> On 28 Jan 2024, at 20:23, Thomas Walter via mailop <mailop@mailop.org> wrote: > > > > On 28.01.24 20:02, Jaroslaw Rafa via mailop wrote: >> There are "edge cases" when the mail couldn't be reliably classified as spam >> or non-spam. Even with best tuned spam filtering systems false positives >> will happen. > > So why not just deliver these to the Inbox then - and add a tag/label instead > if you have to?
A very experienced spam filter person, who worked at a not-for-profit spam filtering company and two of the major mailbox providers once told me that the biggest challenge with their job was that there were messages that some recipients were SURE were spam and messages that some recipients absolutely wanted. Those were the hardest messages to decide what to do with. They couldn’t block them because some recipients would be mad and they couldn’t deliver them because other recipients would be mad. > In 95% of the cases, I can just identify the bad emails by subject. A quick > press on DEL and it's gone. > > I don't see any advantage of a Spam folder if I have to regularly check it > anyway. In fact it can even be more difficult to identify a false positive > between the Junk that collected in there. Some mail clients allow you to turn off the spam folder option and get every mail, spam or not, in your inbox. That may be a solution for you. I know mail.app will also tag it in a different color, so you can visually see what mail.app thinks is spam in you rinbox. > Plus there are still customers that use POP3 for different reasons > (connectors that collect mails for internal Exchange systems for example). > Those never get to see the content of a spam folder. Google heavily discourages POP, to the extent it throws up security warnings if you try and enable it. They’re pretty clear they don’t want their customers using it, so why would they go out of their way to suppor tht usage? > >> Just having a binary distinction - reject or deliver to inbox - would be a >> much bigger obstacle to communication than delivering to spam folder, >> because it's still easier to reach the recipient in some different way and >> tell them to check the spam folder, than to make the recipient's provider >> fine-tune their email filtering to exempt you from rejection. > > It should be just as easy to contact the recipient and tell him his provider > is blocking the email - and for the recipient itself to lift the block in > some way instead of having to convince the provider. I totally agree with you. It is a regular part of my followup process for some business messages when I’m unsure if my response was delivered. A lot of my customers are senders with poor enough domain reputation that if I leave their domain name in my replies their provider puts it in the spam folder. I do go find another way to contact them, be that through their website or LinkedIn or another non-email channel. >> Of course, the users should be aware that they *should* check the spam >> folder, which means, the provider should inform them about this with a very >> clear and prominently visible message. Sadly, most providers don't do it, >> therefore the users are convinced that they don't need to check the spam >> folder at all, since it's clearly labelled "spam" or "junk", so "by >> definition" it cannot contain anything useful to them. > > We've done this in the past and sent out daily mails with a list of subjects > that got sorted as Spam. After a week or so nobody read that email anymore. > > And after we had some issues with important documents and deadlines that got > missed, because nobody checked their Spam folder, we just leave them in the > Inbox. > > Yes, I do see my share of Spam this way, but I also do see the Spam if I have > to check the Spam folder regularly… Different audiences have different needs. Not all providers are going to meet the needs of all senders and all recipients. IDIC. laura -- The Delivery Expert Laura Atkins Word to the Wise la...@wordtothewise.com Delivery hints and commentary: http://wordtothewise.com/blog
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