Above is a for-real screen shot of my Google Apps based e-mail (i.e. Gmail) “Spam” folder.
Anyone who is a domain owner knows that spammers will send e-mail to any common address at your domain, such as webmaster@example.com, contact@example.com, sales@example.com and so on.
I’ve had my primary domain registered since 1999 but spam wasn’t really a problem until the early 2000′s. After that point the spam started flooding in like a tidal wave.
I tried everything to stop it, but as you know once your e-mail address is known to exist, spam happens. It’s unavoidable. It got so bad I had to switch e-mail addresses at one point.
When I made the switch to having all my domain mail be Google Apps based I noticed the spam filters were, in a word, awesome. At first I was dismayed at the fact there are hardly any spam filter options (either it’s “on” or “off,”) but as it turns out I don’t need to adjust any settings because Gmail’s filters are that good.
Then I decided to put Gmail to a real test. I set up my primary e-mail address as a “catch-all” for any e-mail received to my domain, essentially telling spammers “Bring it on!”
The result is what you see above. That screen shot is about one month’s worth of spam. I know there are those who receive literally tens of thousands of spams a month, but my spam count is nothing to discount.
Periodically I check the Spam folder to see if there are any false positives. When I first started using Gmail there were only two marked as such, but none since.
At this point I am finally able to list my e-mail address on my web site in full public view without worrying about it anymore. I simply don’t worry about it.
Gmail’s spam filters don’t fall under the “too weak” or “too good” category; they’re actually “just right.”
Concerning proper spam filtering, Gmail is the best that exists. I don’t know what Google uses to accomplish this and I honestly don’t care. It just works.
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