It’s happened to all of us. We’re waiting on a certain email from somebody. We wait and wait and wait only to find out that when it was delivered…it went in your spam folder. But why is it that certain emails over others get dumped into your spam folder? Even ones from trusted senders? Well, if you’re using Gmail, then be thankful because Google has decided to let you in on why this happens.
Starting yesterday, Google has updated Gmail to allow users to select any email thrown into your spam folder and see a message from Google explaining why this particular message was classified as spam by Gmail. In addition to that, the “Why is this message Spam” note will also be accompanied by a “Learn More” link to a specific page describing all the many reasons some emails are considered to be spam.
Some of the messages you may find stating why a certain email is spam consist of things like “our systems couldn’t verify that this message was really sent by (insert sender here).” Some messages could be marked as spam because an increased number of Gmail users received the same message and marked it so. For this you will get a message like “many people marked similar messages as phishing scams, so this might contain unsafe content.”
Other messages could be labeled as junk because “similar messages were used to steal people’s personal information” or because they are “similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.” Overall, Gmail does a pretty decent job of separating spam from other legitimate messages. Regardless, these helpful messages from Google could be helpful in alerting you to specific unwanted emails and tell you what to do when you do get spam.
Source: CNET – Gmail: That’s spam, and here’s why
