Gmail users are reporting that their legitimate emails have suddenly started to end up in the spam folder over the last few days.
Thomas Frank, the founder of College Info Geek, tweeted: “All of a sudden, Gmail thinks about half my legit email is spam.”
All of a sudden, Gmail thinks about half my legit email is spam. No idea why – but maybe check your spam folders today!
— Thomas Frank (@TomFrankly) March 15, 2020
He later added that based on the replies to his tweet, Gmail’s spam filter “is very broken and is picking up lots of false positives right now.”
Frank advised Gmail users to check their spam folders for legitimate emails and to mark things as “not spam” and “spam” accordingly to “hopefully” fix Gmail’s spam filters.
Also, mark things as “not spam” and as “spam” accordingly – hopefully that’ll help to fix the Bayesian filters
— Thomas Frank (@TomFrankly) March 15, 2020
Tiago Forte, the founder of the productivity website Forte Labs, tweeted that he’d noticed Gmail’s spam filters had become “WAY more strict in the last two weeks” and wrote that he too was finding that “half the emails” in his spam folder weren’t spam.
Anyone notice the @gmail spam filter got WAY more strict in the last two weeks? I just checked and half the emails in there weren’t spam, including people I exchange messages with frequently. Check your spam folder!
— Tiago Forte (@fortelabs) March 14, 2020
Forte added that emails from people he messages frequently were being flagged as spam and that emails from a wide variety of senders and domains were being affected by this issue.
Yes me too. It's not one kind of email or one sender or domain. Wide variety of misidentified emails, including very important ones I needed to see
— Tiago Forte (@fortelabs) March 14, 2020
In a follow-up tweet, Forte wrote that the spam filter was so strong that “even MY OWN EMAILS TO MYSELF are getting classified as spam.”
This is getting absurd. The spam filter on @gmail is so strong even MY OWN EMAILS TO MYSELF are getting classified as spam. Check your spam folders ppl! https://t.co/AMUU3HG9uL pic.twitter.com/oKtA4vq5yx
— Tiago Forte (@fortelabs) March 16, 2020
“Just checked my spam folder and found all sorts of legit emails in there that I’ve been missing, said Jeff Sheldon, the founder and designer of clothing brand Ugmonk. “Not cool Gmail. There’s got to be a better way.
Yikes. Just checked my spam folder and found all sorts of legit emails in there that I’ve been missing.
Not cool @gmail. There’s got to be a better way. https://t.co/wR4ZwivPhU
— Jeff Sheldon (@ugmonk) March 15, 2020
Media Studies grad student Andy Fischer tweeted that a formal email from the president of his institution containing information about COVID-19 scheduling changes also ended up in Gmail’s spam folder.
in today’s daily dose of apocalypse, formal email from president of my institution informing me of COVID-19 scheduling changes sent to spam by gmail (presumably because I have not opened mass emails from Chase, Frontier, Alamo, etc. with similar content?)
— Andy Fischer Wright (@RevAndrewWright) March 12, 2020
And design engineer Mike Dick wrote that Amazon delivery notifications were being marked as spam in his Gmail.
Gmail spam filter is marking Amazon delivery notifications as spam now
— Mike Dick (@miked1ck) March 16, 2020
Gmail appears to be aware of the issue and has replied to Forte and Sheldon via the official Gmail Twitter account.
That doesn't sound good, Tiago. Have a look at this article to unmark spam in Gmail if an email was incorrectly marked as spam: https://t.co/9AFyaXV20e. Hope that helps.
— Gmail (@gmail) March 14, 2020
That doesn't sound good, Jeff. Check out this guide for tips on how to stop mail from being accidentally marked as spam: https://t.co/N8rySP5zQH. Hope that helps.
— Gmail (@gmail) March 15, 2020
However, Gmail’s tweets give no indication if or when a fix is coming with the tweets advising both Forte and Sheldon to manually unmark the affected emails as spam and follow Gmail’s existing documentation on dealing with spam.
