Users’ email accounts have been overwhelmed with marketing messages and alerts to “exercise caution.”
Users’ email accounts have been overwhelmed with marketing messages and alerts to “exercise caution.”
Certain Gmail users may have observed that promotional emails which typically go to their designated tab have begun pouring into their main inbox. Reports surfaced on the Google forums and Reddit indicating that messages are eluding the Updates and Promotions tabs, going straight into Gmail inboxes. Some users also reported encountering a warning banner atop certain messages alerting them to “exercise caution regarding this message,” noting it has not been thoroughly checked for spam or malware.
Google has acknowledged the situation and made a post on the Workspace Status Dashboard:
Gmail users might observe banners signifying the absence of spam checks. We have encountered a problem with Gmail commencing on Saturday, 2026-01-24 05:02 US/Pacific. Users may see the following banner: “Exercise caution regarding this message. Gmail hasn’t examined this message for spam, unverified senders, or malicious software.” We recommend users to exercise heightened vigilance due to the lack of spam checks. Our engineering team is currently investigating the matter. An update will be issued by Saturday, 2026-01-24 09:30 with further details.
By the afternoon, reports of issues began to decline, and at 8:28 PM ET, Google updated the Status Dashboard to indicate that the issue had been resolved:
The problem regarding Gmail email classification is resolved as of Saturday, 2026-01-24 09:55 US/Pacific. We will publish an analysis of this incident once our internal investigation is complete. Thank you for your patience as we worked to resolve this matter.
Updated January 24th: The issue has been resolved.
