OT: Why am I getting 100 times more spam than others?

[Kurt Granroth]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Josef Lowder <joe at actionline.com> wrote:
> In the past, I have pleaded for help with this issue, and some have
> responded with frustration that I brought this up again ... so I
> apologize in advance for bringing this up again now. But the problem
> has worstened to an enormously frustrating extent.
>
> More than 2,000 spam email messages now come into my gmail account
> every day. It is perplexing and infuriating to me that google/gmail
> will not allow creating filters to *delete* (not just move to trash)
> all this garbage that is clearly identifiable and definable.
>
> Recently, gmail began to mark about half to 2/3rds of this garbage
> with the title *****SPAM***** in the subject line. Why would they
> bother doing that instead of just totally blocking or automatically
> deleting forever all this garbage rather than just labeling it as
> SPAM? Or at least give us the option to choose to have all such mail
> deleted rather than put into a spam folder.
>
> I (and many others) have written to Google and to Gmail forums about
> this numerous times, but of course no one at Google ever responds.
>
> What prompts this message today is that I have recently talked with
> other email users who are even larger volume users of email than I
> and they have expressed amazement at the volume of spam that I am
> receiving. Because, they have reported to me that they are *not*
> receiving even 1/100th of the volume of spam that I receive.

I get over 10,000 spam messages every day to my main domains but 99% of 
them are filtered out early enough that I never see them.  SpamAssassin 
does a great job at the egregiously obvious ones and an okay job at the 
subtle ones.

I doubt that GMail is marking those messages as ***SPAM*** (or similar). 
  Instead, I think it is the spammer doing it directly.  Why?  Because 
most mail apps that have a built-in spam detection solution are set to 
*ignore* any messages that are already marked as spam.  Since most 
people don't have manual filters if they have the automatic detection, 
these messages will get through.  Sneaky!

The quick fix, then, is to do a manual filter to put them into some 
"Definitely SPAM" folder or tag that you can delete very commonly.  It 
is odd that the filters don't allow you to do that directly.

Alternatively, you can, as others have suggested, get a new account and 
try to start over.  If you do, I strongly suggest you create a new email 
address for every single thing you ever sign up for.  That way, if you 
start getting spam on that address, then you know who sold you out and 
can block that address going forward without having to give up your 
"main" addresses.  I've done this with countless addresses in the past 
(including banks who sold my name to spammers!).

GMail does this with the user+optional nomenclature.  Note my email 
address for the plug list.  It is kurt+plug-discuss at granroth.com. 
Everything after the + is ignored by my mail server so it gets forwarded 
to kurt at granroth.com and I can filter on that.  Gmail does the same 
thing.  Pretending your gmail address is jlowder at gmail.com, you can do 
such things as:

jlowder+plug at gmail.com
jlowder+facebook at gmail.com
jlowder+ebay at gmail.com
jlowder+newegg at gmail.com

And so on.  The only real downside to the + naming is that *some* 
websites email address verification routines insist that + isn't a valid 
character in an address and don't allow you to enter it.  I have a 
backup on my own mail server but you're kind of stuck with gmail.