GMail as a Spam Filter

Thursday, March 8. 2007

I have recently received an invitation for setting up a GMail account, and I did exactly what I intended to do. That is, to have a second e-mail account aside from my Yahoo e-mail account. Why? That's because I am sick and tired of the spam I am continually receiving on my Yahoo e-mail account. Now, isn't this a bit nauseating? The thought that digital communication technologies did promote convenience for us, but it also created problems in the process!

I did an experiment whether GMail had better spam filtering capabilities than Yahoo mail. In the weeks that have passed, I saw that GMail had excellent spam filtering capabilities, better than Yahoo mail's! Unfortunately, most of my contacts knew my Yahoo mail account as the account I am using. Why wouldn't they, for I have used this address ever since I started growing my 7-year beard, you know! Plus, I'm pretty fond of my Yahoomail account I just couldn't let it go, not with spam being just the problem. Thus, I kinda had this moment of direct realization. What if I forward the messages I am receiving on my GMail account to my Yahoo mail address? I did exactly just that, but it didn't help with the spam I'm receiving on my Yahoo mail account. But, I had another episode of sudden enlightenment. What if I forward the messages I am receiving on my Yahoo mail account to my GMail account!

That is, I would have to create an input text that would make my Yahoo mail account only forward the messages that were not forwarded by my GMail account. Through this, all my messages coming in from both e-mail accounts get filtered by GMail and forwarded to my Yahoo mail account! Yes, all the messages coming in to both e-mail accounts! Confusing, right? No, you just have to keep this in mind: the messages that are forwarded to my GMail account from my Yahoo mail account are first filtered then also forwarded by my Gmail account back to my Yahoo mail account! With this, all my messages are filtered by my GMail account, and all the messages that comes in both e-mail accounts are accessed through my Yahoo mail account.

Posted by Samuel Thomason in Spam Filters at 07:34 | Comment (1) | Trackback (1)

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Spam In Front
The flood of spam just keeps growing and spammers are getting wiser and sneakier day by day. This means anti-spam products must get tougher and wiser as well to be able to win the game. There are a lot of spam blockers available nowadays, but most of them

Weblog: Internet Computer Security
Tracked: Sep 03, 12:19

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I think that is a very innovative approach! I can't wait to try it out once I get an invitation to GMail. Thanks.

#1 Michael on 2006-08-20 09:41 (Reply)

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