- Gmail spam filtering experienced a glitch on January 24, flooding inboxes with emails and spam warnings
- Users were experiencing misclassified emails, additional spam warnings and delays
- The issue has been fixed, but we still don’t know what caused it
Google engineers had a busy weekend as they sought to fix an issue with how Gmail messages were being filtered and classified after inboxes went haywire on Saturday January 24.
Users reported receiving Primary, Social and Updates emails in their Primary inboxes with some spam messages even appearing as legitimate emails.
Many even reported delays in receiving some emails, which caused issues with email-based two-factor authentication (2FA) codes.
Gmail spam filtering issue is now fixed, Google confirms
“Gmail users might see banners indicating missing spam checks,” a Google Workspace status update read.
The company identified that the issue started at 5:02am PT.
“Some Gmail users experienced a misclassification of emails in their inbox, additional spam warnings, and delays in receiving email,” a separate update in the same thread detailed.
“We advise the users to be extra diligent in lieu of missing spam checks,” the company was warning users at the peak of the incident.
The Gmail issue correlates with a spike in Gmail-related complaints on Downdetector, with one user summarizing their experience clearly: “Sudden influx of promo emails hitting my primary. All labeled as potential Spam.”
Although the issue was marked as fixed with effect from 9:55pm PT, Google still hasn’t confirmed the technical root cause, instead promising to deliver an incident analysis after the completion of its investigation.
Although the undisclosed cause looks to have been rectified, Google is still warning users that they may continue to receive misclassified emails, delays and erroneous spam warnings for a short while.
Google’s advice concluded that its spam filtering tool should only be considered an aid. “we encourage users to follow standard best practices when engaging with messages from unknown senders,” a company spokesperson said to Engadget.
On a similar note, Google pulled Gmailify from its offerings earlier this month, removing the ability for third-party inboxes like Outlook to get Gmail’s spam filtering tools outside of the native Gmail experience.
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