My spam filter is asocial
I am deeply dissatisfied with Google Mail spam filter. I get 4 or 5 false positives per week, at least 2 of them are critical. It might be the best spam filter in the world, but it does not listen to me. It keeps on marking off as spam perfectly legitimate emails, written in French, from uqam.ca. I have no way to “talk some sense into it.” It is totally asocial.
Daniel,
I didn’t even realise there was a spam filter in Gmail until I read your post. Thanks — great post!
Comment by Cyril — 26/5/2008 @ 12:56
GMail contacts are supposed to work as a “white list”. Mail sent from addresses in your contacts should not be marked as SPAM.
Comment by Sérgio Nunes — 26/5/2008 @ 13:01
Thanks Sérgio, but am I going to white list every single student and every single employee of my school?
I work in a very large school. There are always new students.
Comment by Daniel Lemire — 26/5/2008 @ 13:19
You can set up filters, but I suspect they operate post, rather than pre spam filtering. Definitely a case where Gmail opted for simplicity over offering control, and I share your frustration. Spam is sufficiently subjective to call for a user-controlled configuration.
Comment by Daniel Tunkelang — 27/5/2008 @ 15:12