[GTALUG] Spam is basically dead

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 11:16:27AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> Agreed. But ​I'd take it from a slightly different perspective that splits
> the issue.
> 
> IMO the volume of spam has not abated, but its effectiveness has.
> 
> I use gMail for a significant amount of my incoming mail, and it implements
> a pretty aggressive spam filter. There are almost no false positives
> getting through these days, but I do have to go into the spam mailbox every
> few weeks to check for false negatives (maybe a few percent of the total,
> non-critical stuff from a few read-only mailing lists)
> ​
> But the volume? Still as robust as ever. The old style sales calls,
> solicitations for money and phishing schemes. The filters successfully and
> consistently differentiate between real Interac eTransfer receipts and fake
> ones.
> 
> Yeah, I know the evils of Gmail. But every choice is a balance. In this
> realm it does surprisingly well, and I'm less bothered by spam than ever.
> But I wouldn't go as far as saying the phenomenon itself is dead, it's
> still seeking out the newcomers and unaware.

Strangely I see almost no spam these days.  I just checked my spam folder
for this account, and the filter found 25 messages in the last week.
Not very much really.  It used to be much more.  I don't think I see
more than 1 message a day that the spam filter missed either.  On gmail
I think it is similar.  Very few spam show up these days.

-- 
Len Sorensen