Poor Hotmail gets a lot of flack for poor SPAM filtering, while GMail gets all the compliments (although less so recently). Google must have some fancy algorithm for finding SPAM – or do they?
Well, it’s actually the fact that GMail has a big edge, a huge edge even. Up until very recently GMail was used primarily by techies, techies that unsubscribe from email they subscribed to and flag real SPAM as SPAM. See the subtle difference?
A non techie will tend to flag anything as SPAM they no longer want to receive. So why is GMail’s SPAM filter starting to get a little sloppy? Because more users are flagging things incorrectly.
One thing I absolutely suggest that you always put within your emails the date your users signed up. The secret is to encourage users to behave correctly as society should! Flag only SPAM as SPAM and we won’t get any (or much).
I’m still hoping we will come up with a solution that will kick those spammers into the stratosphere, although a recent legal ruling might help some what – $873 million fine.