This may be related to Sarah’s issue of not receiving an email: today I noticed that I was missing bunches of important group emails from my group - a member’s response to a pending membership questionnaire (I sent her a resend), a reply to a group message by a new member whom I was surprised I hadn’t heard from yet (and was about to ask whether she’d received the messages), and more. Then I saw my junk folder and it was all in there and I moved everything to my inbox.

I mention this because in (5+?) years of running my group on groups.io, as crazy as it sounds, I don’t ever recall a message going into spam before. (I know it’s happened to some of my group members, because every so often they’re spam-removed.) And I mention it also because I wonder whether it’s now happening a lot to other people as well, including possibly Sarah.

I particularly have never had a response to a pending membership email go into spam.


--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

It's not happening here.  My messages from groups.io groups are not going into the Spam folder.  I use Gmail too.

Andy

Although I have not seen messages showing up in Spam, just this morning one of my co-moderators said that he does.  He is seeing a sudden increase in group messages that went into his Spam folder in Gmail.

It could be that Google/Gmail is phasing in changes to their algorithms, and the changes reached J and my co-moderator, but not me yet.  Google does that kind of thing.  It's happened before.

The co-moderator also wonders whether that hijacker who targets AOL addresses may be partly to blame.  My group gets hit fairly hard by that idiot.  If a lot of AOL users who are not subscribers to our group receive group messages and mark them as Spam, might it somehow trickle down to other email providers (such as Gmail) and cause Gmail to mark legitimate messages as Spam too, just because they came from our group or from groups.io?  (Not talking about blacklisting.)

The hijacker went on hiatus for a month but it seems he returned about Nov. 6.

Andy

Reminds me, I haven't yet checked my spam today. I need to start checking it every day. Never had to before....
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

I use web gmail for my email client and several email services (including the dread comcast.) The gmail client pushes some Groups.io emails into my spam folder every few weeks. I opt for digests rather than individual emails, which keeps the numbers low. I don't recall having all gio email stuffed in spam for any long interval, usually it's only 2 or 3 out of the half dozen or so digests I get a day. Sometimes no gio emails will be designated spam for weeks, then there is a clump. This week was clumpy.

Google must have an AI tool that changes continually and gio drifts in and out of its cross-hairs. Another reminder that we were evacuated from Camelot some time ago. But it's not the Slough of Despond either. Fake Amazon bills and love letters from foreign princes in need of gift cards for prosthetics hardly ever appear in my inbox any more.
Marv

On 18-Nov-21 5:20 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

This may be related to Sarah’s issue of not receiving an email: today I noticed that I was missing bunches of important group emails from my group - a member’s response to a pending membership questionnaire (I sent her a resend), a reply to a group message by a new member whom I was surprised I hadn’t heard from yet (and was about to ask whether she’d received the messages), and more. Then I saw my junk folder and it was all in there and I moved everything to my inbox.

One of my two Gmail accounts was doing this a couple of days ago (both receive groups.io messages). I set up a filter to fix it.

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Bill

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 04:38 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
...

As an aside, in early November I did some more work that (hopefully) has cut down further on the spammer receiving emails from us. Unfortunately, what it seems like is that he's now taking old group messages sent to him and re-sending them; I've gotten a couple of complaints this week about email that was originally sent to an account I had disabled at the beginning of November.

That seemed to be his usual behavior all along, storing messages for one to two weeks before re-sending them.

Our latest rash of messages re-sent since Nov. 6 may have been sent from an address that unsubscribed on Nov. 6.  He is re-sending messages stored before he unsubscribed.  I think you did not disable that account.

Andy

Why does everyone assume this villain is a he? :-)
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 04:29 PM, Marv Waschke wrote:

Google must have an AI tool that changes continually ...

Gmail's spam filtering is supposed to be custom for each user, and is based on the emails you receive and what you do with them.  If you mark messages as Spam, or mark them as Not Spam (to take them out of the Spam folder), it "trains" your account's spam filter.

But then every so often, Google throws a wrench into the works, and you have to "re-train" it again.  Maybe that is what just happened, this week.

Andy

My co-moderator points out that only some group messages end up in his Spam folder.  But it was a sudden change, enough for him to notice.

Andy

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 02:52 PM, Andy wrote:

it was a sudden change, enough for him to notice

Yes it was. Seems to have stopped, at least for me, maybe since I immediately moved the whole bundle to my inbox once I noticed. And I only noticed because I had to search for messages that I could see were posted online, including a message to group owners.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

I spoke too soon. They've started to go into spam again.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

I just discovered 33 GIO messages dating back a week in the spam folder of a test account set to receive individual messages. 

pete 

This is very unusual, yes. I’ve sent out a warning bulletin to my group about the situation.

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

I just fished a couple more out of there, too. Several in one day.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

This may be related: ever since this started happening, 100% of my bcc's to myself of private replies have had the warning "This looks like spam" and asked me to check "spam" or "looks safe."100%. Not one has made it through to me (I use gmail) without the warning. I always mark them "looks safe" but that hasn't stopped the behavior.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu