2y ago

Can a reply to an ongoing email conversation land in spam?

Had an exchange of emails with someone, around 4-5 back and forth emails. He then told me that my last reply never arrived. When I forwarded that email again to him, he told me that actually the original reply arrived but landed in spam... he checked it after I forwarded the initial reply.

It's not critical or even a super important conversation but I think he lied to me. Is there any chance that a reply lands in spam if the last 4 mails in a thread arrived without a problem?

The emails were sent from a custom domain, using Office 365 Business. I have that email address for more than 6 years and I never had a problem with my emails landing in spam or never arriving. It's the first time I am hearing about it but I think he is duping me.

Edit Thanks all for the replies, it's good to know that it can happen.

22 comments

Yes. It's happened to me and it is a head fuck. The email was from a business with a perfectly legit email address.

You haven't mentioned what email provider they're using. That matters a lot. Not all providers have smart filter. No need to attribute to malice what can be explained by reason.

Yes, and even more chance of that happening today than 5 years ago. Reason: because of the modern day prevalence of the 'fake reply' SPAM and Phishing emails. Spammers and phishers are now drafting fresh messages mocked up to look like replies in existing email threads...older spam detection used to let these types of messages slip through because they thought they must be legitimate replies, and so naturally spammers started exploiting that to slip past detection. Modern detection no longer gives apparant replies a free pass.

Absolutely. Ask Apple. Even the “VIP” all end up in the spam folder all the time too, and there’s no way to tell it “this isn’t spam”.
- Doesn’t moving to out of the spam folder tell it?
  
  Unfortunately, no. There are a handful of emails, that no matter what I do, always go to the spam folder. I was told making them VIP would keep them out of the spam folder, but I can say with certainty that’s not true.

In my experience, yes. When I finally got the official job offer from a HR person I'd previously communicated with, the email landed in spam.

I had an email go to spam in the middle of a discussion with my insurance company. Even though I had already had 5 exchanges with them.

Yes. Email basically makes no sense whatsoever, it's a rotten pile of hacks on hacks on hacks that's been around for decades. Anything can end up anywhere.

It shouldn't, but it can, had it happen a bare handful of times but it's really rare.

- Wow! Thanks so much for the detailed response. I remember I tried mail-tester some time ago, I tried it now it gave me a 7.9/10
  SpamAssassin. Score: -2.1.
  -0.1 DKIM_SIGNED
  Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid This rule is automatically applied if your email contains a DKIM signature but other positive rules will also be added if your DKIM signature is valid. See immediately below.
  0.1 DKIM_VALID
  Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature Great! Your signature is valid
  -0.001 HTML_MESSAGE
  HTML included in message No worry, that's expected if you send HTML emails
  -0.1 MIME_HTML_MOSTLY
  Multipart message mostly text/html MIME
  -1.985 PYZOR_CHECK
  Similar message reported on Pyzor (https://www.pyzor.org) https://pyzor.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ Please test a real content, test Newsletters will always be flagged by Pyzor Adjust your message or request whitelisting (https://www.pyzor.org)
  0.001 RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_H2
  Average reputation (+2) xxxxx listed in wl.mailspike.net
  0.001 SPF_HELO_PASS
  SPF: HELO matches SPF record
  0.001 SPF_PASS SPF
  sender matches SPF record Great! Your SPF is valid
  This is the other part of the test with yellow checkmarks.
  You're not fully authenticated
  [SPF] Your server xx.xxx.xx.xx is authorized to use mail@xxxxx
  Your DKIM signature is valid
  You do not have a DMARC record You do not have a DMARC record, please add a TXT record to your domain _dmarc.xxxx with the following value: v=DMARC1; p=none
  Your reverse DNS does not match with your sending domain.
  The rest seems to be green except for the List-Unsubscribe header but I do not send newsletters.

Yes, but the mail provider/software you're using and a bunch of other variables do play the role in this equation.
A suggestion: to confirm it, have a test conversation with somoene and mark the last message as SPAM, to see how your environment is going to react.
- Absolutely NEVER mark anything from an online email provider you want to keep as spam. They use shared systems, it's not just spam for you, but potentially for everyone on that email provider. That's one way to protect people from receiving spam, 100 users marked that same newsletter email as spam? Alright, the newsletter will go to the spam folder for the next 20k users.
  If you mark legitimate emails as spam for fun you're fucking up the system (and give the sender a massive headache if suddenly every @gmail.com receiver puts their emails into the spam folder).
  
  > Absolutely NEVER mark anything from an online email provider you want to keep as spam.
  Set up temporary email account for the purpose of test, write to yourself, mark as spam, check how it works, forget about it.
  Done.

Absolutely yes. Even if you have marked all their previous emails as non-spam manually.

Email needs to change. It's incredibly insecure and the volume of spam/phishing/scams is overwhelming. Most people will not notice this, but if you open a couple of domains or work at a company that has secrets worth getting at, you'll notice how bad it is.

22 comments