I somehow doubt that I've won a thousand .dollar.Visa.Giftcard!

November 3, 2011 10:05 AM

Recently spam mail from (what appears to be) the same source keeps getting through my Gmail account. I've never had a problem with this in the past, and the current crop all seems to be roughly formatted in the same way. I've been marking everything I notice as it comes through, but is there anything else I can do?

To clarify, I don't think that my account has been hacked, just that spam mail has some how managed to start getting past the filter.

posted by codacorolla to computers & internet (8 answers total)

Create a filter that automatically sends the mail to the trash.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:09 AM on November 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, just realized that unless you use keywords in your filter, it's going to be pretty worthless.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:18 AM on November 3, 2011

Keep flagging it as spam and eventually (assuming the spam is actually going to a lot of people's Gmail accounts) Gmail will automatically start classifying it as spam.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:20 AM on November 3, 2011

Create a filter that automatically sends the mail to the trash.

Isn't this what a spam filter does? It comes from different addresses (ostensibly) each time and I'm assuming formatting that's juking the existing spam filter. I have no idea how I would more successfully filter it compared to what's already there.
posted by codacorolla at 10:29 AM on November 3, 2011

Spammers keep finding ways to get around spam filters. Periodically you'll just get a wave of spam from one source that's found a loophole, and your continuing to flag it is what helps your ISP rewrite the code on the filter to plug that loophole. It'll go away in time.

Then a few months from now some other spammer will find some other loophole, and you'll flag that and that hole will be plugged too.

Rinse and repeat.

Spam sucks, but it's more like the common cold than it is like the Evenutal Heat Death Of Everything.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:38 AM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

You've suggested the formatting is similar, which led Foci & I both to believe there might be keywords in common. Or, there might be similar addresses in the To: or CC: lists (that aren't in your address book).

Any of these would make a filter unique to this spammer. If there's no commonly repeated text, a filter won't help.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:39 AM on November 3, 2011

This happens to me as well, every now and again (usually it's image-based spam, against which keyword filtering is pretty useless). Really the only reason I notice it is that it's so unusual - on the whole, Gmail's spam filter works insanely well.

I just keep marking it as spam. To make the process a fraction more interesting, I star it first so I can easily check the percentage of received spam I have needed to attend to personally over the last 30 days (my current in:spam in:starred score: 3 out of 716).
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 PM on November 3, 2011

Me, too. Gmail does a pretty good job of filtering, but when I see one getting through I confess to admiring the skills of the spammers. They'd be a force to reckon with if they would get honest jobs.

I just report them as spam and help train teh googlez. Wish I could do something similar for the phone calls that get through my minefield (".... there is nothing wrong with your credit card...." types. Maddening!)
posted by FauxScot at 4:09 AM on November 4, 2011