[SC-Help] Re: Giving them my email

[Mike Easter]

Fred k wrote:
> "Mike Easter"

>> Tho' I don't have a hotmail, I do have a gmail account, and I have it
>> configured to forward to me, and it 'never' forwards spam, but it
>> keeps its spam for 30 days, so I go over to that account every once
>> in a while an look in there and see if there's any wanted mail
>> mistakenly filtered. Looking thru' filtered spam for a wanted mail
>> /should/ be much faster than looking thru' an Inbox full of spam
>> looking for wanted mail.
>

> What is gmail's ~ track record regarding false positives/negatives?

First a little background and clarification and perspective to help with
the interpretation.

Shortly after I got the gmail I started exposing it in the Reply-To in
usenet posts.  Shortly after that it was 'attacked' by an individual who
signed it up for a bunch of newsletters because of a petty newsgroup
disgreement and my criticism.  The majority of those newsletters sent a
confirmatory;  a couple of them sent me the IP of who signed me up,
which enabled me to know who that was, and who had left a trail with his
IP in another newsgroup and so I informed his provider of his bogus
signups.  A few of those newsletters handled their mailing list badly ie
non-confirmed, but straightup and I chose to unsub with the intention of
reporting them if they persisted.

Next;  I haven't been forwarding very long;  only about 10 days or so.
I don't exactly understand how gmail forwards.  That is, how often.  I
do know that it isn't 'rightaway' -- because sometimes when I go visit
the webmail there are a couple of items in the Inbox which haven't been
forwarded, but yet I have gotten wanted items forwarded.  Gmail has weak
forwarding filters to enable filtering on From Subject or To -- but I
don't currently have any of that enabled.  I would probably enable the
To feature;  maybe the From.  The To would keep away any spams which
didn't have my addy in the To;  the From would handle the items from
people I've given my gmail addy.

Then last, to answer your question, with that perspective.

I've received no forwarded spam.  Sometimes there has been a spam or two
in the Inbox when I visit, both before I started forwarding and after.
There have been a total of 73 spams to the account in the last 30 days,
none of which are 'like' the original newsletters which I was bogus
subscribed.  I've discovered no false positives in the spam folder.

So, the address doesn't get a great deal of activity of spam or wanted
mail to derive something useful about gmail stats.  I think there's
probably information about that if you search around, because some
people have set about to try to get a lot of spam at their gmail
accounts to test the gmail spam filter


-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin