Yahoo Is Censoring My Mail

Like I mentioned in the post below, I’ve got a new email address using Google’s new Gmail service. Since the service is only in beta testing right now, the only way to join is to receive an invitation (I don’t know who gets these invitations or why, so don’t bother asking me to invite you). Since a competing free email service can potentially cut into Yahoo’s business, they’ve set up filters to make it more difficult for Gmail invitations to get to their users (or at least, that’s the way it appears). As far as Yahoo is concerned, Gmail invites are spam.

Since the Gmail invitations come from an email address that ends in @gmail.com, I figured I would send a few emails to myself and see if I can nail down what kind of filtering they’ve got in place. I figured they were just blocking all emails for gmail.com or scanning the subject lines, but it turns out that they’re actually searching for the message body itself.

The amusing thing about this is that any email that contains this in the body of the message will get thrown into the “bulk mail” folder :

———————————————————————–

[blank] has invited you to open a free Google Gmail account. The invitation will expire in three weeks and can only be used to set up one account.

To accept this invitation and register for your account, visit http://gmail.google.com/gmail/

Once you create your account, [blank] will be notified with your new @gmail.com address so you can stay in touch with Gmail!

If you haven’t already heard about Gmail, it’s a new search-based webmail service that offers:

- 1,000 megabytes (one gigabyte) of free storage
- Built-in Google search that instantly finds any message you want
- Automatic arrangement of messages and related replies into “conversations”
- Text ads and related pages that are relevant to the content of your messages

Gmail is still in an early stage of development. If you set up an account, you’ll be able to keep it even after we make Gmail more widely available and as one of the system’s early testers, you will be helping us improve the service through your feedback. We might ask for your comments and suggestions periodically and we appreciate your help in making Gmail even better.

Thanks,

The Gmail Team

To learn more about Gmail before registering, visit: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/benefits.html

(If clicking the URLs in this message does not work, copy and paste them into the address bar of your browser).

If you’ve got a Yahoo mail account you can try it for yourself. Copy the text above and email it to yourself using any email address and any subject line (I suggest “Stop censoring my goddamn email!”). Within a few minutes, you’ll see the email you sent has been thrown in with the rest of the spam.

Have there been so many invitations that Yahoo’s anti-spam filters genuinely flag this is spam? Could be, but Yahoo’s recent upgrade of all their mailbox sizes from 6MB to 100MB make it clear that they’re threatened by Google’s new service (whose main attraction is a 1GB mailbox). All I know is that when it comes to free email services, sometimes you get what you pay for.


posted by greg on June 17, 2004 @ 2:54 pm

39 comments

  1. Amazingly enough, you’re right. I ran about 15 different tests. I figured there spam filter was just cutting out on some of the words or phrases in the email. But ANY edit I make on the message causes it to be delivered just fine. Even one as minutes as subsituting noogle for google and nmail for gmail.

    Comment by Andrew — June 17, 2004 @ 3:50 pm

  2. Hope you don’t mind, but I submitted this story to slashdot.org. I didn’t give credit to your site in the submittal, because I wanted to spare you the slashdot effect on the small chance it actually gets approved.

    I figured more people should know about this (especially after the stink was made about google scanning email text), and slashdot would be the best way to get the word out.

    Comment by Andrew — June 17, 2004 @ 4:01 pm

  3. according to zdnet.co.uk (http://tinyurl.com/2724o) hotmail is doing the same thing.

    I never thought I’d say this but: fuck google, good for yahoo & microsoft. I’m so sick of the elitist ‘invite-only’ program for a product that has spooky shit all over it. the idea of customized ads is so fucked and I don’t see why people aren’t more upset about this.

    welcome to minority report land.

    sorry. on my first cup of coffee still.

    Comment by jihad666 — June 18, 2004 @ 5:55 am

  4. I think that early beta testers are able to dole out invitations. A friend sent me an invitation after I asked her about GMail, but I don’t have the ability to invite people.

    I can’t wait to hear what the people at Hotmail and Yahoo have to say about the G-Mail invitations being tossed. Despite the security warnings about GMail, I still feel GMail’s benefits outweight any concerns I have. A gig for e-mail? Google search your mail? Discussion group-style storage? It’s wonderful!

    Besides, if you have dire security concerns, keep a separate account for things of a sensitive nature.

    Comment by E-Rock — June 18, 2004 @ 7:36 am

  5. I have no problem with the invite only beta. It is a beta after all. All real beta testing is done on an invite only. If everyone could sign up, you’d run into alot more problems then if you limit your users until you get the kinks worked out.

    I also really don’t have a problem with the targeted ads. It seems to me that the ads in yahoo and hotmail also are targeted to some degree. Plus, this just proves that hotmail and yahoo are scanning email in the same fashion as google is, so they aren’t any less secure.

    Besides, you shouldn’t be using a free email account for anything you want to remain private, unless you sign up as a little old lady from uzbekistahn (that’s what I do to keep private).

    Comment by Andrew — June 18, 2004 @ 7:55 am

  6. Since I have to deal with this same issue with emails from my company to our customers I must add that the reason that hotmail, yahoo and others have marked this as spam is because enough users clicked the button that says it is spam. When a user tells the mail systems that a particular message is spam then the subject line is saved and compared all known spam subject lines. The same thing is done with the body. If either is similar to existing known ones then a rule is created to identify all similar items. If enough people push the button then this rule is activated for all people - blacklisting this message. The way to help reverse this is by going into your spam folder and selecting whatever the “This is not spam” button. If enough people do this then the message is “whitelisted” and allowed in their In Boxes. Now of course Yahoo or anyone could blacklist any message they wanted but I bet their users will usually beat them to it. So although this could be nefarious there is a good possibility that it is just normal spam filtering.

    Comment by Joshie — June 18, 2004 @ 2:45 pm

  7. Joshie,

    That’s what I thought at first to. That this was a baeysian spam filter that was being trained by the users. However, if that was the case, making minute changes to the body shouldn’t be enough to get it past the filter. Taking out a line of text for example. It should have still triggered the filter. Unless, they are scanning for the EXACT body. If that’s what Yahoo is doing, then their spam filter is broken! If all it takes for a spammer to get a new message through is change a couple of letters in the email, it isn’t a good filter. I did some rigorous testing, and pretty much decided this was a deliberate act on their part, and not the work of an over zealous spam filter.

    Comment by Andrew — June 18, 2004 @ 3:33 pm

  8. Interesting. You are right: none of the invitations to Gmail get through my spam filter, but invitations to the GOP’s Liberal Witch Burnings and President Bush’s Backyard Baby Bar-B-Q slip through just fine.

    Comment by Mark Spittle — June 18, 2004 @ 4:52 pm

  9. I too send many invitaions to yahoo and hotmail address, nothing got bounsed, yes in some cases hotmail took a while ( may be a 5 min max) for to receive the email, but still out of my 20-25 invitations to both hotmail and yahoo was converted without any problem.

    Comment by Sunil — June 21, 2004 @ 7:35 am

  10. To user jihad666,

    It seems like people either really hate the customized-ads thing or just don’t give a damn about it. I’m in the latter category. I couldn’t possibly care less that the ads are “targeted” based on the content of the emails. Why is this, perhaps you ask?

    One: I rarely look at the ads anyway.
    Two: So what if they’re targeted? At least I’m not seeing ads for random stuff that I *know* has nothing to do with anything, ie: TV.

    I’m not sure where Google got a reputation for being this big, evil corporation. Frankly, if more places were as “moral” and “ethical” as Google, the corporate landscape would be a much, much consumer-friendlier one (IMO).

    Now, what WOULD have or COULD be evil:

    - Google keeps track of what shows up in emails, builds profiles of YOU, sells profiles.

    - Google shows YOUR email(s) to advertisers.

    - Google runs some poorly or ineptly-implimented spam filter that actually doesn’t really block most spam.

    Comment by Brad Zimmerman — June 21, 2004 @ 8:14 am

  11. As far as I’m concerned, I am quite happy about Yahoo’s anti-spam filtering. What is this other than a unrequested offer for services ? Exactly the kind I wopuld expect to end up in the bulk folder. I am not interested, but if I were, I would still have a chance to accept the invitation by checking my bulk mail folder. So… what’s the problem ?

    Comment by giulix — June 21, 2004 @ 8:27 am

  12. http://whp.4saken.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=149

    Comment by t i — June 21, 2004 @ 9:13 am

  13. Mysterious Missing Gmail Invites

    When I heard that Google was offering email accounts with 20 gigabytes of storage space, I nearly gnawed my fingers off in excitement. For months now, I’ve been sick of my Yahoo! account constantly going over its storage limit–usually when…

    Trackback by TurkeyMonkey — June 21, 2004 @ 10:10 am

  14. Is Microsoft … er … Hotmail at it again?

    Gizmodo is reporting that Hotmail is blocking Gmail Invitations. If this is true, then it is a very underhanded (anti-competitive?) thing to do. Not that I expect less from Microsoft, but to be so blatant about it? A number of…

    Trackback by John P. Hoke's Asylum — June 21, 2004 @ 10:42 am

  15. giulix,

    It could be considered an unrequested offer. However, what if the invite came from your best friend, wife, gf, or parents? Spam filters should filter on the sender first and allow all messages from whitelisted senders through regardless of the subject or body. The fact that they’re mucking with MY whitelist upsets me.

    Comment by Andrew — June 21, 2004 @ 10:59 am

  16. the way this show is going, it’s clear that privacy is out the window. Scott McNealy, you old ratbastard, you were right after all.
    On the other hand, there is no reason why you shouldn’t use this stuff against them. Send some mails to friends and acquaintances and have them contain keywords that have nothing to do with you [make sure to let your friends know about this].
    If anything, it will mess up the statistics. If enough people do it, it will give a significant deviance to the model to screw up the people who are doing the spamming [but it’s not going to be a particularly rewarding thing to do, so don’t expect a big prize].

    For the really important stuff, use snail mail. It’s delightfully classy in an oldish sort of way, but unless you commit mail fraud, it’s a pretty secure way of sending information [I’m keeping all the ifs buts and maybes under consideration].

    I don’t look at any adds in Yahoo! and I’m not owned by anyone simply because they happen to know what kind of printer/computer I like or am likely to buy.
    The whole idea behind targeted adds is crap anyway: if you like the Chevrolet Corvette, you don’t need General Motors to send you information on the new model. You’ll know what the skinny on the new model is already. That’s why you’re a fan in the first place. Any other car they send you information about is not going to be of the same interest to you and you can simply chuck it.
    Look at it from the corporate point of view. Looking at adds doesn’t make you any money [no Joey, people do not live to give you 4K a month to do nothing, doesn’t happen], so you cut that out of your day entirely.

    Don’t do the add people any favors, they certainly aren’t looking to do you any.

    Comment by acetate — June 21, 2004 @ 11:23 am

  17. Hotmail to hot for Gmail

    Microsoft thinks they are hot shit already with their patenting of to-do lists.

    Trackback by Blog-Her :: Pandora's Box — June 21, 2004 @ 12:13 pm

  18. Well I did two tests with the invite. I sent two test invites to my Yahoo account and only one got through. The first one I sent with a subject of GMAIL and the second with a subject of INvite, and I only got the 2nd message. Oh well. GMAIL rocks.

    Comment by Shawn — June 21, 2004 @ 12:36 pm

  19. How about this for a further conspiracy theory.

    I had a friend of mine emailed me an invite to my SBC/Yahoo! email addr davepk@pacbell.net. I never recieved it. I asked him later if he sent it and sure enough he did. I then had him send me it via other means.
    Now this is where it gets interesting.
    Upon registering for my gmail acct i discover that davepk@gmail.com is already taken. And, not only that, the original invite is nowhere to be found. Makes me wonder if Yahoo! is now the proud owner of the gmail acct davepk@gmail.com

    Comment by David — June 21, 2004 @ 1:31 pm

  20. giulix,
    Gmail is still in closed beta. While invitations are a little easier to come by, I don’t know of anyone going out and spamming gmail to unsuspecting recipients. I’d wager that 95+% of gmail invites are sent to people who have asked/begged/bought them.
    sqw

    Comment by sqweak — June 21, 2004 @ 2:24 pm

  21. Yahoo! vs Gmail?

    I came across some interesting articles about how the oh-so-desired Gmail invitations are being either blocked or labeled as bulk by competing “free” email providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo! mail. I had to test it, so I sent myself…

    Trackback by Shadowedken Rants — June 21, 2004 @ 2:55 pm

  22. I just received a gmail invite last saturday (emailed to yahoomail), and it was placed on the inbox. I don’t why my case was different, but luckily it was. Cause, I wouldn’t have known about the invite. I usually expect all the messages in the bulk folder to be spam. Now I know, it isn’t always the case.

    Comment by Franco — June 21, 2004 @ 5:29 pm

  23. there is a way to bypass this.
    after you send the invite to your friend, copy the link below this “To accept this invitation and register for your account, visit”
    send that link to your friend again.

    Comment by Kelly — June 21, 2004 @ 7:25 pm

  24. I have a few gmail invites left. 12 in fact. I’m willing to give them away, but not for free. So I’ll make a deal. I’ll trade a gmail invite for a nude male pics. (No, they don’t have to be you.) I don’t want GRAPHIC. I am no into that. And I don’t want movies; I like stills more. So anyway, there you go. Pic for invite. In the case of more than 12 invites, I’ll pick the 12 hottest pics. (Again NO graphic (e.g., acts being performed). NO girls — if I want to see a girl I can see my wife. NO movies.)

    8=============D
    -B

    Comment by Brandon — June 21, 2004 @ 10:03 pm

  25. gasp! it did go to my bulk folder!

    Comment by anna — June 22, 2004 @ 7:14 am

  26. You know what’s really funny? I went to my Sent mailbox to look at some invites I’d sent out, and then I glanced at the ads AdSense decided to place next to Google’s invite. The top one? “Yahoo! Mail now offers 100MB of free storage!”

    Comment by Ravi Hiranand — June 22, 2004 @ 8:51 am

  27. I sent the above message contents (as in the first thread) and it didnt go to my bulk mail on Yahoo. Stayed right in my inbox.

    Ashok

    Comment by Ashok — June 22, 2004 @ 2:56 pm

  28. Yep Ravi, Yahoo has been advertising with AdWords for a long time. Money is money, kind of like seeing a Movie for ABC showing up as a commercial on CBS.

    I tried this test with four different mailboxes. First I sent a normal text mail from each, and they all went thru to my Yahoo mail account. No problems.

    Then I sent the sample text provided by Greg. All four wound up in the Bulk Folder. I marked all as “Not Spam” and resent two more times. Each time, they wound up in the Bulk Folder.

    Next I added those mailboxes to my Contacts, and resent again. Voila, they went thru to my Inbox. So I deleted the mailboxes from my Contacts and resent the mail again … they got tossed into the Bulk Folder again.

    I then tried using parts of the sample text, and they went through to the main Inbox … all except one in which I removed the last sentence with the parenthesis. That went to the Bulk Folder as well. There may be others possibilities, but I have seen enough.

    Comment by Dodger — June 22, 2004 @ 4:32 pm

  29. I tried the cut & paste test of the GMail invite to se if it went into my bulk mail. It id not do so from my work email–but from my Hotmail account it went right into the bulk mail folder!. Who knows? Considering the amount of bulk mail I get in the course of a day my invite may have been inadvertently overlooked and deleted!

    Comment by Lee — June 23, 2004 @ 12:44 pm

  30. all you haters are just jealous that you dont have accounts of your own… gmail rocks, end story.

    btw, genmay4lyfe, niggazz

    Comment by elliot — June 23, 2004 @ 8:00 pm

  31. Heck… I copied the invite and sent it from my yahoo acct to the same acct and it ended up in bulk folder :(

    Comment by Sauron — June 24, 2004 @ 7:12 am

  32. Yep this happened to me too. The best part about it is that I can tell Yahoo to get stuffed, because I just dropped their abominable SBC DSL AND their crappy mail service. (Although I am not overly impressed with GMail, either.)

    Comment by Beerzie Yoink — June 24, 2004 @ 8:06 am

  33. Just gotten a gmail account.
    I noticed that those so called Ads don’t appear in your emails, unless your email contents text related to those ads. Therefore, Google ads appeared in my email once in a blue moon. Also, many using yahoo would have notice emails that you sent out actually contain yahoo advertisement. so whats the big fuss? Google is been kinder and more honest than Yahoo. So why are people complaining? Right?

    Comment by Weikiat — June 24, 2004 @ 9:40 pm

  34. David,
    Here’s one way to find out. When your friend sent you an invitation, an exact copy of what you’d have gotten is saved to his ‘Sent Mail’ label - you alway have a copy of your sent mail in GMail. This mail has the link to the invitation. Click on it. If it hasn’t been used yet, you’ll be able to use it create another account. If, on the other hand, it has already been used, you’ll see a message that says exactly what account was created using that invite.

    Comment by Praveen — June 25, 2004 @ 12:35 pm


  35. ljljllj

    Comment by ewrwe — July 5, 2004 @ 8:51 am

  36. Actually I agree with both the statements : one stating that it’s just another way Yahoo and Hotmail trying to avoid any widespread service , and also the other one stating that this what-called invitation is the one type of mail that is supposed to be sent into the bulk or spam folder. Well these are 2 different points and neither of them should be considered incorrect. However, it cannot be said that Hotmail cannot be doing such a thing on purpose. Otherwise they wouldn’t increase their user’s (like me :) ) inbox storage limit all of a sudden, woudl they? And their manager renounced that was done just not to fall back with the competition going on.

    Comment by Murray — July 8, 2004 @ 11:58 pm

  37. I have given two invites to a person on AOL and they never received them, nor do they receive mail from my gmail address. I think this is a deplorable lack of consideration and is against my right to chose who I may communicate with and which provider. I know that AOL seems to block these out. AOL fears competition they didn’t like it when I try to check my Juno email too.

    AOL sucks.

    Comment by Audrey — August 4, 2004 @ 7:01 am

  38. I don’t see the big problem with google Ads. I honestly don’t care if code examines my personal information. Actually, for all I care, code can do anything it wants to my e-mail SO LONG AS:

  39. It doesn’t sell my info
  40. It doesn’t create a profile
  41. It doesn’t have any actual people looking at my mail

    42. GMail rocks, and I can’t wait for all the new features. It’s going to be truly amazing.

    Dan

    Comment by Dan — August 23, 2004 @ 7:30 am

  42. I agree with one of the posts above. This is so fucking elitist. If you want a 1gig mailbox go to www.spymac.com and anyone can sign up for it.

    Comment by Parlay — October 5, 2004 @ 11:25 pm

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