

Jessica Lares · Sep 20, 2013

I look through my spam folder everyday just to make sure that stuff that isn't spam isn't getting thrown out. Today it marked a friendship request as being spam and it said that the filter finds that a lot of the messages from you guys are in fact spam.

Just thought I'd let you know. Hmm...

annk · Sep 21, 2013

Hmmm...Part of our policy is that we don't - as a general rule - send unsolicited mails to members. There are a few exceptions to this, but they are truly exceptions, and would only be a last resort.

When you say that gmail says that a lot of mails from MR are spam, where exactly are you seeing that message/where is that message coming from?

I'll try to follow it up.

Jessica Lares · Sep 21, 2013

annk said:
Hmmm...Part of our policy is that we don't - as a general rule - send unsolicited mails to members. There are a few exceptions to this, but they are truly exceptions, and would only be a last resort.

When you say that gmail says that a lot of mails from MR are spam, where exactly are you seeing that message/where is that message coming from?

I'll try to follow it up.

That message is coming directly from you guys. One of my friendship requests went into my spam folder yesterday and that message popped up.

I see in another thread, this is happening to someone else too.

The Mrs. · Sep 21, 2013

My "complete registration" email was routed to my spam folder as well, with that exact same message.

The Mrs. · Sep 21, 2013

Jessica Lares · Sep 21, 2013

For the people getting this, make sure to hit the "Not Spam" button. The more of us that do it, the more likely it's going to fix itself.

annk · Sep 22, 2013

I've given a couple other admins and arn a heads-up, just so you know I haven't forgotten.

SandboxGeneral · Sep 22, 2013

annk has already notified arn and the other admins, as she mentioned above. Here is a tip from Google on how to handle this issue on your end, the receiver of email from MacRumors for Gmail users.

Legitimate mail is marked as spam

If you find a message wrongly classified as spam, you can unmark the message. Just select the message, and click the Not Spam button that appears at the top and bottom of your current view. Unmarking a message will automatically move 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 we know with high confidence that they are spam.
Some messages sent from contacts which are very clearly spam can be sent directly to your Spam label. More importantly, in some cases messages from contacts will not be sent to Spam but will be marked with a red warning banner if the content is suspicious - for example, your friend's or contact's account has been compromised and used to send phishing messages.
Creating a filter so the messages are never sent to Spam.

There are things, as the sender (MacRumors) can do with Google and I am confident that the admins will be looking into that as well.

Tech198 · Sep 22, 2013

Glad to see i'm not the only one here on this.

However,I've had the same issue with Apple discussions too,, Problem here i think is since Gmail works on "collaborative filtering", people who just no longer with to subscribe anymore just mark it as spam, in addition to remove their subscribed posts from MR. If enough people do that, Google gets the point of marking any emails from MR domain as spam, something, which has never happened to me before either.

I always received MR emails in my Inbox, but Gmail does have a filtering option, which i guess is kind of not the solution, but 50% way there.

I suppose that's all you can really do. Since there is no human doing this at Gmail, its all done by users like u and me doing the filtering

This is why Google spam is soo good. (and in this case over-kill), something Yahoo doesn't do, thus why Yahoo is high on the list as "spam culprits"

So, in short, to me MR isn't doing anything wrong, they are doing things like they always are, its Google you should be setting a filter in.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6579?hl=en

Follow instructions under "To use a particular message to create a filter"

jbachandouris · Sep 22, 2013

I also have this issue. I think what causes gmail to suspect The email as spam is forum notifications. Think about it: you receive the notification email, you visit the thread, and almost immediately delete the email. Their system must think its spam because of this. Maybe..,

Tech198 · Sep 22, 2013

Confirmed

I haven't tried VIP, but adding MacRumors to your contact list works.

For some reason filters don't work...

arn · Sep 22, 2013

Yep.

This is on Google's side alone. You can help by marking these messages as "not spam".

Basically, it seems Google uses a lot of factors in determining if emails are spam. One, of course, being if a lot of people are marking messages as spam, so that might be part of it.

Otherwise, we don't send out actual spam, so there's not much we can do on our end. I did add a better "one click unsubscribe", in case that was what people were complaining about.

arn

Cubytus · Sep 22, 2013

Simple solution: get away from GMail, and use a proper, private email provider.

localoid · Sep 22, 2013

Google has a "Bulk Sender Contact Form" -- at the url: https://support.google.com/mail/contact/bulk_send -- that sites sending bulk email can submit the full headers of messages sent that Gmail has incorrectly marked as spam.

arn · Sep 22, 2013

localoid said:
Google has a "Bulk Sender Contact Form" -- at the url: https://support.google.com/mail/contact/bulk_send -- that sites sending bulk email can submit the full headers of messages sent that Gmail has incorrectly marked as spam.

Thanks,

Will check it out.

arn

lelisa13p · Sep 23, 2013

Please see my posts in this thread. It's been almost a week without any Daily Forum Update emails. Last batch was time stamped Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 12:06 AM.

Now that I think about it, I haven't been getting any type of emails at all from MacRumors from the same date going forward.

I just added MacRumors Forums webmaster email address (from an old email update) to Gmail Contacts. Tonite will tell if that works. *** It did not. ***

Tomdarkness · Sep 24, 2013

I just signed up here to post about something related and ironically my registration confirmation email went straight to spam.

Anyway the issues with your emails being marked as spam might have something to do with these emails:

Code:

Delivered-To: ---@gmail.com
Received: by 10.58.252.105 with SMTP id zr9csp285958vec;
        Tue, 24 Sep 2013 03:45:40 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.42.250.201 with SMTP id mp9mr20903679icb.0.1380019540212;
        Tue, 24 Sep 2013 03:45:40 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <GlobalView@macrumors.com>
Received: from mail-qa0-f52.google.com (designsgoods.net. [173.249.151.191])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTP id jw9si325164icc.154.1969.12.31.16.00.00;
        Tue, 24 Sep 2013 03:45:40 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of GlobalView@macrumors.com designates 173.249.151.191 as permitted sender) client-ip=173.249.151.191;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
       spf=pass (google.com: domain of GlobalView@macrumors.com designates 173.249.151.191 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=GlobalView@macrumors.com
Received: from 209.85.216.52 (127.0.0.1) by mail-qa0-f52.google.com id h85ml80n7lg2 for <---@gmail.com>; Tue, 24 Sep 2013 06:45:39 -0400 (envelope-from <GlobalView@macrumors.com>)
Return-Path: email@transaction.UK Debt Relief
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 06:45:39 -0400
From: UK Debt Relief <email@macrumors.com>
Reply-To: "reply@macrumors.com" <reply@macrumors.com>
To: UK Debt Relief <---@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2.2.0.1100045415.7493.6900074235180@transaction.macrumors.com>
Subject: Clark Richards - Stop your creditors hassling you today!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
X-EMV-Platform: cce.campaigncommander.com$
X-EMV-NotificationId: 35456$
X-EMV-SendRequestId: 35524365453$
 Hi ---@gmail.com


Reduce your payments by 80% today
<removed dodgy link>


Debt worries? Change your life today.
<removed dodgy link>


There is a way out from debt. We can help you find it.
<removed dodgy link>



See Here
<removed dodgy link>




Thanks
Clark Richards.


3 Bailey Court, Green Street, 
Macclesfield SK10 1JQ

-----------------------------------------------


Cancel your subscription:
<removed dodgy link>

They appear to be forging the from address to appear it is coming from @macrumors.com which is easy. However, somehow the SPF records are allowing 173.249.151.191 as a designated sender for @macrumors.com making it look like you did indeed sent the message when obviously you did not.

Edit:

If you look at macrumors.com SPF record:

Code:

> set q=txt
> macrumors.com
Server:  winsrv2012-primary.home.net
Address:  192.168.1.15

Non-authoritative answer:
macrumors.com   text =

        "v=spf1 a mx ip4:173.192.108.135 mx:macrumors-com.relay1a.spamh.com mx:m
acrumors-com.relay1b.spamh.com mx:macrumors-com.relay1c.spamh.com include:_spf.g
oogle.com +all"
>

For some reason it has "+all" rather than "-all", the + sign means allow and all, well means all (so allow ALL senders). Basically the SPF record might as well just say "v=spf1 +all" for all the use putting the allowed senders does at the moment.

This is most likely why most of macrumor's emails are going to spam. You've just published a DNS record stating you want to allow anyone to send emails as @macrumors.com.

If you check the RFC for SPF here is how a SPF pass result should be interpreted:

Code:

2.5.3.  Pass

   A "Pass" result means that the client is authorized to inject mail
   with the given identity.  The domain can now, in the sense of
   reputation, be considered responsible for sending the message.
   Further policy checks can now proceed with confidence in the
   legitimate use of the identity.

So you can't be too hard on google for marking @macrumors.com email as spam.

lelisa13p · Sep 24, 2013

So perhaps my emails are being held up at the Gmail server level and never even making it to my account. IIRC, didn't something like that (spoofed address) happen here a couple of years ago?

arn · Sep 24, 2013

Tomdarkness said:
For some reason it has "+all" rather than "-all", the + sign means allow and all, well means all (so allow ALL senders). Basically the SPF record might as well just say "v=spf1 +all" for all the use putting the allowed senders does at the moment.

thanks for the research. I'm making a change. Hopefully that will help.

arn

AppleDApp · Sep 25, 2013

Glad to see I'm not alone and you are aware of this issue.

Any updates on this?

arn · Sep 25, 2013

We've made some changes, and contacted them. It might take some time.

Has anyone seen any improvements in the situation?

arn

lelisa13p · Sep 25, 2013

No emails and tonite marks one week without for me.

Thanks for looking into this.

AppleDApp · Sep 25, 2013

arn said:
We've made some changes, and contacted them. It might take some time.

Has anyone seen any improvements in the situation?

arn

I got the notification for this post. I also marked macrumors as not spam.

MacNut · Sep 25, 2013

All my MR mail hit the spam folder for a week. Seems Gmail changed their filtering and that triggered the spam.

arn · Sep 25, 2013

AppleDApp said:
I got the notification for this post. I also marked macrumors as not spam.

MacNut said:
All my MR mail hit the spam folder for a week. Seems Gmail changed their filtering and that triggered the spam.

Are you still seeing them hit SPAM folder directly?

arn

GMail says that "We find lots of e-mails from MacRumors are spam"

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