Gmail suddenly has a relentless primary inbox spam problem, and users can’t seem to stop it

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed something quite annoying. Gmail, the one email service I can rely on not receiving to spam in my inbox (unless you count Google’s crappy ads I have to swipe away each morning!) has begun to get flooded with exactly that – spam.

Now, this isn’t your garden variety spam. This is somehow getting through not only Google’s primary inbox spam filters, but also continues to appear each day even if I mark it as spam and choose “Unsubscribe”! I’m not really sure why this is happening, but it’s starting to become a real problem – not to mention it’s annoying as hell.

I’m glad to say that I’m not the only one experiencing it though, and others feel my pain. For example, Artem Russakovskii on Twitter (Founder of Android Police) first confirmed my suspicions by stating that he, too, was getting the same unrelenting garbage despite his best efforts to squash it.

If you’re having the same issue, the reason you can’t win by marking it as spam and choosing to unsubscribe from it is that it comes from a different domain each time. This is likely some kind of coordinated spam attack, and I hope Google is doing something to address it. So far, we’ve heard nothing from the company regarding its presence, even though users have been complaining about it on Reddit and other places as well.

Some of the spam looks like that which you see above, promising free gifts or stating that you’ve won something and need to claim it via a confirmation. No doubt, this is the point where the attacker will try to steal your credentials or personal data.

An easy way to tell whether or not an email is legitimate is by dropping down the arrow on the “To” and “From” section. There, you’ll notice that the email address is a bunch of nonsense, followed by a domain that you likely didn’t sign up to receive anything from. I would encourage you to avoid clicking any links in these email bodies to protect yourself!

These attacks are going to be more common over the holidays as many consumers begin shopping for products on behalf of loved ones, but being as how this has been a nuisance for the past 3 months or so (I’ve only seen it over the past 30 days, personally), I have a feeling it’s a separate, more sinister campaign. Stay safe out there this holiday season, and let me know in the comments if you’re battling the same spam as of late!