Yes it is. It is malware at this point. (It’s trying to trick you into clicking ads.) If I can invite you to try Port87, it’s an email service that I wrote that does the opposite. (Keeps spam out of your inbox, rather than inserting spam into it.)
Full disclosure: I developed and run Port87, and as such, have a financial interest in it.
Isn’t that labels thing the same as using the + in Gmail? You can use [email protected] to register somewhere, and if you receive anything else on that email address you’ll know they shared your email address.
Kind of. It’s called tagged addressing or subaddressing, and the fact that you can do that with both services is where the similarities end. With Gmail, it’s just another address that goes to your inbox. With Port87, whatever you put after the dash or plus sign is the label it goes to in your account. That way, it’s automatically organized for you. And you can make a label screen senders before their email is delivered. That way, a label that’s meant for people, like “[email protected]” will only get emails from real people.
It sucks that Gmail is pretty much the best app that works with, well… Gmail accounts. At least from what I’ve found. Especially with the 2FA thing where it asks you to press “yes” in Gmail after signing into Gmail from a different browser.
What’s so great about the gmail app (aside from the 2FA thing you mentioned?) Personally, I’m reasonably happy with the iOS mail app (I mean, it’s bad, but it does its job and it doesn’t advertise to me, so I guess that’s a win)… But I guess I do most of my emailing on mu4e.
Nothing really, just the 2FA I find to be really useful and I’m too lazy to switch over my 2FA settings too.
I can’t seem to get the iOS mail app to work for Gmail, it always, and I mean always pushed notifications like a minimum of 30-45 minutes late for important emails. Maybe even longer, and that’s a minimum.
There’s other email clients I’ve wanted to use: outlook was one and spark was the other. I liked outlook, but again the 2FA was important, and Spark felt like it was a tad bit too gimmicky for an email client (having AI to write an email for me, I mean I guess that can be useful but I’d rather take the time to write it myself)
The mail app does not support push notifications for gmail and also does not support IMAP IDLE (my naive understanding is that IDLE keeps a socket open and potentially the radio as a result which would impact battery life), so it fetches emails on a timer. AFAIK the only ways to get push notifications is with iCloud email and with an exchange server. I know you used to be able to set gmail up as an exchange server account on iOS, but I’m not certain if gmail will still pretend to be an exchange server these days. This is probably my biggest complaint with the mail app — like I said, it’s not great :), but it’s good enough for my purposes right now.
That’s fair! :) I feel the same about the Gmail app, it’s not great, but it fits my purposes well enough. I saw the ads OP was talking about, I know I’ve seen them for years by this point, but I never really took notice because they’re so (in my humble opinion) discreet and not really noticeable.
Spark and some more sensible form of 2fa will do. I’ve found Spark superior in every way, what do you prefer about the gmail app? You can use your hardware keys or totp apps with gmail, and it’s much more portable.
It’s mainly due to the lack of knowledge, I don’t know what hardware keys are, nor do I know what a totp app is, so it’s more of a convenience thing for me and not pretending to know what something is or how it works
If you ever feel like looking into totp (time-based one time passwords) some common ones are authy or google authenticator. In case you ever feel the need to start investigating, or some account tells you to use an authenticator like that.
Oh? You can set an Authenticator like Microsoft Authenticator for Gmail accounts? I know about those apps I just didn’t know what totp meant
I think I tried that but it defaulted to Gmail, I keep forgetting how to actually change that, or at least make google keep that setting. It took forever for it to click in how to change login settings from pixel to iPhone (you know the google app popping up with the “press yes to authenticate”
Yep! Sorry for unsolicited acronym, I realize that’s a really annoying thing to get in reply comments.
Any time an app tells you to “use Google authenticator” you can use any authenticator. That QR code they give you to scan for setup can be read by lots of apps. I personally like authy, and it is a very easy cross platform switch when you bounce from android to iPhone or whatever. Keep copies of your backup passwords tho! No matter which app you choose, either print them out or put them in a password manager or whatever Very Secure Method you like.
That being said if you’re happy with your setup that’s awesome and no need to fix what ain’t bugging ya.
I don’t use any of the default Gmail apps. Not because of ads, but because, if your email is too long, Google will truncate it and make you click to a new page to read the whole thing. I found Edison Mail on Android works acceptably. And in Firefox I use an addon called Notifier for Gmail. But I’ve seen recently that N for G might stop working sometime soon.
These ads only appear in the “promotions” section of Gmail, the section that is by definition for advertising emails. It’s not great, but this is the least intrusive place to put ads.
I loved Inbox. I hate everything that was supposed to replace it. Spark isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it’s not nearly as smart. Shortwave may be ok but my only IOS device isn’t set up to receive email and I haven’t bothered to try it since the Android app is new. Gmail is terrible. Outlook is Outlook.
Inbox worked in a way that my brain immediately understood and adapted to.
But these gmail features aren't remotely like inbox. They hide the emails behind alternate tabs. Ones you cannot configure yourself. With nearly no indication instead of putting them front and center (but grouped together). They make it harder to see and understand your inbox instead of easier. This post being a perfect example -- tons of people didn't even understand what was going on because of how awful the feature is.
Inbox was killed and its main features lost with it. They were not folded into gmail.
What I do is I create rules with which I tag emails and auto archive them. This moves them to “folders” in a way I decide and removes them from the inbox. They all are still in the all mail tab.
I also archive all the mail after processing it so that “clear the inbox” feeling that Inbox had is not lost.
I still prefer Inbox to Gmail but I emulated all the features I used.
You can turn on and off tabs. But if you turn them on, you’re going to get ads.
I’ve been getting these ads for months now, and am slowly working on moving to proton/k9. I imgine it’s going to suck getting similar filters set up for my mail, though.
2023 is easily the worst year in the history of the internet, every big company can go fuck itself imo
Never noticed an ad in the Primary tab. They appear in the others. I genuinely never look there as it’s just three extra tabs of spam I don’t need to see.
If any of my wanted email is there, I guess I’ll see it when I use the search function. That also doesn’t have ads. So far.
Shit I was confused I’ve never seen this, but I assume I am have all that turned off. Still moving away from gmail though. Protonmail, mentioned by someone else, is what im using, but I think having your own domain and just having someone host the data is probably the best bet
I agree with you 100%. That’s what I did. Registered a domain for 10 years, and use the free version of Zoho mail. It may or may not be enough, depending on if you regularly clean your emails or not, since each of the allowed 5 users gets only 5GB of storage space. There are plenty of alternatives out there to do this, all of them with their pros and cons.
Are you kidding? It filters out 90% of my inbox so I don’t have to look at it, but keeps it available for me in case I want it later. It’s one of my favorite features Gmail.
I’ve still been using the HTML version on desktop. I just got a notice that it’ll be discontinued come 2024. It’s actually a nice nudge to de Gmail myself.
The only way to disable them is to disable the inbox sorting setting (where it sorts primary, promotional, and social). As it is, it only puts adds in the promotional inbox. The worst thing is, i swear it knows where your mouse is and re sorts your emails so an ad lands right below your mouse, increasing the number of ad clicks and the ad revenue. I’ve had this happen to be multiple times.
Yep, first thing I do whenever I add an account to Gmail is disable inbox sorting — presto, zero ads. This has been going on for years, but if OP just made a new Gmail account for the first time since 2013ish, it could be the first time they’ve seen the ads. Feels bad.
If you have a Gmail account with promotional emails, go into your promotional inbox and just mouse around a little bit near the top 10 emails. You’ll most likely see it move the ads around
It’s definitely getting far worse lately. It used to only be in promotions but now I’m seeing it in updates too. In promotions it’s about 1 ad to every 2-3 emails now when it used to be 1-2 at the top and that’s it
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