Since the early 90’s SPAM email has been an ever increasing staple on the web. Whether it’s from legit online marketers to bad actors we all receive our fair share of unsolicited junk mail. 14.5 (BILLION!) spam emails are sent daily, and 45% of all emails are believed to be some form of SPAM. And malicious links account for roughly 31% of all spam email.
While the effort to control and refresh spam email filters continues to be improved there is an unintended consequence of the automated algorithms used to determine and trap spam. Legitimate mail can get caught up in your spam folder. This has been on the rise in recent years for Gmail user’s. It’s not a big deal until it affects your bottom line and the vital need to communicate with customers/clients confidently.
The idea is to limit the trapping of legitimate emails and filter out the illegitimate, unwanted junk mail called spam. No one wants to unknowingly/accidentally load malware, or a trojan horse, etc., onto their desktop via spam mail. However, the same can be said of missing legitimate mail and calendar notices for trusted clients, customers, vendors and suppliers.
Training your Gmail spam filters is really important in order to minimize the damage of losing a legitimate email, calendar meeting invite, etc. to spam. Ever since Google l rolled out these automatic category tabs (Social/Primary/Promotions) for Gmail (around 2013) it’s even more important than ever before to train your spam filters. Basically, Google is determining what goes to which box.
Google’s intention is not bad when you take the long view of what it’s doing. However, it doesn’t guarantee that valid emails won’t end up in your spam/junk folder. You have to train Google. When you find a friend, or colleague’s legitimate email in your spam folder you must take the time to mark it as “Not Spam”. This will help retrain your Spam folder.
Filtering legitimate emails from spam mail is not a perfect science. Spammers are constantly trying to figure out ways to trick Gmail and other email platforms. If you want to find out more about how to filter your emails follow the instructions from Gmail below:
Gmail’s spam filters are trainable so you can adjust the sensitivity. Sometimes they designate email as spam that is not spam. Remember, headers, the sender’s domain, exact email addresses, etc., all come into play when it comes to spam. Spam detection is ever changing which is why it’s important to mark legit emails as “not spam” when you discover them in your spam folder. This will help your gmail spam filter learn your preferences.
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