What's the point of Mark as spam?
Hi, everyone. Leo, Notenboom here for
Askleo.com.
It's a common admonition I give people very frequently when they're having issues
with spam, when they're complaining about spam, about getting so much spam.
And that is, mark it as spam and move on.
Because typically, that's really all we can do.
That's the only thing we really have in our control.
That being said, though, a lot of people wondered, Great, but what good is that?
I'm still getting spam even after I mark things as spam.
Well, let's talk about exactly what mark as spam is supposed to do,
what it actually does, and why you should keep on doing it.
Now, I want to be clear at the outset.
I'm using mark as spam as my example, but depending on what email service you're
using or what email program you're using, spam can also be referred to as junk or
junk mail, as bulk or bulk mail, or even just unwanted.
I'm using all those terms synonymously.
Use whatever is provided in your email program or interface to do the thing,
to mark things as spam or junk or bulk or whatever.
The promise of mark as spam
is that it trains the system to understand
better what it is that is spam.
Specifically, one of the ways that I like to put it is by marking something as spam.
You are telling the system this emails,
the email that looks like this is, to me, spam.
Presumably, that means that the spam filter that's involved gets better.
It can then do a better job of recognizing
email that looks like that as being spam in the future
and automatically sending it to your spam folder.
And to be clear,
if spam is showing up in your spam folder, that's the system working as it should.
If spam is showing up in your inbox,
that's when we're doing this mark-as-spam training.
Now, I mentioned that it is intended to make the spam filter better.
It's intended to inform the service of what it is you think is spam.
Great.
What's this service thing I'm talking about?
Well, there are two categories that we need to talk about.
One is online email services.
By this, I mean services like Gmail.com, Outlook.com
ProtonMail, any of those others.
Basically, if you're accessing your email by opening up your web browser and going
to a website that displays your email, you're using an online email service.
When you mark something as spam online,
that information can be used for everybody that uses that online system.
The intent is that if enough people think that this email is spam,
then we'll just start filtering it as spam for everybody.
In addition, a really good system might actually take your personal
preferences into account so that you're saying this is spam enough
times, may mean that, Yeah, this person thinks this email is spam.
This person doesn't.
So I'm going to filter it as spam for the one that thinks it's spam and not
filter it as spam for the one that doesn't seem to mind.
I don't know how common that is.
But ultimately, by being online, you're giving the service information
about what is and is not spam that it can use for everybody.
However,
if you're using a desktop email program, by that, I mean a program like
Thunderbird, the Outlook program that comes
with Microsoft Office, the mail program that is included
in Windows, EM client, and many, many others.
Then you're operating on your desktop.
Your email is being downloaded to your computer.
And the spam filter that takes effect when you mark something as spam is local
to your computer in that specific email program.
In other words, marking as spam is really helping only yourself.
It's helping only that specific email
program you're using on that specific machine.
If you happen to use two machines,
then each of those spam filters are being trained separately.
They don't talk to each other.
They are being trained separately every time you mark something as spam.
But again, it's local to your machine, and it's really helping only you.
Now, most of the time that's the case.
There are a couple of scenarios that I think where there might be some crossover,
and it might be useful to understand what those are.
The first one is specifically if you're using a Microsoft
desktop email program, Windows Mail, Microsoft Office Outlook,
and so forth, and you're connecting it to a Microsoft email account, Outlook.com
Hotmail.com
Live.com,
then if the email program is configured to use the Microsoft protocol,
typically the Exchange protocol to connect to that service to get your email,
which means it's not using Pop3 or IMAP, then your mark as spam may,
and -I have to say may because I really don't know for sure
-may be sent back to Microsoft to improve the spam filter for everyone.
How do you make sure you're connected the quote-unquote, right way?
I believe that most current Microsoft email programs will do it automatically.
In other words, you specify an email address and they
figure out how best to connect to that service.
If you're using a Microsoft email address, the Microsoft email program will typically
do the right thing, and will probably connect using this
Microsoft or Exchange protocol that would enable this functionality.
There's another one, a possible crossover that I honestly, I hope it works.
I'll put it this way.
I hope that this approach works, but I really don't know if it does.
And I think it really varies a lot
depending on exactly what email service you're using.
That is, you are connected to some email provider
on a desktop email program, and you're using the IMAP protocol.
In other words, your email store on your machine is really just
a reflection of the master copy of your email that sits on the server.
When you mark something as spam, your desktop email program will move
that message into the junk folder or the spam folder.
Since it's IMAP, the same thing will then happen on the server, right?
The message will get moved into the server's spam folder.
It is possible and hopefully likely that the email service would notice
that that message just showed up in the spam folder and therefore
would take it as a sign that that message looks like junk.
And it's the equivalent of having marked
it as spam on the email service, even though you did it in your email program.
Unfortunately, I don't know how common this is.
Like I said, I really, really hope it works this way because
that means that honestly, a lot of email programs could potentially
be feeding back spam information to the email services online.
There's just no way to know, and they're not saying.
But the bottom line here is
that the intent of marking something as spam is that your spam filters,
wherever they may be, will do a better job of filtering spam for you in the future.
It varies dramatically.
Some services are good at it.
Some services seem to never learn.
Some services are schizophrenia.
They're good one day and horrible the next.
But the bottom line is, honestly, that's the only tool we really have.
If you find spam in your inbox, like I said at the beginning,
mark it as spam in the hopes that it will improve the spam filter and move on.
Hope that helps a little bit understand why marking as spam is in fact,
important for comments, for updates, for links related to this topic and more.
Visit
Askleo.com/162055.
I'm Leo Notenboom, and this is
Askleo.com. Thanks for watching.