If your Gmail has felt unusually sluggish this weekend, you are not alone, and it is not your internet connection. The world's default email service is having one of its worst mornings, with processing speeds suddenly crawling like the dial-up days and, more seriously, a system that seems to have "forgotten" how to catch obvious spam. Users are steadily reporting delays in sending and receiving mail, along with warnings that some messages have not been scanned for spam, which inadvertently lets junk and potentially harmful content land straight in your inbox.
Gmail Delays One-Time Codes and Shows Spam Warnings
On major tech forums like Reddit and on the social network X, many users are complaining that sending and receiving email is significantly delayed, often by more than 10 minutes. For ordinary email, that delay may be only a minor annoyance, but for security services it is a disaster. Many users say messages containing one-time passcodes (OTP) or two-factor authentication (2FA) emails arrive too late, so the code has expired before they can use it. It is the kind of technical glitch that can turn a simple login attempt into a long, frustrating wait.
Another, more serious problem is the weakening of Gmail's normally invisible "superpower": spam scanning. Google's Google Workspace status dashboard has been officially updated to indicate that some users may see warning banners about missing spam checks. Specifically, users may see a message that reads: "Be careful with this message. Gmail has not scanned this message for spam, the sender has not been verified, or malware."
Google says the issue began at around 5:00 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday and that it is actively investigating the cause. However, based on reports from the user community, the problems appear to have started earlier than the time Google has confirmed. The failure of the spam scanning system is more than an annoyance. It also carries cybersecurity risk, since phishing emails or messages carrying malicious code can easily reach users without being blocked as they normally would be.
Inbox Sorting Errors and Advice From Experts
Meanwhile, the trouble does not stop at delays or spam. Users are also complaining that Gmail's tabbed sorting is behaving erratically. Emails in the Promotions and Social categories, which normally sit neatly in secondary tabs, are suddenly being routed straight into the Primary inbox. For users who have notifications turned on for their mobile devices, this misclassification can set off a storm of alerts from junk or promotional messages that would normally be filtered out through the secondary tabs, which is distracting and irritating.
Although Gmail is not completely "down," outage monitoring data from the community shows the disruption is widespread. The outage-tracking site Downdetector is showing a sharp spike in error reports, with the most common issue listed as "receiving messages." This confirms that the problem is not affecting just a small group but a large number of users worldwide.
Until Google fully resolves the problem, the advice for you may sound boring but is extremely important right now: remember that your Gmail settings have not changed, because this is a server-side error. Avoid clicking any suspicious links that appear in your inbox, even if they look safe, since the spam filter is not working well. Also consider temporarily switching to an authenticator app for two-factor authentication wherever possible, rather than waiting for codes by email, to avoid having them expire. Google says it will provide another update later this morning on the progress of the fix.
