Facebook Emails Suck
Apparently Facebook has decided to route all your emails through their servers first, replacing your usual contact information with an @facebook email address. My usual gmail address has been replaced with, horror of horrors, this:
The fix? Edit your contact information, and select the “shown on timeline” for your real email address, and hide the Facebook proxy from ever being known.
GMail Blocking Chase Emails as Spam
For whatever reason, Gmail keeps blocking my account alert emails from Chase. In my spam folder, guess which are really spam, and which are legit?
When I move them to my inbox and/or mark them as spam, I get warned that “Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information.”
How do I get Google to believe that my emails from Chase are real? I keep marking them as not spam, but that doesn’t help! Ridiculous that Gmail is hurting Chase Bank’s ability to conduct business and manage their fraud/risk. I highly suspect that account fraud alerts would get thrown into the same bucket…
Update 1:
The message headers seem to indicate a failure between Cornell and Google’s servers on SPF (Sender Policy Framework):
Delivered-To: XXXX@gmail.com
Received: by 10.231.53.18 with SMTP id k18cs6777ibg;
Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:13:22 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.52.93.112 with SMTP id ct16mr4101007vdb.423.1316866401115;
Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:13:21 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <Chase@alerts.chase.com>
Received: from limestone3.mail.cornell.edu (limestone3.mail.cornell.edu. [128.253.83.163])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id bz6si11946296vdc.126.2011.09.24.05.13.20;
Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:13:21 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: fail (google.com: domain of Chase@alerts.chase.com does not designate 128.253.83.163 as permitted sender) client-ip=128.253.83.163;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=hardfail (google.com: domain of Chase@alerts.chase.com does not designate 128.253.83.163 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=Chase@alerts.chase.com; dkim=hardfail header.i=@alerts.Chase.com
X-CornellRouted: This message has been Routed already.
…
Update 2: A helpful Googler/blog reader said this:
It appears to be a problem specifically with Cornell. It’s a known issue when Cornell is forwarding e-mails to GMail. The Cornell IT admins [are fixing] their exchange server. In the meantime you can fix this with either:
- have Chase send info direct to @gmail.com
- create a filter to “never mark as spam” for that address.
My solution is to change my old rules to email directly to gmail rather than forward through Cornell’s servers.
Why Facebook delays its email notifications
Have you ever been logged into Facebook and gotten an instant notification “hey, someone commented on your post” and waited an hour later to get the email version of that notification? Did you ever wonder why Facebook’s system seem out of sync with email? I’ve experienced this on occasion, and recently it got me thinking.
If you were Facebook, and trying to drive eyeballs to your site, why would you even do email notifications at all? If people realized that Facebook itself was a better source of data for realtime Facebook updates than the email notifications, it would be more likely that people would visit the site to keep up to date. And visitors to the site would most likely drive other activity and engagement. So, by degrading email notifications functionality, Facebook could transition people into higher engagement of the website.
A clever way to do it undetectably (except by, say, Google) would be to periodically degrade email notifications randomly. It’s easy to blame it on “system failures.” Since users are not all affected at the same time, but only a portion of users experience a portion of delayed email, gradually the userbase would be conditioned to mistrust Facebook’s email notifications, and trust the website more.
However, their email notifications are pretty good. Here’s the last five of mine, they line up perfectly:
I don’t have the data right now to demonstrate anything sinister. and Facebook’s email notifications do appear to generally arrive in a timely fashion. But if your experience has been otherwise, leave a comment and kick off this conspiracy theory.