False positive "phishing warnings" messages from Google on these list messages
As some of you no doubt already know, Google's Gmail "phishing detection" algorithms appear to be having some convulsions lately, and have been false tagging some (apparently not all) messages from at least two (and probably three) of these lists -- for sure PRIVACY and PFIR, and probably NNSQUAD as well. I hadn't originally planned to mention this publicly, and have already made queries to Google about this, but since Google has obviously not fixed it and I've been getting more notes from readers, this message is simply to inform you that I do know it's happening. The typical form of the warning is a banner that reads: "Be careful with this message. It contains context that's typically used to steal personal information." False positives like this are bad news, since they can ruin reputations and of course greatly upset various innocent parties who might not understand what's going on. Google usually does a very good job with this stuff but when the algorithms go batso getting them updated can be -- shall we say -- challenging for anyone. The really important take away here is that if this can happen to my lists they can indeed happen to anyone. My PRIVACY list has been running around a quarter century, PFIR almost that long, NNSQUAD for many years. The same static IP addresses have been been used for delivery for many years as well. So one would *think* they would all have good reputations by now! Why some of these messages are suddenly being flagged as phishing (remember, they're phishing warnings, not spam tags) is a mystery. They contain nothing asking for personal information of any kind. I do have a suspicion though. We've been talking about the FBI a lot lately, and I'm wondering if those mentions are somehow false triggering something deep down in Google's anti-phishing code. Just a hunch -- I have nothing to back that theory up. In any case, I apologize for this, and I'll make another round of queries to Google. Thanks as always. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone. _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
