Decrease spam reaching Gmail inbox
September 24, 2008 6:48 AM Subscribe
Why is more spam getting through to my Gmail inbox lately?
I'm not receiving any more spam in total but the number of messages that are making it into my gmail inbox rather than being marked as spam has been increasing. Some of these messages are obviously spam and even my Outlook spam filter (which used to miss lots of spam that Gmail picked up) is doing a better job of weeding out the garbage lately. Short of reporting all inbox spam as spam (which I've been doing) is there anything else I can do?
I'm not receiving any more spam in total but the number of messages that are making it into my gmail inbox rather than being marked as spam has been increasing. Some of these messages are obviously spam and even my Outlook spam filter (which used to miss lots of spam that Gmail picked up) is doing a better job of weeding out the garbage lately. Short of reporting all inbox spam as spam (which I've been doing) is there anything else I can do?
I think someone found a new trick. I've received over 40 so far this morning, on an account that usually sees two per week (that is to say, 40 made it to my inbox).
Possibly related: yesterday my spam folder had ~9000 emails in it, today (so far) it has ~17000. I've never seen a jump that high on this account, and at the rate things are going I bet it'll pass 27,000 before five o'clock.
So, I have no answers, but something weird definitely seems to be happening.
posted by aramaic at 7:10 AM on September 24, 2008
Possibly related: yesterday my spam folder had ~9000 emails in it, today (so far) it has ~17000. I've never seen a jump that high on this account, and at the rate things are going I bet it'll pass 27,000 before five o'clock.
So, I have no answers, but something weird definitely seems to be happening.
posted by aramaic at 7:10 AM on September 24, 2008
Huh. Nothing of that nature here, and certainly nothing like that volume. I don't even see any particular increase in attempts.
posted by kindall at 7:33 AM on September 24, 2008
posted by kindall at 7:33 AM on September 24, 2008
I've noticed the same thing. Coincidentally, the upsurge seems to correspond to the new Google browser's debut. Not an answer, just an observation. Sorry I don't have a better answer for you.
posted by misha at 7:44 AM on September 24, 2008
posted by misha at 7:44 AM on September 24, 2008
No upsurge for me either. Although the damage is done, did you subscribe somewhere recently using this account?
A trick which works in gmail is to add +<website name or something unique> for each service that you subscribe to, for ex. if you are subscribing to example.com, give the id as <yourid>+example@gmail.com. This will land in your inbox but you can easily filter/delete and also figure out who is selling your id.
Sorry, no help for the current situation.
posted by swapspace at 8:09 AM on September 24, 2008 [1 favorite]
A trick which works in gmail is to add +<website name or something unique> for each service that you subscribe to, for ex. if you are subscribing to example.com, give the id as <yourid>+example@gmail.com. This will land in your inbox but you can easily filter/delete and also figure out who is selling your id.
Sorry, no help for the current situation.
posted by swapspace at 8:09 AM on September 24, 2008 [1 favorite]
I have not noticed a significant increase in either spam that hits my inbox or the totals in the spam filter. Although I suspect that now that I opened my big mouth I will get swamped.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:12 AM on September 24, 2008
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:12 AM on September 24, 2008
Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen a bit of an increase in the amount of uncaught Gmail spam offering me assorted kinds of free money. Seems to be settling down again now, though.
posted by flabdablet at 8:22 AM on September 24, 2008
posted by flabdablet at 8:22 AM on September 24, 2008
I haven't had any spam at all for weeks. Is the spam coming direct to your @gmail.com account, or is it forwarded via another of your email addresses that is in your contacts list?
posted by roofus at 8:52 AM on September 24, 2008
posted by roofus at 8:52 AM on September 24, 2008
Response by poster: The spam comes to my real email account and not from a forwarded one. It's not huge numbers or anything. But if I get 30 spam messages a day, Gmail used to catch every one of them. Now about 5 or 10 of those will get through and this happens daily. So I was curious if there was some setting I could adjust in gmail to make the spam control a bit tighter.
posted by gfrobe at 9:00 AM on September 24, 2008
posted by gfrobe at 9:00 AM on September 24, 2008
It could be as simple as "someone came up with a new disguise for spam that google hasn't caught yet." That's one of the reasons to ask you why they report spam -- it doesn't just customize your filter, if you get enough people telling Google "Yo, the stuff with the word "eggplant" hidden in the code is spam" then they rewrite their spam filter and add that detail.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:39 AM on September 24, 2008
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:39 AM on September 24, 2008
Google has .admitted to a bug which caused more spam to hit the inbox - it has apparently fixed now. Maybe that was the cause?
posted by amestoy at 12:14 AM on September 25, 2008
posted by amestoy at 12:14 AM on September 25, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Grither at 6:58 AM on September 24, 2008