Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernard Sanders’ economic plan triggered Gmail’s “phishing scam” antenna, with the mail system saying Mr. Sanders’ liberal campaign promises — including lower prescription drug prices and free college for all — sound like a fraud.
“Be careful with this message. It contains content that’s typically used to steal personal information,” Gmail said in a bright red warning box that appeared at the top of a message sent by Mr. Sanders’ campaign Friday, laying out his “Agenda for Working Families.”
“This message could be a scam,” Gmail says in its page explaining why it flagged the message as a “phishing scam.” Phishing is a specific type of spam email where someone tries to entice users to disclose bank accounts or other sensitive information.
The Sanders campaign declined to comment for this article, but a spokesperson for Google, the Internet giant that runs Gmail, said the company believes it has figured out the problem.
“A regression in the spam filter’s machine learning framework was determined to be the root cause. The issue affected only a very small percentage of the overall email received by Gmail and it has now been resolved,” the spokesperson said.
A screen grab of the Sen. Bernard Sanders e-mail deemed a ‘phishing … more
According to Gmail, messages are automatically analyzed based on the sender and the content of the message. In this case, the Sanders press release was sent by Michael Briggs, a campaign spokesman, and other similar messages weren’t marked as spam or phishing, so it’s probably that Mr. Sanders’ wording caused his message to be labeled a scam.
The offending email complains that America’s economy is failing, stiffing working families while rewarding billionaires.
“My plan would make Wall Street banks, profitable corporations, millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. My plan would provide living wages for working people and ensure equal pay for women,” Mr. Sanders says, ticking off his plans to raise taxes by $1 trillion and spend it on infrastructure, guarantee free tuition at public colleges and universities, raise the minimum wage, raise Social Security benefits and cut prices on prescription drugs.
Ira Winkler, president of Secure Mentem and a cybersecurity expert, said the campaign likely triggered Gmail’s filters because it used phrases spammers use to try to sell prescription drugs, and by offering things for free — in this case, the promise to pay for public colleges and universities.
“The way spam filters tend to work is you’ve got scoring. And the more time trigger words are used scoring tends to go up. So if you see words like ‘free,’ if you see words like ‘prescription drugs,’ that keeps triggering it,” Mr. Winkler said.
“When you put out a campaign message filled with fluff it’s not unexpected,” he said.
He said one solution businesses that do a lot of mass mailings should use is to sign up with a trusted bulk emailing company, which then works with folks like Gmail to make sure they know the messages are legitimate — a practice known as “whitelisting.”
Mr. Winkler said getting labeled spam could happen to any politician making promises to voters, and using red-flag words.
“If you use the word guarantee that’s another flag,” the expert said.
It was unclear why Mr. Sanders’ message would have been deemed phishing, rather than regular spam. Those sorts of messages usually include links they want users to click on, hoping to entice someone to provide sensitive personal information.
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