DIGITAL LIFE

Google Confirms Why Gmail Emails Have Been Vanishing For 3 Years

Some messages have been vanishing when sent to anyone who uses Gmail as their email platform. For anyone who likes reading error messages, the reason why has been hiding in plain sight all along. For everyone else, a Google spokesperson has confirmed the reason why some incoming emails have been disappearing for Gmail users: the algorithm thinks they are spam. Here’s what’s been going on.

Disappearing Gmail—A Problem, Or Blessing, For Many Years...Email disappearing consistently over several years is either a problem or a blessing, likely depending on whether you are the sender or the intended recipient. Three years ago, an IT solutions company complained in the Gmail subreddit that “Over the last month or two, we’ve had about three clients who all use a uk.com domain have all their mail either blocked by Google or marked as spam.” More recently, in May 2024, a user posted to the official Google Gmail support forums that “Sending email to Gmail, or Google hosted email, gets rejected for low reputation only for email from uk.com domains.” A little time spent Googling will reveal many, many more such complaints in the gap between. This week I received an email from a reader of PC Pro, a magazine I have been a Contributing Editor of for 30 years. That reader had the same complaint, emails from uk.com domains being blocked as spam for Gmail users. “It is clear after researching this that this is a known issue and despite attempts to reach out to Gmail nothing,” they said, adding that they are now considering “finding a domain that is acceptable to Gmail so I can communicate with friends and contacts etc using Gmail.”

Before I continue with the communication I had with Google concerning this matter, I must address the spammy elephant in the room: most Gmail users will gladly embrace an algorithm that filters out email most likely to be considered as spam. That’s a simple truth, and while anyone who has ever looked in their junk folder will know, there’s no such thing as a perfect spam filter. The anti-spam protections put in place for Gmail will always walk something of a tightrope between stopping enough spam, a leading distribution channel for malicious actors, and stopping too much genuine email. Overall, I have to say I think that Google is doing a great job as far as Gmail is concerned.

Blocking Spam To Keep Gmail Users Safe From Malware And Phishing Attacks...I have recently covered many new strategies that Google has been bringing in to place in order to help curb the spam menace for a majority of Gmail users. At the forefront of these, which came into play in April 2024, was the new requirement for all Gmail users who send significant volumes to embrace robust email authentication methods. At the time, I reported how the changes would impact email sent to personal Gmail accounts only and that those sending more than 5,000 messages a day would need to use strong domain authentication as well as avoiding the sending of unwanted or unsolicited email. While this change is not the only reason, considering the amount of time people have been seeking help with the issue behind the spam blocking being complained about, it has brought things back into the spotlight.

I have also covered how Google is employing AI, specifically custom large language models that were first deployed in late 2023 and trained on a diet of the latest, most terrible spam and phishing content, to fight back against Gmail spam and malware. At the time, Google told me that the new AI defenses had resulted in 20% more spam being blocked in Gmail and a 90% increase in the speed of responding to new spam and phishing attacks.

The Google Response To The Spam Blocking Gmail Complaints...Which brings us nicely to the response from Google concerning the specific complaints about emails from uk.com domains vanishing and being blocked from Gmail inboxes before they even get there. For background, my conversation with Google confirmed that the domains being talked about are not the U.K. top-level country domains, co.uk, but rather a commercial entity which is distinct from this. It also confirmed my suspicion that the whole what is spam space, covered by this, is a complex and not clearcut one.

A Google spokesperson provided me with the following, on the record, statement: “We have extra protections in place to keep our users safe from messages coming from domains where we’ve observed high levels of abuse. While not all private top-level domains are the same, many of them are popular with abusers because they don’t conduct validation of their customers, creating an open door to spammy and/or malicious activity.”

I have reached out to the operators of the uk.com domain and will update this article if a statement is forthcoming. Meanwhile, Google told me that keeping all users safe is the top priority but it wants users of all domains to be have a quality experience regardless. Any senders of email who experiences a similar type of spam blocking is, therefore, asked to complete a bulk sender escalation form that will allow Google to investigate and, hopefully,(https://support.google.com/mail/contact/gmail_bulk_sender_escalation) provide mitigations so that Gmail recipients can see emails in the future.

Davey Winder