I just happen to have set up an email server and encountered the same problems with Google as described in the article. I own the IP since quite some time, it is not on any black list, reverse DNS is set up etc. but Google rejects email as spam.
And this even happens when the gmail account has added the sender in his address book and has send the first email to which I replied - thus there is a message id that should already be known on Gmail's side.
Use your AI to put email into the spam folder. Refusing it outright is a case for the European Commission which hopefully will slap you another few billions of fine onto the wrist until you remember to play nicely with the other kids.
There is no excuse to refuse SPF, DKIM, reverse DNS, proper MX, no blacklist, sender in recipient address book and reply-to msgId email.
I wish Google had a way you could tell it "messages from these people/domains are never spam (or I'll deal with it myself)".
I use gmail and they know who is sending. I got an email today with a gmail flag saying “this user sent from a different email address previously”
I doubt this affects things when messages are rejected at the protocol level, but if your problem is emails showing up in the spam folder, this might fix it.
What Google is likely doing is checking the domain of the originating IP in the SMTP "envelope", but that also gets tricky with outsourced email services or internal IPs.
I do not use Gmail, so these are just wild guesses, but I do run my own mail server and frequently get my email not showing up for people.
Problem with SMTP bounces is that it may take a week for the final bounce to show up in my inbox (because again, that's how SMTP protocol is designed, to expect nodes to be down and retry a number of times).
Isn’t this the exact thing that DKIM is designed to fix?
I prefer getting a bounce than ending in the spam folder by far. Lots of relatives on Gmail never look into the spam folder so I never know if they get to see my email or not and I end up having to ping them on eg. WhatsApp. At least with a bounce, I know they did not get my email.
If the message is ending up in your spam folder, it's harder to shift that blame off of Gmail's shoulders.
My mother would just simply ignore the spam and often times spam catches majority of the phishing e-mails too. So it's a double edge sword educating and conditioning the users to review the spam folder. Why is it the end user's job to determine what is spam and what is legitimate ?
Yes, I'm yet another person with the same problem as the author of the article - running my own mail server for years, only I send mail from it, very low volume, everything set up properly, etc. The difference is that my emails go to spam, rather than being rejected by the SMTP servers, which to me is even worse, since I never know whether an email I sent to GMail has been delivered or not. Since GSuite is so popular now, I never know this for any unfamiliar domain, unless I do an MX lookup.
You say all the right words, but Google's actions on this issue (or lack thereof) speak much louder. It's very difficult to believe that the situation will improve and many comments here reflect this skepticism.
I think it also hurts Google themselves. There is a reason they have trouble competing with AWS. Why should developers trust Google that there will be a person on the other side helping them out when things go wrong? And they always do, at worst possible time. Amazon, for all its problems, has excellent customer service.
So your parent's attempt to fix this is a PR stunt at best. If they (/Google) care about this, they should fix the problems in the process:
- define, hardcode and publish rules that will lead to successfull e-mail delivery (SPF, DKIM, history,...)
- establish a gmail technical customer support service
And they should stop with preferential treatment of those who shame them publicly. Or do they want all of us to start doing the same?
It is not Google support, it is just an employee giving some insight on his own time.
What is wrong with that?
This is a very interesting idea that I completely missed.
