A quirk in Google’s Gmail system that identifies heavy loads of mail from one source as spam again afflicted Harvard users over Thanksgiving weekend, according to Jason Fuller, Harvard Law School’s Manager of Technology Support Services. For the second time this year, the Google spam flag appeared to cause significant delays in email delivery for users on the Harvard Law School and Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) networks whose Harvard email accounts forward to the Google email service, and for Gmail users waiting for emails from the Harvard network.
The nature of the problem meant that HLS technicians could not send an email to the HLS community, for fear of making the problem worse. News of the issue spread through social networks like Twitter and Facebook before it was resolved on Sunday afternoon. The same problem afflicted Harvard for a much longer period of time during the first week of October.
“This is indeed a frustrating situation because we have no direct control” over Google’s software, Fuller wrote in an email. “We want our students email infrastructure to work reliably.” The issue requires the HLS’ Information Technology Services department to work directly with Google to ensure that emails sent from its system are not really spam.
According to Fuller, this second slowdown has ITS looking for a permanent solution, but he said that the lack of transparency at Google meant that ITS lacked “any way to get further insight or visibility into Google’s policies/procedures surrounding forwarded email.”
The Harvard Law Record is seeking more information from Google itself; check back for updates.
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