Re: [Evolution] Evolution and gmail

[Ángel <angel 16bits net>]

On 2022-08-16 at 23:24 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Spam filtering is under the control of the receiver. It's trivial to
> tell Gmail that a message is not spam, and it will learn that for
> future reference. You might also look at *why* your mail is being
> classified as spam. Could it be that some people have marked it as
> such?

Actually, I would consider this a weak point of gmail. As a receiver,
you don't know why a message is considered spam (compare that with a
system like SpamAssassin, where you can view the scoring of the
different modules), and even Google itself would often be unable to
determine why the ML engine considered it bad.

Sometimes Gmail provides some reasons, like "This message is similar to
other spam messages", but (a) They are generic explanations, not always
matching the underlying one and (b) They can be completely false (such
as claiming as similar a message that is completely unique). Which is
not to deny that it is a powerful spam filter.

Finally, you have the option to create filters that exclude messages
from being marked as spam. However, I have seen accounts with a
wildcard "do not mark as spam" rule, with messages getting classified
as spam (they _were_ spam, but still…) so, at least in the past, Gmail
was overriding the filters in some cases, so it was not really "under
the control of the receiver".


Regards