What’s happening 

Gmail has recently started assigning shoreline.edu emails a low reputation. This makes it so that many of the messages sent from our shoreline.edu email accounts go straight into the recipient’s SPAM folder and they never see them. The messages are usually flagged in Gmail as follows: 

Does this affect student go.shoreline.edu accounts? 

No. Our student go.shoreline.edu email addresses are based in Gmail, but we have the ability to “whitelist” messages from shoreline.edu, so our messages do usually get through to those student email accounts. It’s other Gmail accounts that sometimes don’t receive our messages. 

Why is this happening? 

Google is not perfectly clear in their explanations, but we have identified that malicious email senders sometimes send email claiming to be from shoreline.edu. When users mark those as SPAM it damages our reputation. 

There are other potential contributing factors, involving how we send marketing messages, the times Shoreline users have fallen victim to phishing attacks causing their email accounts to send out SPAM, and the number of software systems we have that send email using our domain. We are working on a number of college-wide responses in addition to the technical changes below. 

What’s the solution? 

TSS has been working for months to secure Email transmission using Internet standards such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and by reviewing and modifying Spam Control Lists, Whitelists, and implementing stricter Quarantine, SPAM, and Phishing filters.  

Restoring our email deliverability has been elevated to a top priority for TSS but results may not be immediate. Recently we acquired a technology service that lets us that lets us identify non-Shoreline senders using our mail domains and eliminate or limit their ability to impersonate us. In addition, TSS is also utilizing services that track domain reputation, IP reputation, delivery rate failure, and SPAM reports. These tools and processes will allow us over time to restore our mail reputation and increase the deliverability rate of our emails to external addresses. 

What can I do now? 

If you have the ability to communicate with people who have Gmail accounts ahead of time, you can ask them to check their SPAM folders. When they find your message, they can click “Report not Spam” to get the message to be delivered and make it more likely they will get future messages. They can also add your address as a contact or create a rule to ensure delivery of your messages. 

If you have messages that must get through such as messages to job applicants or newly accepted students we can temporarily assign you a go.shoreline.edu email account. Since that is a Gmail account, messages you send from there will typically get to their recipient. To request that, email tss@shoreline.edu.