Tag Archives: Gmail

Gmail spams President Obama

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Back to the topic of SPAM … Imagine my surprise when an email from the whitehouse.gov domain, with proper headers and routing information, was ignominiously dropped into my Gmail SPAM bucket. Wow!

Something is major league wrong with Gmail’s SPAM filters!

The President’s email concerns a competition between schools to host a visit by the President. Seems like a worthy enough endeavor, and certainly not something that should be discarded as SPAM.

Matter of fact, nothing in the email screams SPAM. Words are spelled properly, there’s no attempt to sell me Viagra nor real estate. Nothing indicates that a distant relative died leaving me $35 million. And as mentioned above, all the routing information looks legitimate. Honestly, I have no idea why Gmail considers whitehouse.gov email to be SPAM.

Is Google trying to become the new McAfee?

SPAM can be entertaining

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Blogs like this accommodate responses or “Comments.” Some come from friends, associates and random interlopers, but the vast majority come from spammers pushing their Cialis or investment opportunities. Fortunately there’s a terrific tool called Akismet the effectively filters the spam, completely removes it from view, and drops it into a quarantine bucket. Reviewing that bucket periodically is interesting … and very good for the ego!

Examples:

  • Thank you! You often write very interesting articles. You improved my mood.
  • I added your blog to bookmarks. And i’ll read your articles more often!
  • Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.
  • Wow this is a great resource.. I’m enjoying it.. good article
  • I liked it. So much useful material. I read with great interest.
  • I really like your blog and i respect your work. I’ll be a frequent visitor.

Honestly, spam is pretty easy to spot. About a quarter of it is in cyrillic characters, and the rest comes almost exclusively from mail.ru and gmail.com domains – Sticks out like a sore thumb.

But it is fun to read before emptying the the quarantine bucket.

Mistaken Identity Confusion

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asdaorderWhen traveling, I use a gmail address – It’s easy, convenient, and when I get home, my original email is undisturbed in Outlook folders. The format of my email address is fairly common, [fname].[lname]@gmail.com.

About a year ago, a very religious gentleman in southern California with the same first and last name created a gmail account for himself. Since [fname].[lname] was already spoken for, he created [fname]d[lname]@gmail.com, BUT he mistakenly told his friends his email address was [fname][lname]@gmail.com without his middle initial “d”.

Gmail treats [fname].[lname] and [fname][lname] as the same - Periods in email addresses are ignored – So guess who started getting deluged with multiple “Praise the lord!” and “Who’s bringing the hymnals?” emails?

All it took was one friend to create one community email to ten people with the wrong address, and all the replying back and forth about who was bringing what to a potluck filled my email screen with gibberish. It took months (!) for all his friends to permanently update their address books.

Last month, we had the Silk Surrender episode, although in that case I believe the obfuscation was intentional so the buyer could remain anonymous.

Them, just last week, a chap in England decided to go online with [fname][lname]@googlemail.com – Turns out, not only does gmail ignore periods in email addresses, but it also treats gmail.com and googlemail.com as the same. Anyway, this chap placed an order with a grocery store using his googlemail address and guess who got the confirmation? It’s been over a week and in spite of the grocery store’s promise to remove my address, I continue to receive emails about specials on rump roast this week. Argh!

And this morning I received a note from someone’s mother, presently vacationing in Cancun, who wants him to know what a great time she’s having. Unfortunately, she also got the email address confused and sent it to me.

Bottom line, what started as a simple, easy-to-use, travel email has become a repository for bible thumpers, perverts, Englishmen with strange dining habits and someone’s mom. Is it time to change my travel email address?