Google drops third‑party blacklist after GOP fundraiser emails were flagged as 'dangerous'

Google has stopped using a Netherlands‑based blacklist service in Gmail’s spam filtering after reports that the list flagged some Republican fundraising emails as “dangerous” and diverted them to users’ spam folders.

A Google spokesperson said the company removed the SURBL signal from Gmail after an internal review concluded that the company’s own protections were more effective at protecting users. José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, said Gmail relies on “hundreds of signals” to identify spam and that SURBL had been only one of those signals.

The change follows complaints from Republican consulting firm Targeted Victory and the GOP fundraising platform WinRed, which said links to WinRed were being marked as suspicious and routed to spam while comparable Democratic fundraising messages went to users’ inboxes. Targeted Victory notified Google on June 30 about the issue, and internal correspondence reviewed by media outlets shows SURBL removed WinRed from its list on Aug. 20 after WinRed contacted the Dutch firm.

Google told reporters that it stopped incorporating SURBL as a signal after media inquiries in mid‑August. In a statement, the company said it uses signals that include user reports and other industry‑recognized lists and that Gmail’s spam filtering is applied equally to all users regardless of political affiliation.

WinRed’s chief executive, Ryan Lyk, criticized the involvement of an overseas service in U.S. political communications and characterized the situation as foreign interference. In communication with WinRed, SURBL advised the platform to ensure that “best practices are followed,” and cited references including material related to a Canadian anti‑spam law, according to documents reviewed by reporters. SURBL did not respond to requests for comment.

Researchers and conservative campaign operatives have raised concerns about differential treatment of political emails in the past. A 2022 study by researchers at North Carolina State University found Gmail flagged a higher percentage of Republican fundraising emails as spam than Democratic fundraising emails during the leadup to the 2020 presidential election. Republican officials and outside critics have periodically accused Google of anti‑conservative bias, claims the company has repeatedly denied.

Legal and regulatory scrutiny of Big Tech’s role in political content has been intermittent. The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit last year alleging biased email filtering that was dismissed by a federal judge. The Federal Election Commission also dismissed a related complaint that alleged discrimination in Gmail’s filtering. Separately, the attorney general of Missouri has in recent months questioned whether major technology platforms skew AI chatbots or other services against particular political actors.

Google’s move to stop using SURBL reflects a broader trend in the industry of reexamining reliance on third‑party reputation lists and automated signals for content and security decisions. Companies that provide blacklists or reputation services are commonly used by internet service providers and email platforms to help identify abusive or malicious content, but critics say those lists can be opaque and sometimes include errors that affect legitimate senders.

Targeted Victory, which represents Republican campaigns and committees, said the problem should alarm campaigns that rely on email to reach voters and donors. The firm and its clients documented weeks of back‑and‑forth with Google support before receiving confirmation that WinRed links were being flagged within Gmail’s systems.

Google said it will continue to employ its own advanced protections and user feedback to identify spam. The company reiterated that its systems are designed to protect users from phishing and other threats, and that any single signal is one part of a broader set of criteria used to route messages.

The episode underscores ongoing tensions between political campaigns, third‑party security vendors and major platform operators over how automated tools affect political communications. Google’s decision to remove SURBL as a signal reduces one identified source of the flagged messages, but it also highlights questions about transparency and oversight of the signals that influence message delivery during election cycles.