The Random Comic Strip

The Random Comic Strip

Words to live by...

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and to rest afterward."

[Spanish Proverb]

Ius luxuriae publice datum est

(The right to looseness has been officially given)

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle."

Apparently, the crossword puzzle that disappeared from the blog, came back.


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Arrogance, thy name might be Gmail


Do you have, or are you contemplating having, a Gmail account? I set up a Gmail account quite some time ago. My wife's nephew, the computer genius, recommended it. On the whole, it was good advice.

But something changed about a month ago, maybe a bit earlier than that. Gmail began an aggressive filtering for spam. We all hate spam, don't we? So this couldn't be a bad thing, could it?

Turns out that it is. Turns out that Gmail sees spam almost everywhere. Email from friends, associates, just about any business, even from themselves. Yes, that's right... even from themselves. After I discovered some desired email had been deemed spam, I went to a Gmail forum and asked a simple (I thought) question: How do I turn off spam checking?

It turns out that you cannot. That answer came through and was delivered to my inbox without problems. However, a follow-up response was deemed spam and tossed blithely into the spam folder. Since I use Live Mail for my email client, I did not see this for quite some time. You see, it is the online folders at my account on Gmail.com where this alleged spam is sent.

The interesting thing is that it was suggested that I could create a filter which would send all mail addressed to me to my inbox.

Here is the suggestion: There's no way to turn off the spam filters, but you can bypass them.  Go to Settings->Filters and create a filter for anything TO you can check the box for "Never send it to spam".  You'll get it all in your Inbox.

Funny thing is, there's a lot of mail that I want that is not addressed directly to me. It is to mailing lists, to "undisclosed recipients", and so forth.

So, now I am wondering just how wise I was to make the move to Gmail. And also wondering why Gmail thinks it knows better than its clients what is spam and what is not.




4 comments:

Steven Scott said...

If you have things that aren't spam in the spam folder, be sure to mark them as not spam so the filters can adapt to you

Douglas4517 said...

 When that is available (it seems to be randomly so), I do that. On the other hand, why shouldn't they provide an "opt out" of spam filtering altogether? Then I can choose, for myself what I wish to read or trash. I realize that they are primarily web-based, that the intent is to be an online mail service. But they have to know that many of us prefer to use our own mail clients to read and reply to email since they provide instructions in how to do so.

Steven Scott said...

oh....i believe, if you're using an imap client (definitely not POP), moving from the spam folder to inbox marks it as non-spam behind the scenes...i believe

Douglas4517 said...

 If simply moving falsely labeled "spam" to my inbox will help then my complaints will diminish. However, I prefer having the option to "opt out."