#GMail is harmful to e-mail ecosystem; its antispam blocking policy matches too many valid messages as spam.
It blocked LastPass email leak warning email, because it contained "a link" to a leaked site.
It blocked an e-mail from goverment agency addressed directly to me.
It discriminates all non-gmail servers, and it's pretty much impossible to own a private SMTP server these days, because GMail will classify everything as spam.
It's not how e-mail should work.
Consider dropping GMail.
@antekone Gmail sucks, more than ever today. @Tutanota or @protonmail all the way.
@tapaniraja @antekone @Tutanota @protonmail You might take a look at https://posteo.de/en/ and https://mailbox.org/en/ also?
@svenbrier @antekone @Tutanota @protonmail Yes, familiar with both. Great alternatives as well.
@tapaniraja @antekone @Tutanota @protonmail
I don't have any experience with Tutanota, but unless you're using Protonmail for hosting with a custom domain, I strongly recommend against it.
Their encryption setup means that they can't forward emails to another address, making it extremely difficult to leave.
I'd recommend going with a more traditional email or mail hosting provider like Posteo, Fairmail, of Migadu
@th4lia @tapaniraja @antekone Hi there! Although automatic forwarding is indeed not possible with ProtonMail at the moment, paid users can use the Import-Export app to easily export their entire mailbox in the event of a migration: https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/how-to-export-emails-from-your-protonmail-account/
@protonmail @tapaniraja @antekone Import and export are a non-issue for anyone with a decent mail archiving workflow. The problem is that there is no easy way of watching for mail going into the old account without maintained a payed account or staying signed in to the browser or app.
This makes it *really* difficult to switch providers
@antekone The links the send in the reject messages also point to "help" pages that are not helpful and not telling me what they want to see, e.g. https://support.google.com/mail/?p=IPv6AuthError doesn't mention IPv6 at all...
@cm @antekone Speaking of GMail's IPv6 support: even with perfectly configured IPv6 FCrDNS, DMARC, SPF, DKIM, ADSP, etc., Google keeps randomly rejecting e-mail sent using IPv6. Only option: force all outbound e-mail aimed at Google to be sent to a hard-coded IPv4 GMail inbound relay, overriding their DNS. Very clean & convenient... 😕
@antekone I agree with you on most points but "pretty much impossible" does not fully match my experience. I manage my own SMTP server and I interact with Gmail people.
@antekone I completely agree! Consider dropping GMail in favor of some smaller provider (not Yahoo or the likes) - there are many remaining and doing a great job in keeping the Internet as open as they can.
@Ventronik @antekone I really like mail.de for example.
@antekone
Yes, definitely. You should drop it.
@antekone Google provides the dominant service in a number of areas now and shows in all of those areas that if you dominate the market you don't need to provide good service. In many cases the main feature they provide over the competition is unlimited space.
@antekone Okay.
For what?
@antekone gmail should have stayed garfield mail
@antekone Bonus, almost everyone bulk drops any "residential" IP.
@antekone
Drop Gmail. Only use for the account here is for login authentication on Google -powned essential infrastructure. The ASB Bank, for example, now insists on a Google account for NFC payments.
@antekone did that yrs ago.
@antekone is go so far as to say that Gmail isn’t Internet email, and I suspect that their system isn’t even SMTP standards compliant (though I haven’t had a chance to prove that yet).
It’s like any myriad of old proprietary email systems (AOL, Compuserve, etc.), and you’re right, it’s making its users more and more undeliverable.
@antekone Well, I turned that horse around: my mail server auto-responds to mails from Gmail, telling the sender that I won't (and that they should get themselves a "real mail provider" that respects the privacy of their correspondents).
@antekone outlook.com has similar issues. It blocks whole IP ranges (e.g. the whole Hetzner IP space) and drops or bounces mails from there (sometimes even silenty).
@antekone Goog seems to put emails from SDF accts in to spam now.
This problem is bigger then most realize. Tons of companies now outsource their email to goog (or outlook) because they get tired of fighting to say off blacklists. Just because it isn't "@gmail.com" doesn't mean it isn't powered by Gmail. You can get yourdoamin.com powered by gmail.
Goog & Outlook.com basically run a protection racket today. Hire them for your email hosting or risk having your domain labeled as spam. 😡
@antekone this happened to me when using Mailbox.org with custom domain. My mails were considered by spam by Gmail recipients.
I managed to solve this with proper SFP and DKIM configuration.
@antekone I eventually want to move to a different mail provider, maybe s9mething like mail.com which is end to end encrypted...
@antekone it's increasingly seeing more adoption among corporates. For commoners, there's nothing better than free 
This seems a bit hyperbolic. Gmail isn't the reason that self-hosted email servers are increasingly difficult to manage. Spammers and the necessary security responses to them are the reason why most people can't keep up.
Niklas
@antekone You're so right,delete that shit.I deleted my Google account years ago and haven't missed it a single time.There are so many good,privacy-respecting and free email providers.If you need one,here are the best: https://tutanota.com , https://dismail.de and https://disroot.org
@antekone The Google argument would be: "if everyone just used Gmail, this wouldn't be a problem."
I'm with you on this, but a couple of thoughts: 1) is this also a problem with G Suite email? and 2) What are the best alternatives to Gmail in your opinion and based on what criteria?
@antekone All links are changed to tracked ones as well.
@antekone anti spam measures can be discriminating, but gmail is a whole new level💁
@antekone and don't drop Gmail for an Outlook/Exchange Online system: they do exactly the same thing. Any SMTP server that is not run by an ISP or a giant mail hosting company is flagged as spam by default.
This is blatant anti-competitive behaviour, but they will claim it is for our own good.
The reality is that they want to control your data and lock you into the privacy nightmare that their ecosystems are.
It is AOL/CompuServe all over again, only much, much worse.
But you're completely right: drop GMail (and all other Google services, for that matter).
@antekone fwiw, Microsoft's mail (e.g. outlook.com) is even worse -- it was silently dropping my messages (not even filing them as spam) for several years before I thought to do a "delivery status notification" on one of them, and finally got an error message back.
This caused me to believe that a very dear friend was intentionally ignoring me, which could have resulted in us losing contact if I hadn't investigated further.
It even spams messages from GMail, though at least it doesn't silently delete them.
cc @resist1984
@antekone Anecdotally, I didn't have trouble sending from my personal SMTP server to GMail after I set up a few basic things (SPF, DMARC, etc). hotmail refused all my email but fixed it when I contacted them. It's annoying, but for my little one-person email server it hasn't been a real problem.
@antekone about this -
“it's pretty much impossible to own a private SMTP server these days”
this is very sadly true. but i think it’s hardly just gmail fault, or dropping gmail would help it at all. the internet needs more decentralized but sadly the world is moving in a centralized and denser shape.
@antekone to add pain to serious insult the Microsoft run services are even worse. From Danmark at least outlook.com insists on whitelising ips of senders. That was the final straw that made me give up on running my own mail server...
IME, gmail let's 90% of spam right through - even it's a straight up spoof from a telnet session.
@antekone @wuffel I cannot relate... Gmail works extraordinarily good for me. I experienced all the annoying stuff (in one way or another) with Microsoft emails though, so that I will never use any MSN, Outlook & Co.-domains. I wonder why the perception is so different 🤔 Maybe it depends on the country.
@schreiblehrling @antekone @wuffel As someone who operates SMTP servers and also mailing lists I have had problems with both, and also with United Internet (GMX, Web.de, 1&1). The one thing that *all* of them have in common is that they don’t provide a method to approach them if legitimate mail is rejected.
@dentaku @schreiblehrling @antekone
exactly.
You mostly just can wait.
Thats very annoying, if you are shure, that never any harmful started from your mailserver.
@wuffel @schreiblehrling @antekone Actually even *if* there was an incident with spam originating from your server you should still have a way to tell them that you've fixed the problem now.
@antekone It's not impossible to run your own email server. I personally use https://www.authsmtp.com/ for sending mail, which works fine. And I've also found that once you setup dkim and SPF, Gmail doesn't block any of my big name VPS providers. I haven't done a lot of testing with that. But I've yet to see it not work.
pretty much impossible to own a private SMTP server these days, because GMail will classify everything as spam
Bullshit.
Stardenver
@antekone @kubikpixel So does and did Hotmail/Outlook, Yahoo and some others of the big players. Kinda forcing you to use their services, in case you wanna make sure your mails will get delivered. Tough fight sometimes, in case you are using your own server and great solutions like #mailcow #yunohost #mailinabox or something alike.
I totally understand blocking private IPs from your local ISP. But this is just shady business.
@antekone it also blocks sometimes legit emails from Debian without any reason given. not nice :(