Gmail Spam Filter Breakdown Affects 1.8B Users

Gmail experienced a global breakdown of its spam and categorization filters, pushing Promotions/Social messages into Primary inboxes and flagging trusted senders with warnings, reportedly affecting about 1.8 billion users starting early Jan. 24; Google acknowledged the issue on its status dashboard and stated it was resolved by 9:55 a.m. PT, though some residual effects may persist. The disruption underscores the complexity and importance of Gmail’s AI-driven defenses (e.g., RETVec) and comes amid stricter bulk-sender enforcement, reminding users to remain vigilant during recovery periods; the article also briefly notes a separate researcher-reported data leak of 149 million logins without further detail.