So, last weekend I was sitting in my garden enjoying a relaxing Hobbitshire sunset…
When my phone started pinging.
(Not literally pinging, because I don’t let my phone ping with anything. I guard my notifications tighter than a bitcoin wallet. So… metaphorically pinging. You get the idea.)
It was coming at me from all sides…
Whatsapp, emails, IG DMs, Telegram…
WTF was going on?
Turns out something had flipped in the algos at Google HQ and my emails were identified as phishing.
You know the drill…
“Don’t open this email… may be trying to steal your sensitive information… do you trust this sender…”
A whole bunch of thoughtful people were reaching out to let me know they’d had the warning.
(Thank you, btw — I’m grateful to you!)
Anyway…
Bugger!
For an email-first business to be marked as phishing is pretty much the worst news you can get.
And sure enough, it happened right as I was heading off for a 3-day break in Poznań (Poland).
Timing, eh?
Anyway, the phishing thing was confusing…
See, I know my way around an email list.
My engagement is through the roof, open rates sky-high, all the verifications are in place, 100% domain reputation and ~0% s*** reports.
And yet… phishing?
Moi?
That’s what Google thought, anyway.
I had my email guru Moh (shoutout to Moh!) dive in and he texted me to confirm…
“Dude, there’s nothing wrong with your domain.”
It’s true that there were some minor things in my DNS that needed optimising (DMARC policy levels, yawn), but nothing that would lead directly from “email golden boy” to “phishing king” from one day to the next.
Kit support were less-than-helpful, informing me that it’s a good idea to clean cold subscribers from my list from time to time.
(As if a few cold subscribers result in sudden phishing flags.)
So, it’s all a bit of a mystery.
Unless…
Unless –
Unless there was something about the promo I sent last week that raised a big bright red flag, like a burner phone at a police station.
See, last week, I sent a 5-day promo for my F——- Zen programme.
I’m not going to say a single word about what that promo was, for reasons that will soon become clear.
Anyway…
In my signature style, the sales emails were actually NOT sales emails at all.
They were good ol’-fashioned legit “value” emails. The kind that elicit responses like this:
So, I’m confident we can say that the emails were pretty banging…
However…
They were all about f——- stuff. Moolah. The green stuff.
Chock-full of words that have to do with that topic.
And I have a theory that this triggered the Google alarm bells.
In fact, I ran the email through a dodgy email checker, and it lit up like a goddam Christmas tree.
This is interesting.
Because obviously I was writing about business f——.
And it’s one of the most popular topics I write about — I get tonnes of replies when I write about this.
But…
The fact of the matter is…
If I were a scammer, trying to con Auntie Doris out of her house, those are the same words I’d be using.
Same words… different context.
But, if my theory is correct, Google ain’t smart enough to tell the different, or to understand the context.
I may be wrong.
(Wouldn’t be the first time.)
But in any event, my hope is that this is a one-time thing, and that by getting back to sending my regular emails, and giving that topic a particularly wide berth for a while, I’ll live to fight another day.
On that note…
I would like to signal to Uncle Google that I’m not a dirty scammer…
So if you would like to help me out, then please feel free to hit Reply to this email and send a few nice words back my way.
Tell me something about your business.
Ask a question.
Inform me what you had for breakfast.
A nice back-and-forth is just what the doctor ordered.
Thanks for all your support.
Olly