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I see one or two messages per week, and I guarantee that my email addresses are on every spam list in the English-speaking world. (Also Chinese and Russian -- a

I see one or two messages per week, and I guarantee that my email addresses are on every spam list in the English-speaking world. (Also Chinese and Russian -- at a minimum) If spam is a problem for you in 2022, you have a crappy email provider.

BeetleB 5y ago
You didn't understand the point of my comment. If you sign up for something (e.g. by purchasing goods from a legitimate store), those will virtually never be classified as spam. The reality is that it is hard to get off those lists - a lot of them have an "Unsubscribe" link that purports to get you off their list, but do not actually do so. If you have a provider that is classifying them as spam, then you have a crappy provider.
- josephg 5y ago
  The modern definition of spam, used by gmail & other providers is “email the receiver does not want to receive”. I consider the unsubscribe button a courtesy, but the “mark spam” button is the real unsubscribe link. I wish modern email systems had a button which did both - “unsubscribe, and mark any future email from this domain as spam”.
  - andylynch 5y ago
    Not that I normally use it, but at least on iOS the gmail app’s ‘report spam’ button gives just this; ‘unsubscribe and report spam’ as the first option.
josephg 5y ago
I declared bankruptcy on an old email address (josephg@gmail) in part because of the quantity of junk that address receives. About 10-20 junk emails per day make it through to my inbox. In my case, it’s because there’s at least 3 different people who regularly misspell their email address and type mine instead. The emails tell their story - first through account creation emails, and then a series of emails with password reset codes. And I get a flood of attempts to reset my Facebook / Google / apple / etc account passwords. All mixed with genuine spam, phishing emails, pay stubs (!!), Indian cell phone bills, and all sorts of other cruft. The spam has now filled up my Google storage quota, and I can’t use Google docs with that account any more. (I’ll probably just backup & delete all email in that mail box soon to restore the account) If gmail’s spam detection is “crappy”, I’m very curious who you consider “good”.
- jandrese 5y ago
  For me my gmail was not in bad shape until a particular social network leak, now it gets signed up for every single website with a weak CAPCHA. Probably 4 or 5 websites and mailing lists a week now. I have learned which sites will let you sign up multiple times with the same email address. Some dating websites apparently don't check at all and I now have dozens of accounts on them. Hooray.
  - josephg 5y ago
    Plenty of websites also seem to consider email confirmations optional in their sign-up flow. Which is to say, if you never confirm your email address, plenty of websites will still consider your account active enough to spam you.
- ghostly_s 5y ago
  lol, exact same story for me. my 'crappy' new email gets several spam messages a day + regular false-positives but that's nothing compared to gmail.
- quesera 5y ago
  Well, I'm disappointed to learn that Gmail is also crappy. My understanding was that they did this part well, at least. To be fair, legit emails to misspelled addresses are not spam, per se -- just a consequence of being @gmail.com (with a humane name). FWIW, I run rspamd for half a dozen users. It correctly classifies upwards of 6000 spam messages, and ~300 non-spam messages per day. A dozen or so false positives get through per week, and I haven't seen a false negative in at least a year. I'm probably more annoyed by spam than most people are, but it has barely occupied any part of my brain in a decade. I guess my original comment should have been more specific. Spam detection is a solved problem in 2022, and has been for many years. That some providers implement it poorly is, well, crappy.

BeetleB 5y ago

You didn't understand the point of my comment. If you sign up for something (e.g. by purchasing goods from a legitimate store), those will virtually never be classified as spam. The reality is that it is hard to get off those lists - a lot of them have an "Unsubscribe" link that purports to get you off their list, but do not actually do so. If you have a provider that is classifying them as spam, then you have a crappy provider.

josephg 5y ago
The modern definition of spam, used by gmail & other providers is “email the receiver does not want to receive”. I consider the unsubscribe button a courtesy, but the “mark spam” button is the real unsubscribe link. I wish modern email systems had a button which did both - “unsubscribe, and mark any future email from this domain as spam”.
- andylynch 5y ago
  Not that I normally use it, but at least on iOS the gmail app’s ‘report spam’ button gives just this; ‘unsubscribe and report spam’ as the first option.

josephg 5y ago

I declared bankruptcy on an old email address (josephg@gmail) in part because of the quantity of junk that address receives. About 10-20 junk emails per day make it through to my inbox. In my case, it’s because there’s at least 3 different people who regularly misspell their email address and type mine instead. The emails tell their story - first through account creation emails, and then a series of emails with password reset codes. And I get a flood of attempts to reset my Facebook / Google / apple / etc account passwords. All mixed with genuine spam, phishing emails, pay stubs (!!), Indian cell phone bills, and all sorts of other cruft. The spam has now filled up my Google storage quota, and I can’t use Google docs with that account any more. (I’ll probably just backup & delete all email in that mail box soon to restore the account) If gmail’s spam detection is “crappy”, I’m very curious who you consider “good”.

jandrese 5y ago
For me my gmail was not in bad shape until a particular social network leak, now it gets signed up for every single website with a weak CAPCHA. Probably 4 or 5 websites and mailing lists a week now. I have learned which sites will let you sign up multiple times with the same email address. Some dating websites apparently don't check at all and I now have dozens of accounts on them. Hooray.
- josephg 5y ago
  Plenty of websites also seem to consider email confirmations optional in their sign-up flow. Which is to say, if you never confirm your email address, plenty of websites will still consider your account active enough to spam you.
ghostly_s 5y ago
lol, exact same story for me. my 'crappy' new email gets several spam messages a day + regular false-positives but that's nothing compared to gmail.
quesera 5y ago
Well, I'm disappointed to learn that Gmail is also crappy. My understanding was that they did this part well, at least. To be fair, legit emails to misspelled addresses are not spam, per se -- just a consequence of being @gmail.com (with a humane name). FWIW, I run rspamd for half a dozen users. It correctly classifies upwards of 6000 spam messages, and ~300 non-spam messages per day. A dozen or so false positives get through per week, and I haven't seen a false negative in at least a year. I'm probably more annoyed by spam than most people are, but it has barely occupied any part of my brain in a decade. I guess my original comment should have been more specific. Spam detection is a solved problem in 2022, and has been for many years. That some providers implement it poorly is, well, crappy.