this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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A Boring Dystopia

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This is a completely real notice with absolutely none of the hallmarks of actual spam. The chances of this being a legitimate false positive are just about zero.

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[–] Ava@piefed.blahaj.zone 64 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean... in fairness to Google, wouldn't this be an email address that has almost exclusively emailed a massive chunk of users all at once, without obvious connection, and with exactly identical content? The URL it's sent from doesn't resolve to a webpage, and isn't on the same domain I found attached to other information/copies of the settlement.

[–] scytale@piefed.zip 35 points 1 month ago

Yeah, class-action settlement emails always go straight to my spam folder because they do honestly look like spam/scams. A random email from a domain made specifically for the settlement, then links to forms that ask for personal information. It's not surprising that it gets flagged as spam often.

[–] markz@suppo.fi 28 points 1 month ago

The chances of this being a legitimate false positive are just about zero.

On a mass email campaign?

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

That long-ass domain name is probably what got flagged moreso than the email IMO. A law firm would/should use the domain of the law firm for reputation (aka a user can look them up to see if its legit without opening attachments), with the name of the class action as the username instead of just "help'

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Google’s spam filter is absolute trash, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s a false positive. Everyone loves Google’s spam filter, cause they hardly ever see spam, but that’s because it’s incredibly aggressive, and constantly makes false positives.

If you mark everything as spam, you’ll catch all the spam, right?

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 10 points 1 month ago

I remember email before Gmail's spam filter.

I'd get 20 emails a day and 15 of them would have various misspellings of knob pills in the subject. The rest would be pump and dump stock scams.

[–] Anon518@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's not just Google unfortunately, Yahoo & Hotmail/Outlook are even worse.

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes. Google's spam filter is one of the best there is. It's possible to train a better bespoke one if you control your own email, but provide one for free for all your users? Nobody's ever done that better. And just imagine the amount of spam and grift that hits Gmail on the whole.

I remember the time before learning filters (turn of the 2000s). It was hopeless. (I also remember the time before spam email. It was hopeful.)

[–] bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also adding if other users marked it as spam that's probably why too. And yes, users flag perfectly legitimate email as spam. Ask me how I know.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sometimes they do it because the emails are legitimate and annoying. Or maybe they just want to pretend they didn't see it. You know how I know that :)

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 0 points 1 month ago

They do it because users' brains are like those of the lizard or planarium. They want to "punish" the email they just got because it annoyed them, and so they press whatever button will give them the closest equivalent of "punching" the email to try to make it stop.

Marking the email minutes from the weekly team meeting as "spam" doesn't make it stop, and creates other problems sometimes, but that's not the level they are operating on when they do it. (There is some accidental sense in which marking something as spam makes Google marginally more likely to put similar stuff into your "spam" folder in the future, but that's pure coincidence as far as why they're doing it.) They just want to hit.

It's actually exactly the same reason some Lemmy users call anything or anyone they don't like "transphobia" or "zionism." They don't actually mean that that person supports the state of Israel in a literal sense. They're just doing it because they can't physically hit the person speaking, and that's the closest analogue available to punish them and try to shut them up.

[–] Aeri@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Mass emails about class actions are annoying because I have to go through a lot of trouble to verify they're real and then like a year later I get a check for 5 dollars which I also view intensely suspiciously.