HACKER Q&A
📣 dkrich

Is it just me or has the Gmail spam filter stopped working?


In the past year or so, but picking up in the past six months, there has been a noticeable amount of email allowed through to my inbox that is obviously spam.

By "obviously" I mean I can clearly tell at first glance that it is spam. It's not any sender I'm subscribed to and there are all caps and random offers that you'd normally expect when clicking into your spam folder.

On top of that, there are senders who I had subscribed to at some point, to join a store's member club, etc. that I no longer was interested in receiving mail from and reported spam and unsubscribed and I still receive mail from them. There is one store in particular that I have now reported as spam at least three times and it still comes into my inbox.

Is this a function of just too much mail to process or is there some other reason for the uptick? In years past I don't recall ever seeing spam and if I did it was few and far between. Now it's probably 30% of my daily mail.


  👤 ilikecinnamon Accepted Answer ✓
Spam has become more advanced with technology, so some of them can pass the filters of email services such as Gmail, but there is still some average spam that goes to the spam folder in your email.

👤 PaulHoule
Other people are reporting that.

👤 ratsmack
For me it doesn't make any difference, because I disabled it a couple of years ago. I disabled it because it seemed to catch too many things that were obviously not spam and would and would let too many things through that were obvious spam. I just decided I would deal with it myself instead of constantly searching the spam folder for that "missing" email.

👤 beardyw
Seems good to me. Just checked spam and wheat/chaff separation seems fine.

👤 DerekBickerton
I treat my spam folder as my 'second inbox'. We even get services asking users to 'check your spam folder if you didn't get our message'.

👤 RulerOf
I've noticed post-delivery filtering the past few months.

Messages show up in my mailbox that disappear minutes or hours later. Typically from other gmail users.