On Fri, 2026-02-27 at 08:22 +1100, Stephen Morris wrote: > The message indicates to me that Google thinks the mail is not a mail > that is not a reply to a mail I have sent, how it determines that I > don't know unless it is because the mail source is a mailing list, and > it seems that Google's assumption is that if it is unsolicited it is > spam.
You can look at your headers for list mail (okay and problematic ones). There's a mix of messages FROM a server address and FROM a user's address. There will be LIST-ID headers identifying it is list mail, and which list. Messages are generally TO the list server address, but arrive at you via some other headers, you can see your address in the ENVELOPE-TO (if your server doesn't strip it off during delivery), BCC for some list servers. The combination of everything can be considered by anti-spam systems as to how they rate it, and what actions it'll take. List mail is considered bulk mail, and can get different treatment than individual mail. From time to time lists get falsely identified as spam sources, which can be incompetent processing, or the fact that many people don't unsubscribe from lists and lazily hit the junk mail button. Hundreds of people doing that can really cause problems for a list. > The other thing it indicates is, as was indicated in Kevin's > response, the Google believes the source address has produced spam > or the server it is coming from has produced spam (at least what > Google considers spam). While I don't believe Patrick would be sending spam, someone could have spoofed his addresses at some stage (harvesting publicly used addresses is a long-standing spam practice) and that can get an address listed in spam filter databases. For intermittent failures, what's probably more likely is that sender- authentication/verification hasn't worked at some time (which can be an origin *or* recipient problem), and upset things. But works usually, and it self-corrects. Or just a plain simple screw-up with their anti-spam system. > What I find strange, which potentially means the message content is > meaningless, is if Google is classifying the mail as spam then why > does it not move the mail to its spam folder? What it does will depend on the type of spam it thinks it might be. *Maybe* spam will get spamboxed, typically because it didn't like something about the message content. Things it's really not happy about, such as thinking it's fraudulently posted, may get harsher treatments. And maybe some mail gets routed through a different path, sometimes, one that's been a spam source at some time. -- uname -rsvp Linux 3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jun 4 14:43:51 UTC 2024 x86_64 (yes, this is the output from uname for this PC when I posted) Boilerplate: All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted. I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list. -- _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected] Do not reply to spam, report it: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/infra/tickets/issues/new
