anyone else suddenly getting tons of generic SPAM?

[Breezy]

In the past Google has filtered out most SPAM email at the server level, leaving me with a system that gets very few SPAMs in the spam box.

However since about June 7 2011 I'm getting thousands of spams a day. I've been through settings but there is nothing I can find to control spam filtering at all. Is this just something with my account or are others experiencing the same problem?

[Breezy]

It appears that what is happening is that Google is not SPAM filtering any of my account. The spam filtering that winds up in my SPAM folder is from the email app I use .. Thunderbird. I have looked high and low and can find no way of re-enabling the internal Google SPAM filter. Any ideas?

[Andy]

> However since about June 7 2011 I'm getting thousands of spams a day.

Are they showing up in your Spam box, or Inbox?

> I've
> been through settings but there is nothing I can find to control spam
> filtering at all.

There are no settings that directly control spam filtering. You have
indirect control over your account's filtering of spam (that is,
moving spam to the Spam folder) by clicking the Report Spam and Not
Spam buttons. Your account's spam filter learns from those actions,
over time.

> Is this just something with my account or are others
> experiencing the same problem?

I have not seen this, currently. But each Gmail account's spam filter
is a little different. And the kind of spam you may be receiving,
differs from everyone else.

Andy

[Zack (Doc)]

Breezy,

GMail's filtering is always on, but the spammers occasionally find ways around it.  Since GMail's filter is Bayesian (learning), you have to help teach it what it's missing.

If you have Thunderbird set up with IMAP, and it's sending the "junk" to the [imap]\SPAM folder, then it's applying the marking backwards to GMail, and it will keep learning.  If not (imap), then you need to login to the web interface of GMail, and be sure to mark those messages and "report spam" button at the top.

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 16:14, Breezy <alliance...@gmail.com> wrote:

It appears that what is happening is that Google is not SPAM filtering any of my account. The spam filtering that winds up in my SPAM folder is from the email app I use .. Thunderbird. I have looked high and low and can find no way of re-enabling the internal Google SPAM filter. Any ideas?

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[Breezy]

I do, religiously train the Thunderbird Bayesian filter and have for years. I also have a filtering addon that allows me not just mark some items as spam, but also to specifically mark good email as NOT spam. The Thunderbird filter is working fine.

The problem is that I'm now getting all this SPAM from my Google account, whereas I used to only get 10-50 a day, which my Thunderbird spam filter would then filter out.

Google filters a lot of spam out at the server level so it never makes it to your inbox .. the vastly preferred way to filter known spam. That's the whole reason I switched to gmail and it's really helped a lot till just these few days. That is where the problem resides.

So when a gmail account goes rouge is there a way/process/tool to check the account or it's server setup? I know this is asking for a lot but how else can anyone troubleshoot problems with their account? I've gone thru the very good help system they have in place but so far haven't found anything about my problem.

[Marko Vukovic]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:54 PM, Zack (Doc) <za...@tnan.net> wrote:

Breezy,

GMail's filtering is always on, but the spammers occasionally find ways around it.  Since GMail's filter is Bayesian (learning), you have to help teach it what it's missing.

If you have Thunderbird set up with IMAP, and it's sending the "junk" to the [imap]\SPAM folder, then it's applying the marking backwards to GMail, and it will keep learning.  If not (imap), then you need to login to the web interface of GMail, and be sure to mark those messages and "report spam" button at the top.

This is exactly why Google recommends that you turn *off* junk filtering in mail clients. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78892 

--
Marko

[Jim Sullivan]

So far today I've had 12 msgs in my "Spam" folder; none in the "Inbox".

That's about average.

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[Breezy]

We're stuck on the wrong track here in this discussion. This is not about individual account spam control. This is about higher level SPAM filtering at the mail server, before the mail even hits your account. You know the kind of spams .. the hiya, hi Re:hi, good day, good morning, good evening, etc spams that continuously permeate mail systems around the world and are obvious spams. Are you getting one to two thousand of those a day? Even though they wind up in my Spam filter, they are now coming into my account, whereas they were not previously.

My old email accounts used to bring them in too. But I forwarded everything to my Google account specifically because Google spam filters at the server level and when I did I only got maybe 5 or 10 spams a day. Now suddenly I'm seeing the same behavior on my Google account, so the presumption is that the mail server my account is attached to is no longer being filtered.

This has absolutely nothing to do with my Spam settings in Gmail or my Thunderbird app. Why do I care? Because I have to go thru them to make sure a valid email didn't wind up in my Spam filters. It's one thing to go thru 1-200 spams a week, but now 2 thousand a day. And they come thru my "smartphone" too. It's suddenly enough to drive you crazy, That is the problem.

[Breezy]

Here's a link to what I'm talking about
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-our-spam-filter-works.html

[Andy]

> This is not about
> individual account spam control. This is about higher level SPAM filtering
> at the mail server, before the mail even hits your account.

As far as I know, Google doesn't do and has never done spam filtering
at some sort of higher level (whatever that means). It all happens
when it reaches your account.

If you're thinking Google should block (delete), or that it used to
block, all emails that are obviously spam, they don't and never did.

> Even
> though they wind up in my Spam filter, they are now coming into my account,
> whereas they were not previously.

Chances are fair to pretty good that this is because of something you
did, not anything Google did.

If you visited certain websites and signed up for something, or
otherwise allowed your email address to get into the wrong hands, lots
of spam is the result.

If you hadn't done those things, your address might not have ended up
on dozens of spam lists.

Yes it also helps to have a convoluted account name (not easily guessed).

And it helps to not let anyone else know your email address, and never
send them email, because their computers might be infected.

Google's policy is and has always been not to block suspected spam.
They let it go to your mailbox where you and your spam filter can deal
with it as you choose. Some other ISPs do it differently; they delete
suspected spam before it reaches you. Which is fine until non-spam
mail gets lost.

> It's suddenly enough to drive you crazy, That is the problem.

That is the unfortunate state of the email world today. You just
happen to have gotten "unlucky" (whether by something you did, or not)
and now you've got tons of spam. Most of us are not so unlucky. It
isn't Google's fault.

Andy

[Breezy]

No, if you read the article link you can clearly see that DO filter mail at the server level, which is unrelated to your personal spam filter.

I have managed numerous email accounts for over a decade and know full well the implications of freely broadcasting your email and joining crappy services like Facebook and Twitter. I don't do any of those things ..

[David]

I am still having a lot of trouble with Spam even mail from Google is
sent to Spam.

i am thinking of trying a new email address and seeing what happens.

Some of the spam that isnt spam is labeled<inbox> but it doesnt appear
in inbox. Any ideas?

David

[Andy]

On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 09:29, Breezy <alliance...@gmail.com> wrote:
> No, if you read the article link you can clearly see that DO filter mail at
> the server level, which is unrelated to your personal spam filter.

I did read the article. I saw nothing there about filtering "at the
server level" versus something at a lower level in each account. Nor
about blocking spam from reaching your account.

Gmail is all server-based. The filtering happens in their servers,
and is different for each Gmail account, based on what emails each
person marks as spam or as not spam.

If you are downloading your emails to your PC and then doing further
spam filtering at that point, I am not aware of that, but that's got
nothing to do with Gmail's filtering.

> I have managed numerous email accounts for over a decade and know full well
> the implications of freely broadcasting your email and joining crappy
> services like Facebook and Twitter. I don't do any of those things ..

You just did. Not on Facebook or Twitter perhaps, but in this forum
(which is mirrored elsewhere). Your address is "out there", as is
everyone else's here. If someone wants to target users of this forum
for spam, it's not that hard.

Andy