Slashdot Mirror
Gmail Spam Filter Changes Bite Linus Torvalds
An anonymous reader points out The Register's story that recent changes to the spam filters that Google uses to pare down junk in gmail evidently are a bit overzealous. Linus Torvalds, who famously likes to manage by email, and whose email flow includes a lot of mailing lists, isn't happy with it.
Ironically perhaps, it was only last week that the Gmail team blogged that its spam filter's rate of false positives is down to less than 0.05 per cent.
In his post, Torvalds said his own experience belies that claim, and that around 30 per cent of the mail in his spam box turned out not to be spam.
"It's actually at the point where I'm noticing missing messages in the email conversations I see, because Gmail has been marking emails in the middle of the conversation as spam. Things that people replied to and that contained patches and problem descriptions," Torvalds wrote.
Or if the other comment's got hit by spam filters
Individual that differs more than 6-sigma from the population's mean has trouble with automated tools designed for the average person.
Gmail's spam filter is why email is still useful.
Well, Linus doesn't *HAVE* to use gmail. There are other email providers.
It is pretty much a given that the FP rate would go up as filters become more ubiquitous. This is how the spammers are winning the spam battles when people place too much faith in filters.
As I have said before, spam is an economic problem. We won't solve the problem with filters, or with any kind of punishment (legal or otherwise); we need to look at this rationally as an economic problem.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Individual that differs more than 6-sigma from the population's mean has trouble with automated tools designed for the average person.
Exactly. I use Gmail and I honestly haven't had a false positive (flagged as spam when it isn't) in over two years. I still get the occasional false negative (spam that isn't flagged) at a frequency of a few per week. It's good enough that I don't even bother to routinely check my spam filter. It also is pretty good on the training - once you've spent a little time telling it what is spam and what isn't for you in my experience it is pretty good after that. Frankly if you have to check your spam filter often it isn't a very good spam filter.
I suspect Linus has rather unusual email requirements. Perhaps Gmail isn't the ideal solution for him. Very few tools are perfect for everyone. I'm a little surprised he's having that much trouble but stranger things have happened.
Apparently he can't afford to purchase decent email service. Maybe someday he'll create something important and then he can get off the crap freemail.
You can tell this is old news given that it was this past weekend the Linus posted an update on Google Plus stating that false positive rates were back down to normal for him.
https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/dJdkRxUCRmK
WTF are you smoking, and can I haz some?
No amendment, not even the first, makes it illegal for me to throw away shit that people decide to send to me.
Pigshit is a valuable resource. Spam is spam. The fact that you can look for similarities in it in order to trash more of it doesn't make it a valuable resource.
you must be the only one, i've not seen anyone else complain about git in that fashion - did you email your bug report to Linus (or did it get put in the spam folder by google)?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The reason for the wave effect is at least in part because a relatively large proportion of the spam that gets sent actually comes from a very small number of sources. Someone figures out a formula for defeating the current spam filters on enough major systems to be viable and then exploits it heavily for as long as they can. The mail services note the changes in traffic, adapt, and block that traffic. On a really good day, a major spammer actually gets taken to court and removed from the system altogether for a while, though mostly that's probably just wishful thinking.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
He posted about it in G+, a googler noticed and offered to look into it. One day later The Register is feeding off the echoes and the story is slashdotted.
"Much better now.
Of the 100+ messages caught as spam over-night, only two were false positives (and I reported them). My email is getting back to normal."
https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/dJdkRxUCRmK
On the next day, Linus wrote "My email is getting back to normal."
https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/dJdkRxUCRmK
Maybe someday he'll create something important and then he can get off the crap freemail.
Yup. Given his past success with both Linux kernel and with GIT distributed source management, I too think that out of anyone Linus Torvalds might be the only guy able to effectively solve the SPAM problem.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Somebody should tell Linus about this great new operating system I run at home. I have sendmail running on my machine, and it lets me control my spam filters and everything.
It's called "Linux". I highly recommend it.
I for one am extremely shocked that the above post ('use other providers') be flagged as funny.
Torvalds is the last person I'd imagine registering an email address @ Google.
Wise as he may have been, sorry, but to me he's a moron now just because of this.
I just hope I won't evolve his way when getting older.
Herve S.
From his original post, there is a clear date he claims the FP rate to have gone up... so this isn't a blanket Gmail FP rate issue, but rather a Gmail or spam blacklist incident, which is quite different from what the summary would suggest. As of right now:
http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3aLKML.ORG&run=toolpage
lkml.org Added to UCEPROTECTL2
Uceprotectl2 Automatically Delists Entries
This blacklist does not offer any form of manual request to delist. Your IP Address will either automatically expire from listing after a given timeframe, or after time expires from the last receipt of spam into their spamtraps from your IP Address.
Uceprotectl2 Accepts Payments Or Donations
This blacklist does support a manual request to remove, delist, or expedite your IP Address from their database upon Payment or Donation of fees to their organization. Please note the following; 1) MxToolBox does not in any way advocate the paying of removal from any blacklists. 2) Removal requests that are submitted without addressing the core problem will likely result in your IP Address being relisted in the database which can cause subsequent problems and extended listing periods without release.
More information about UCEPROTECTL2 can be found at their website: http://www.uceprotect.net/
Reason for listing - Net 146.185.176.0/21 is UCEPROTECT-Level2 listed because 36 abusers are hosted by RCN-ASN - Reality Check Network Corp./AS46652 there. See: http://www.uceprotect.net/rblc...
UCEPROTECTL2 seems a bit shady, but I am not blacklist expert.
Also as a side note, any spam filter that attempts context evaluation has a tendency to mark emails with code or special character formatting as spam. Even emails with links. So for someone like Linus to have a higher blanket spam FP rate is also not surprising.
The best gmail feature is the "never treat as spam" filter.