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How Does This Get Past Google’s Spam Filter?

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On Friday my wife and I went out with some very good friends to celebrate a birthday. As usual, we started talking about tech. One of my friends recently got a promotion at Google and is overseeing part of the company’s business apps offerings and talk turned to Google’s paid email service. We use Google Apps for Business here at GottaBeMobile (and Notebooks.com) and I feel we get a lot of value for the $50 per user per year fee. I really enjoy the services, but I still spend way too much time dealing with spam. Google’s spam filtering is inconsistent and sometimes just downright bad.

As someone that gets hundreds of emails per day, spam messages make my inbox an even more miserable place to visit. I’ve set up filters, reported countless emails as spam, use Priority Inbox and taken other measures, but not a day goes by that blatant spam still finds its way through Google’s filters.

Here’s an example of a message that landed in my inbox today. That’s right. A message that could be nothing other than spam. I don’t expect any system to be perfect, but this is ridiculous.

Making matters worse, my inbox acts as a catch all for messages to our domains. Above is another message that landed in my inbox…addressed to ‘[email protected]’. Apparently there’s a hot Russian girl out there that doesn’t speak very much English that wants to marry me…or someone named laxative.

We can laugh at spam messages like these all we want, but spam can do a lot more than just waste your time. Clicking on the wrong link can infect your PC with Malware or lead you to give up your personal info.

To be fair, for every spam message that reaches my inbox, several dozen are properly sent to my spam folder. But Google can, and should do a better job at canning spam.

9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. savagemike

    02/01/2011 at 1:18 am

    I use the free g-mail and yahoo accounts and have the opposite experience.
    It is extremely, extremely rare that gmail mistakenly sends spam my way.
    Yahoo, on the other hand, is happy to let through a viagra sales pitch or similar about once a day.

  2. John in Russia

    02/01/2011 at 1:14 pm

    Spam may be bad for you but it’s just helped me set up a date with Anneta. Cheers mate!

  3. Joe Romeo

    02/01/2011 at 2:37 pm

    You didn’t mention if you have postini turned on for your domain. My clients on Google Apps which were inundated with spam in the past had that number drop to near zero once we flipped the switch on postini, since it’s included with every Google Apps for Business account it’s worth a shot.

  4. Joe Romeo

    02/01/2011 at 2:37 pm

    You didn’t mention if you have postini turned on for your domain. My clients on Google Apps which were inundated with spam in the past had that number drop to near zero once we flipped the switch on postini, since it’s included with every Google Apps for Business account it’s worth a shot.

  5. Joe Romeo

    02/01/2011 at 2:37 pm

    You didn’t mention if you have postini turned on for your domain. My clients on Google Apps which were inundated with spam in the past had that number drop to near zero once we flipped the switch on postini, since it’s included with every Google Apps for Business account it’s worth a shot.

  6. Joe Romeo

    02/01/2011 at 2:37 pm

    You didn’t mention if you have postini turned on for your domain. My clients on Google Apps which were inundated with spam in the past had that number drop to near zero once we flipped the switch on postini, since it’s included with every Google Apps for Business account it’s worth a shot.

  7. Joe Romeo

    02/01/2011 at 2:37 pm

    You didn’t mention if you have postini turned on for your domain. My clients on Google Apps which were inundated with spam in the past had that number drop to near zero once we flipped the switch on postini, since it’s included with every Google Apps for Business account it’s worth a shot.

  8. Joe Romeo

    02/01/2011 at 2:37 pm

    You didn’t mention if you have postini turned on for your domain. My clients on Google Apps which were inundated with spam in the past had that number drop to near zero once we flipped the switch on postini, since it’s included with every Google Apps for Business account it’s worth a shot.

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