Gmail’s spam filter and automatic sorting are broken
Users’ inboxes have been flooded with promotional emails and warnings to “be careful.”
Users’ inboxes have been flooded with promotional emails and warnings to “be careful.”
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Some Gmail users may have noticed that promotional emails that normally go to their own siloed tab have started flooding their inbox. Reports hit the Google forums and Reddit that messages are bypassing the Updates and Promotional filters and went straight to Gmail inboxes. Some also reported seeing a banner at the top of some messages warning them to “be careful with this message,” explaining that it hasn’t been fully scanned for spam or malware.
Google acknowledged the issue, posting on the Workspace Status Dashboard:
Gmail users might see banners indicating missing spam checks.We are experiencing an issue with Gmail beginning on Saturday, 2026-01-24 05:02 US/Pacific. Users might experience the following banner: “Be careful with this message. Gmail hasn’t scanned this message for spam, unverified senders, or harmful software.”We advise the users to be extra diligent in lieu of missing spam checks. Our engineering team is investigating the issue. We will provide an update by Saturday, 2026-01-24 09:30 with current details.
By the afternoon, reports of problems had started to taper off, and at 8:28PM ET, Google updated the Status Dashboard to say that the issue had been resolved:
The issue with Gmail email classification is resolved as of Saturday, 2026-01-24 09:55 US/Pacific. We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation. We thank you for your patience while we worked on resolving the issue.
Updated January 24th: The issue has been resolved.
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