It's the easiest thing in the world to banish all the spam from your email inbox. Not a sentence you'll hear very often, but it's true. Simply use a spam filter that's so over-zealous in its urge to protect you from unwanted mail that it filters almost everything. It might only allow you to see the odd missive from your mum, or a flight confirmation from Expedia, but at least you're not getting any spam, eh.
The curse of what's known as "false positives" is possibly even more vexing than spam, but you hear far fewer people whining about it – mainly because the problem remains largely hidden; most of the time you don't even know that it's happening.
For example, there's nothing more visible than an email that announces its intention to "harden your weener". It's annoying, and you angrily move it to the spam folder. But the gentle reminder about your friend's birthday party that somehow never made it to your inbox – thanks to the same, errant spam filter – is far worse. Because you sat at home watching re-runs of The Rockford Files while all your mates were having a good time.
Spam filters often come with a control panel featuring a brutal instrument that allows you to increase its spam catching powers, in the knowledge that more false positives will result. It's a balance that can in no way be struck with a slider that you simply drag backwards and forwards with your mouse in the hope that it works. And if you can't rely on your spam filter not to choke on false positives, you end up having to wade through it every couple of days. Which makes the whole point of having one completely redundant.
I often trumpet Google's email service as being by far the most efficient spam catching machine available on the internet, and I still believe that it is. But even GMail can suffer from false positives. You can diminish the chances of it catching valid emails by making sure its address book contains an up-to-date copy of your contacts, who should subsequently be able to effortlessly breeze through the spam filter. But I was surprised to find an email from Google's PR department sitting in my GMail spam folder earlier this week. I pointed it out to them with glee, and they promised to file a bug report.
So, if I don't reply to your emails promptly, it's not my fault, honestly it isn't. You've probably just been relegated to false positive status.
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