Comments on: Gmail and spam: A problem, a suggestion

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:06:44 +0000

Here’s a little code to effectively turn off gmail spam filtering in Outlook. This way you can continue to download your email using POP3 and use your favorite spam filtering client.

See: http://mjcenterprises.blogspot.com

By: Dr. Drang

Dr. Drang — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 19:57:06 +0000

Ted Pavlic Says:
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Dr. Drang â€” I was just teasing. :)

Me, too. Maybe I should learn how to use those smiley things. (This would be a good place for one, right?)

By: Ted Pavlic

Ted Pavlic — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 04:04:06 +0000

Dr. Drang — I was just teasing. :) I grew up with Slackware 2.0, back when setting up PPP over dial-up was pretty advanced and something few people understood why you would want to do. I’ve never used either Ubuntu nor Knoppix. :)

I have LOTS of false positive problems with GMail, and it still fails to do a good job with spam even after lots of training. It frustrates me to no end. I really wish I could just turn it off so that I could do my own filtering and just send the filtered mail to it for archival.

By: Dr. Drang

Dr. Drang — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 03:56:36 +0000

Ted, who says I wasn’t using Linux 30 years ago? You kids with your Ubuntu and Knoppixâ€”try getting Linux installed on a CDC Cyber 175 after your deck of punched cards has fallen on the floor and gotten out of order!

As I said in my post, I’m generally quite happy with the GMail/Mail.app combo. GMail catches most of the spam, which reduces bandwidth, and Mail catches almost all of the rest. I haven’t had the false positive problem Josue mentioned. I don’t think of procmail as a thing of the past, I just haven’t needed to use it for a while. I do think GMail could be improved if it gave us something procmailish.

By: Alex von der Goltz

Alex von der Goltz — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:37:21 +0000

Spam filters are inherently not perfect. A much better approach is using the philosophy of two email addresses are better than one. By this argument (and assuming you have a software solution that can help manage it) you can have N number of addresses where each one corresponds to a user you have total control of who can and cannot send email. The problem with this approach is its not humanly possible to manage. It can be managed in software.

Reflexion does this and its much better (I am a user) than a spam filter. its language independent and requires no image recognition software either. http://www.reflexion.net.

By: josue salazar

josue salazar — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:10:26 +0000

Jeff, my experience had been great, until now. I’ll just have to pay more attention to what Gmail marks as spam or not from now on.

By: Jeff Flowers

Jeff Flowers — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:11:31 +0000

My experience with the Gmail spam filter is that it is a good one. I get somewhere around fifty pieces of spam a day and I have never had a false positive, although one or two pieces of spam per day generally escape the filter and end up in my inbox.

The only thing that annoys me about Gmail’s spam filter is that it is not adjustable and that there is no way to turn it off.

By: Ted Pavlic

Ted Pavlic — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:42:08 +0000

Or you could just use an IMAP provider that has a procmail filter (or (even better?) Sieve).

Phrases like “Back in my Linux days” are really funny to me. They’re supposed to look similar to “Back in the old days” (implying 30 or 40 years ago, maybe) but actually mean “six months ago.”

It’s not like procmail filters are a thing of the past. :)