Is Gmail’s Spam Filtering Failing For You, Too?
That’s the question I posed on Twitter this morning, and I’ve already seen a number of positive and similar responses. I started to notice a change for the worse about three or four weeks ago. I’m getting pounded with spam in both my personal Gmail account and my GigaOM Google Apps for Domain Inbox. A fair number, perhaps half or more, are in foreign languages, so they’re doubly wasted on me: I can’t even understand the spam! ;)
I’d love to see some way to “reset” the spam filtering in Gmail for situations like this. Checking Google’s Gmail Help section on removing spam tells me that “the more spam you mark, the better our system will get at weeding out those annoying messages.” Ironically, I’m finding lately that the exact opposite is happening: I’m marking more and more messages as spam, but getting even more (or at least as many) in return. Back in late 2007, Google reported fairly impressive spam-filtering statistics. I may look around to see if that data has been updated lately.
It’s getting so bad that it’s taking at least 15 to 30 minutes of my day to mark items as spam in the two accounts. That’s simply too much effort. Is it just me and a few other folks on Twitter, or have you noticed this of late as well? I’m still thinking that, like sending a piece of snail-mail, maybe we should be charged a minimal micro-payment for every e-mail we send. Oy!
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Just turn on postini for your google apps. Postini is great, I use postini both for my Gmail-account and for my Exchange account. I never get any spam anymore.
Unfortunately I don’t think google uses postini for the free version of gmail… :(
And micro-payment?! That’s Heresy… shame.
To pay for each email is basically punishing the victim. Why should I have to pay for the unscrupulous acts of others? I think it’s payment enough that I spend 3-4 hours twice a week deleting, have been doing it for months, but just can’t keep up.
As usual, the spammers are winning. Every battle they wage against filters always ends the same way. Clearly a better solution needs to be put into place to combat spam at its source. We do not have to change how we use email, but instead change who we want to contact us. Content filtering doesn’t work, spammers gets around it, you get emails filtered out that are not suppose to and that you really need.
An anti-spam system needs to only allow communication with people (contacts) that you want to communicate with. Similar to facebook or linkedin do you really want some random person, you don’t know communicating with you. When an email is sent to you, you only want a trusted contact sending you email. This is the only way to solve the problem.
Such an anti-spam system exists. Sendio.com makes an appliance that does just that, establishes a trusted network of contacts based on who you email. It is a simple, straight forward email and puts you back in control of your inbox.
Yes, but have you never received an email from an email address you recognize as a friend only to find that it’s some spamming message?
Email address hijacking is not uncommon, so simply trusting any email from an address in your contact list by itself is not a sufficient approach.
Hmm, well, I’ve got 6 email accounts on the go which between them get thousands of spam messages a day, but I only see perhaps 3 a day in my Exchange inbox thanks to a combination of the email provider filters, Outlook and my own rules (Acai berry anyone)?
1/2 hour a day must be really annoying Kevin, it truly is a modern curse. My daughter is 12 and of course now wants her own email account, which will soon be filled up with all sorts of sexual spam so I’m evaluating the best email solution for her, along with having a talk about the perils of the internet!
Same here .. :(
Having GAFYD (gmail for my domain) AND postini.
All mailboxes are being spammed like crazy the last couple of weeks.
Having the impression the spamfilter is either down or working only partly. My domain never had spam before.. well ok maybe 1 or 2 per 3 months.
Hope google picks it up and sorts it out.
Every 4 days or so, I get 5-7000 spams and about 300 pieces of junk mail in my gmail account. My solution is private accounts for people and businesses I want to hear from. That works in one account and the other isn’t bad. I keep hearing about this wonderful gmail spam filter. It takes me days to go through them all, so I have to delete them all. That, and all the junk mail are about all I can find time for. How do I make it work? I miss a lot just because I don’t have time to read my inbox.
I have noticed a difference in the type of spam recently.
A very slight increase in spam for me. All seem to be from the same spammer varying slightly each time
However, gmail has been pretty good overall over the years.
Wow. I don’t have my own website or anything like that, so I don’t get nearly as many messages as the rest of you I’m sure, but I use my Gmail to sign up for everything and have never had an issue with spam on it. In fact, it’s been better at filtering spam than my paid-for Fastmail account.
I don’t have a website either. But I get bombarded with spam. I think I have it down to maybe 6-800 spams a day, and 200+ pieces of junk in my inbox. Still a huge timewaster. I get little done spending my online time deleting and hunting through it all for something I want. I just learned this week that my aunt has been emailing me since May. I looked for her emails every time I go online and didn’t see them. What’s really sad is that she is blaming me, and has stopped communicating. Please, gmail, do something fast.
btw.. google is aware of the issue and working on it appearantly.
“Hi everyone, thanks for reporting this problem with our spam filters. We’re looking into it as I type, and we’ll get it corrected as soon as we can. In the meantime, please continue to mark any misclassified messages as “Spam.” Not only will you get the messages out of your inbox — you’ll also be helping us to fix the problem!”
See http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=60eda5b723e1b393&hl=en&fid=60eda5b723e1b393000469d1bd71d9c7 for full thread.
I’ve noticed that the spam folder fills up faster (I mostly ignore it, but occasionally go through to see if I’m missing something important).
Sounds like a nightmare.
Hmmm ,,, interesting.
I am using 2 gmail accounts and the spam filter for me is 99.9% perfect. I get maybe a hundred or so spam messages a day and very few make it into my inbox. I might get a spam in my inbox maybe once a week.