I am receiving 20 millions emails every day. All of them goes to my Spam, but there are too many of them, my normal emails get delayed.
Why this happen:
Some one sign-up newsletters using my email address, the newsletter didn't send verify link to email to let you confirm, they just start to send emails to you.
What's worse, gmail support alias: 1) the dot in gmail get ignored 2) the + and what comes after + get ignored. For e.g. if your email address is [email protected], then [email protected], or [email protected], [email protected] goes to same address.
That's the worst part: the attack register thousands of alias to newsletter, for those newsletter, they don't know this alias thing, they think they have got thousands of subscribers (Huh, they didn't even send you verify link, what did I expect?) So whenever they send out one email, I received tens of thousands of them.
Top3 newsletters spamers:
My issue is not receiving spam emails, Gmail filter all of them to spam folder, good job Gamil!
My issue is, seems that Gmail has sort of rate limiting, Gmail keep sending me those spams, but all of my normal emails delayed for ~48hours, some are delayed for 3 days.
(It's not my filter issue, my normal email didn't go to spam or trash, it showed up on my inbox correctly, but delayed 48hours to 3 days)
Blocking is not an option. Gmail actually doesn't have such feature to let you block some senders, the "block" button in Gmail is just send those emails to Trash folder when receive them, which didn't help in my case, the email still goes to my account, and there are too many of them.
What I have tried
Call Google
It's nice to talk to a real person! One point for Google.
But the hotline didn't solve my email delay issue, we talked one hour. Follow her instruction I have tried:
- Incognito mode - Switch to another browser - Switch to app - Switch to another device - Test by sending email to myself - Disable all of my Chrome Extensions - ...
After one hour, I tell her there is thing called Message Header [1] which can let you analysis the time sequence of an email, and it showed clearly that it's Gmail server delay to deliver the email to my account, not my client side issue. She confirmed it with higher tier of support, then tell me there is a issue with Gmail server, and suppose to be resolved in 24 hours, and she let me keep updating her the issue by reply the email she sent me.
But it's been a week. The issue is still there, and when I reply the email, seems it's a different person reply me each time, and he/she didn't have the context, cause he/she let me try to check the spam folder, trash, all emails (which is not the issue)
What can I do?
If we sign-up someone's address on those bad newsletters, we can delay one's email, that easy? I am shocked that the email system (even Gmail) is so vulnerable.
[1] Email message header analysis: https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/messageheader/