Starting in April, senders of unwanted mass emails to Gmail users will begin to see message rejections increasing unless they abide by new Gmail email sender guidelines, Google
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02/13 updates below. This article was originally published on February 11.
New Rules For Sending Mass Email To Gmail Accounts
As an article I published on Forbes on last Tuesday made clear, new rules are coming into place to protect Gmail users from unwanted mass emails. At the time, it was reported that some senders of mass marketing emails had started to receive error messages relating to some messages sent to Gmail accounts. However, a Google spokesperson has told me that those specific errors, 550-5.7.56, were not new but “a product of pre-existing authentication requirements.”
Google has also confirmed that, from April, it will “start rejecting a percentage of non-compliant email traffic, and we’ll gradually increase the rejection rate.” Google says that, for example, if 75% of the traffic meets the new email sender authentication guidelines, then “a percentage” of the remaining non-compliant 25% will be rejected. It isn’t yet clear what that percentage will be. Google does say that when it comes to enforcement of the new rules, it will be “gradual and progressive.”
This slow and steady approach appears to have already started, with temporary errors on a “small percentage of their non-compliant email traffic” coming into play this month. Google also says that bulk senders will have until June 1 to “implement one-click unsubscribe in all commercial, promotional messages.”
Only Email Sent To Personal Gmail Accounts Will Be Rejected
These changes will only impact bulk emails sent to personal Gmail accounts. Senders of mass email to those accounts, those sending at least 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts, will be required to authenticate the outgoing email as well as “avoid sending unwanted or unsolicited email.” The 5,000 message limit is calculated on emails sent from the same primary domain, regardless of how many subdomains are used. The limit only has to be reached once for the domain to be considered a permanent bulk sender.
These guidelines do not apply to messages sent to Google Workspace accounts, but all senders, including those using Google Workspace, must meet the new requirements.
Improved Security And More Control For Gmail Users
A Google spokesperson told me that the requirements are being implemented to “boost sender-side security and increase the control users have over what gets into their inbox even more.” For the recipient, it should mean that they can trust the sender of the email they receive to actually be that person or organization, reducing the phishing risk to them as malicious actors commonly exploit authentication loopholes. “If anything,” the spokesperson concludes, “meeting these requirements should help senders reach those who want their messages more effectively, with diminished risk of spoofing and hijacking from bad actors.”
WhatsApp Also Steps Up To The Mass Mail Menace Protection Plate
Update February 13: While it is great news that, with some 1.8 billion accounts, Gmail is improving protection against spammers and malicious actors using unauthenticated mass email-sending methods, it’s not the only major messaging player stepping up to the anti-spam message plate. It has now become more accessible for the approximately 2.7 billion users of WhatsApp to block spam messages.
While WhatsApp, like Gmail, already has plenty of built-in protection against spammers, anything that makes dealing with the potentially dangerous as well as always annoying threat is welcome. The newest move from WhatsApp is to enable users to block that spam right from the lock screen without even having to unlock their smartphone first.
It’s so easy that I’m amazed the user interface designers at Meta had not thought of it years ago, to be honest: a long press on the message notification pop-up is all it takes to open the option to block the message and/or report the sender. Not only is this long-overdue, it’s also much less time-consuming than wading through the WhatsApp settings submenus to block and report contacts sending unsolicited and unwanted messages. An additional benefit is that there’s no need to actually open the message in question, which could otherwise be a security or privacy risk in some cases.
