Gmail spam filtering is pretty useless, even funny

[Tomas]

I still remember some user not so long ago touting Gmail as a prime example of how well the spam filtering shall work. Oh No!

Google Groups administration messages end up in Spam folder.
Google Alerts end up in spam folder.
And not some but many of them.

and I'm not even talking about completely innocent messages from completely innocent years old and hugely followed official discussion groups (like python programming).

OK. One can add all of these to the contacts book. Even official google services, if they can't do it themselves. But it makes their acclaimed antispam filters look funny.

I wouldn't be complaining, if there was a choice and it was possible to turn off their spam filtering, but it obviously is not.

[chrisretusn]

You know I never paid to much attention to Gmail's spam filtering.

They must have changed something because I never really had a problem with it. I rarely if ever use the web interface. I just use PocoMail.

Today after reading your post I checked it. Well I'll be, there were some messages in the Spam folder. Of course not a single one was Spam. All of them were from a friend of mine. I was wondering why I had not received and messages in the last week or so.

I really don't like this. I prefer to deal with Spam my self. I even had my ISP turn of filtering for my account after they installed SpamAssassin, way to aggressive, heck I wasn't getting any messages at all.

I have a Yahoo and 2 Hotmail Accounts they at least have the option to turn off or at least set it allow most everything. Never really cared for web mail anyway. I use Gmail for my "forward" friends only nothing important. Looks like I will have to pay more attention to the Spam folder now in Gmail.

[rgrun1]

You meant their admin posts AREN'T spam

As for getting Gmail locally and not via the web - you never know how many are trapped as spam - you never see them. I went out to the web interface and had tons of group mails (but not all!) trapped in the spam filter

[DT611]

I am also using Gmail and it really isn't that good with filtering messages. However, my main problem with it was a lot of spam messages are being placed on my Inbox-- in short it fails in filtering messages. I tried using the filter option where you can filter all messages under a domain...still doesn't work. I just hope that Google fix this issue as like what you have said guys, they are one of the best examples of how well the spam filtering shall work

[chrisretusn]

I got tired of good messages ending up in Gmail's spam.

My solution was to effectively turn off Gmail's spam filtering.

The following filters are applied to all incoming mail:
Matches: from:(@)
Do this: Never send it to Spam

[Tomas]

That's great tip Chris, thank you, didn't know this was possible.

Out of curiosity I checked the spam folder in my gmail account and it seems they improved a lot comparing to situation 2 years ago.

[speerga]

I got tired of good messages ending up in Gmail's spam.

My solution was to effectively turn off Gmail's spam filtering.

The following filters are applied to all incoming mail:
Matches: from:(@)
Do this: Never send it to Spam

That's amazing, that you're having so much trouble with Gmail spam filtering.

Frankly, except for a rocky patch when a lot of spam got into my Inbox for a few months about two years ago, gmail is the ONLY spam filtering that's ever worked for me. LOL!

Seriously, I have -- for the second time in a year! -- moved from PocoMail back to using Thunderbird and gmail. And the reason I have done this is because Pocomail has the absolutely WORST spam filtering of any email client I've used.

That's coming from someone who's owned and used Pocomail for many years, always hoping one tip or another or one revision or another would make spam filtering work for me.

But, alas, spam filtering has always been almost a non-factor in the minds of too many pocomail users and the developers.

Ah, well.

[Tomas]

That's amazing, that you're having so much trouble with Gmail spam filtering.

As far as I'm concerned, that was 2 years ago. Official Google services email messages ending in Spam folder and impossibility to disable antispam (I don't know whether I overlooked the above solution, or it wasn't available back then) was quite enough of a reason for me to avoid using Gmail address for serious stuff.

With Pocomail, you could at least use any other antispam filter, or not enable the built-in one. Gmail didn't seem to give a choice.

But, alas, spam filtering has always been almost a non-factor in the minds of too many pocomail users and the developers.

I don't remember the times when the bayesian spam filters were included in Pocomail. It was many years back and it might have been a good decision at that time, I don't know/remember what was the market situation back then.

In my humble opinion it would be best if the built-in bayesian filtering was removed or made more of an "addon" than built-in feature. It doesn't make that much sense nowadays to include such functionality built-in, as it probably did few years ago. There are specialized antispam tools, and same as Pocomail doesn't include built-in email server, mailing list management, email forensics etc., it should abandon antispam in favor of specialized tools as it can work with most of them (except the few that are Outlook-only). (I'm very happy SpamBayes user.)

[chrisretusn]

Pocomail has the absolutely WORST spam filtering of any email client I've used.

I have had great success with PocoMail's Junk Mail filters, 73% of incoming messages have been filtered as junk with 93.18% accuracy and 0.90% false positives.

[chrisretusn]

As far as I'm concerned, that was 2 years ago. Official Google services email messages ending in Spam folder and impossibility to disable antispam (I don't know whether I overlooked the above solution, or it wasn't available back then) was quite enough of a reason for me to avoid using Gmail address for serious stuff.

The "never add it to spam" filter option was added later. Until that option I used IMAP to check the Gmail spam folder. I never use Gmail for anything serious.

In my humble opinion it would be best if the built-in bayesian filtering was removed or made more of an "addon" than built-in feature. It doesn't make that much sense nowadays to include such functionality built-in, as it probably did few years ago. There are specialized antispam tools, and same as Pocomail doesn't include built-in email server, mailing list management, email forensics etc., it should abandon antispam in favor of specialized tools as it can work with most of them (except the few that are Outlook-only). (I'm very happy SpamBayes user.)

I personally like having the filters built in and hope it stays as a built-in feature.

[FFF]

Pocomail has the absolutely WORST spam filtering of any email client I've used.

I have had great success with PocoMail's Junk Mail filters, 73% of incoming messages have been filtered as junk with 93.18% accuracy and 0.90% false positives.

FWIW, i use K9 "in front" of Poco for years now, ,my rating is contantly 98,80% with 0,13% false positives....

Karl

[chrisretusn]

While those are impressive stats, there is a big reason I prefer to use PocoMail's filters rather than a front end filter.

A lot of my mail comes from friends who send me those pesky forwards. Some of them I happen to like. I also get individual emails from the several Yahoo! and Gmail Groups that I belong to. These types of messages almost always end up being marked as spam. With PocoMail I can filter these out to their respective folders before they are processes by PocoMail's Junk Filters.

In fact most of the messages I get are acted upon by my filter sets before they get to the Junk Mail filters. I get hundreds on messages a week. Since my last reset of the Junk Mail statistic, 2686 messages out of over 20,000 have made it to the Junk Mail filters.

K9, is that this K9? K9 Web Protection - Free Internet Filter and Parental Control Software | Free Internet Filtering and Parental Controls Software.

[Tomas]

K9 is http://keir.net/k9.html

[chrisretusn]

K9 is http://keir.net/k9.html

Thanks. Guess I got the wrong K9.