14th Oct 2007
Gmail spam filtering - too good to be true?
In a lighter side of the growing spam problem, some complain that Google’s Gmail, a web mail service, is actually to effective at blocking some types of mass, automated mailings. As well as detecting spam messages and other forms of spam junk mail, Google apparently sometimes blocks its own “Google Alerts”, a news-alerting service.
A certain user had Google Alerts set up for his own name, but received little in his inbox, before one day noticing that Google’s antispam software had forwarded all these Alerts to his Junk Mail folder. Perhaps the inbuilt spam blocker software had read the messages as impersonal, yet mentioning his name - usually a sign of junk spam mail. In this instance, though, they were blocking information from their own company.
This shows how important it is to check one’s junk mail folder on a regular basis to ensure that it’s not only spam filtering that is taking place. While he only missed out on some news stories, some important information could have gone missing, too. Most forms of spam prevention software offer spam white list services where you can mark certain email senders as “safe”, ensuring that their e mail goes to your inbox, while not affecting the spam blocker as a whole. It’s always worthwhile to check that your spam whitelist is up to date.
See more at WebProNews
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