Google taking steps to exempt political emails from Gmail spam: Report

San Francisco: Tech giant Google is taking steps to ensure that emails from the US political campaigns reach users’ Gmail inboxes instead of automatically getting dumped into the spam folder, media reports said.

The tech giant has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for approval on a plan to make emails from “authorised candidate committees, political party committees and leadership political action committees registered with the FEC” exempt from spam detection, as long they abide by Gmail’s rules on phishing, malware and illegal content, reports Engadget.

“We want Gmail to provide a great experience for all of our users, including minimising unwanted email, but we do not filter emails based on political affiliation,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda was quoted by Axios, which first reported on the move.

Castaneda added that the pilot programme “may help improve inboxing rates for political bulk senders and provide more transparency into email deliverability, while still letting users protect their inboxes by unsubscribing or labeling emails as spam”.

If the project goes ahead, users will see a prominent notification the first time they receive an email from a campaign.

They will be asked if they want to keep receiving such emails. They will be able to opt-out of campaign notices later too, the report said.