Does Gmail do a good job of filtering spam?

Laughing Squid, who hosts my lame website (along with two misanthropemanor.com email addresses), uses SpamAssassin to, well, assassinate spam, with thus far 100% accuracy. In the five months [11/05] that Squid has been my host, I've had 0 false alarms, 0 junk messages labeled as good - and ALL spam has come to the public address that's a sitting duck out on every page of the site, ripe for the trollbots' taking; the other ID, given to only a select few who don't use Microsoft Windows and/or Outlook and have a clue what "BCC" is used for, has received no spam at all.

By comparison, my Comcast address - set up only so I could subscribe to Usenet and NEVER USED for email or displayed in newsgroup postings - with the "spam filter" engaged, lets through around 25 spam messages a week. (In other words, 100% of the mail I receive at Comcast is spam, and it's coming to an address that's never been given out.) At my two AT&T WorldNet addresses - which have been abandoned - around 75 messages per week slip through the "spam filter." Two GMail addresses - one for friends and family who *do* use MS Windows or Outlook, and one for subscriptions, registrations and any other places that might share my ID with third-parties - receive practically NO spam.

As for "dictionary attacks," I've reused the same user names across every commercial domain at which I have an email address; that is, myname@att.net, myname@comcast.net, myname@gmail.com.

Both AT&T and Comcast use Brightmail for filtering, and since both ISPs are set to just toss those messages which they actually deem to be spam, I have no idea what the total amount of spam received is. I don't know whether GMail uses a third-party product or in-house, proprietary filtering, but whatever it is, it works pretty damn well. My GMail accounts are set to save local copies of spam, and over time only a handful of messages have landed in the filtered folders.

Judging from the simple the rules/analysis shown in the sample below (SpamAssassin's report attached to garden variety spam received at this address), it seems like it wouldn't take six NASA scientists working around the clock for a week to come up with the magic algorithms to separate the good from the bad (or the bad from the good), with maybe some minor end-user white list tweaking to allow access for those Microsoft Outlook and AOHell friends and family who insist on using (or forwarding) a screaming rainbow of HTML crap, in-line graphics and animated smileys in every email message.

Why then, can't AOHell, MSN, WorldNet, SBC/Yahoo!, Comcast et al figure out how to at least minimize the amount of spam that lands in everyone's In Baskets?

> From: 樸s
> To: themisanthrope@misanthropemanor.com
> Subject: *****SPAM***** A٦bQN줽q8%HW꺤Oζ?Themisanthrope
> Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:31:45 +0200
> Spam detection software, running on the system "squid16.laughingsquid.net", has
> identified this incoming email as possible spam. The original message
> has been attached to this so you can view it (if it isn't spam) or block
> similar future email. If you have any questions, see
> the administrator of that system for details.
>
> Content analysis details: (26.7 points, 7.0 required)
>
> pts rule name description
> ---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
> 4.3 RATWARE_EGROUPS Bulk email fingerprint (eGroups) found
> 0.3 RCVD_NUMERIC_HELO Received: contains a numeric HELO
> 0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
> 0.1 HTML_70_80 BODY: Message is 70% to 80% HTML
> 0.1 MIME_HTML_ONLY BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
> 2.2 HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_02 BODY: HTML: images with 0-200 bytes of words
> 1.8 MIME_QP_DEFICIENT RAW: Deficient quoted-printable encoding in body
> 0.7 HTTP_EXCESSIVE_ESCAPES URI: Completely unnecessary %-escapes inside a URL
> 2.4 HTTP_ESCAPED_HOST URI: Uses %-escapes inside a URL's hostname
> 2.7 SUBJ_ILLEGAL_CHARS Subject contains too many raw illegal characters
> 2.4 DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_XX Date: is 96 hours or more after Received: date
> 4.3 HEAD_ILLEGAL_CHARS Header contains too many raw illegal characters
> 3.0 FORGED_RCVD_NET_HELO Host HELO'd using the wrong IP network
> 1.2 MISSING_MIMEOLE Message has X-MSMail-Priority, but no X-MimeOLE
> 1.1 MIME_HTML_ONLY_MULTI Multipart message only has text/html MIME parts
> 0.1 MISSING_OUTLOOK_NAME Message looks like Outlook, but isn't
>
> The original message was not completely plain text, and may be unsafe to
> open with some email clients; in particular, it may contain a virus,
> or confirm that your address can receive spam. If you wish to view
> it, it may be safer to save it to a file and open it with an editor.
>
--
Misanthrope Manor
www.misanthropemanor.com
The point at which you veer off course. (tm)

Running a Windows enterprise was like working in the emergency room of Cook County Memorial. Working on Linux was like being a Maytag repair
man.
- Blog posting, LXer, "Why do people switch to Linux?"

I have been using Gmail for a while now, and I have NEVER had any spam land in my inbox!!

(unlike hotmail)

Gmail - It used to be very good at seperating spam from real mail - But now... I get about 3 spam emails a day. It's the kind of spam where they have random words (ie. and then volcano ducks she said no wisdom) or some crap like that and then they add attachments.

It's not doing a good job for me anymore!!!

I'm using Gmail about a year already and i'm not getting spam. Not because gmail's spam filter but because i'm not getting spam at all. However i had important emails marked as spam way too MANY times and only god knows how many times i missed such email just because they were deleted from Spam folder before i noticed them.

The worst thing is that there no option to turn off the Spam folder or set up a POP download on all emails including those which gmail marks as spam! So only think i can do is log in to the web-client often and check the spam folder...

GMAIL SUCKS MY IMPORTANT EMAILS WERE SENT TO SPAM WHICH I DELETED.

Try using Gmail for more than a year - You'll notice about 1 spam email per day making its way into your mailbox.

I'm tired of these people saying Gmail has such an amazing spam filter, it's not that great people. Just today I got an email with "viagra" in the subject line - How gmail didn't filter that is beyond me...

I am a CS Professor who has being using gmail since early on, and find its spam treatement incredibly good.

Yesterday as an in-class demo in setting up qmail I send some emails to various of my addresses, all of which go to different places but end up being forwarded to gmail. They all ended up in spam, so it will be a bit interesting to sort out how. The originating address was one I had just created on a machine we were configuring.

I have followed your work since the elm days. Keep it up.

I think Gmail works very well. But I don't understand the following:

In my spam folder I curently have 9 mails received in the last 20 days from apparently the same spam sender, e.g.:

marcel.janssen@gmail.com (Joanne Anthony),
marcel.janssen@gmail.com (Herminia Sneed) etc.

Finally gmail will delete them, that's ok, but THE QUESTION IS: as gmail software knows the address spam comes from - why gmail doesn't block the address?

And to avoid errors, simply to give me access to the list of recently banned senders whose spam I obtained.

Gmail has been deleting SPAM in my account... dunno why, when my SPAM directory reaches ~900 it gets to 800 again... and I keep receiving SPAM.

GMail rules! In fact, Google rule. So much of what they do I am not only interested in but use on a regular basis and am constantly amazed at how they are improving they're systems. GMail is just case in point. I was just bitching about how many spam messages I get but forgot to bare in mind that ALL of the 400+ messages (accumulated over a month) in the spam box were Spam. Only 3 had managed to find its way into my normal box.

But to keep the system working relies on all of us doing our part and notifying Google of any undetected spam. And remember, as long as you haven't selected 'Delete Forever' then anything you do delete accidentally is stored in your bin folder for 30days.

Pi

one MAJOR problem:
Spam filtering cannot be turned off!!!

I'm reading my gmail mail with MS outlook.
Since some messages find their way to the spam folder by mistake, i don't get them to my outlook, and have to sign in to gmail site to go over my spam folder!

my only real concern over the spam is that i wish that those that are legitimate spam would simply not go to my spam filter period. It is nice that the messages are deleted after 30 days, but for those of us who don't check it every once in awhile, they will have in the hundred's of spam and going through that is painstaking work and something i am simply not enjoying doing, i would rather the occasional spam going to the filter then having the filter fill itself hourly as it is.