Gmail: Now, A Feature that Tells the Reason for Filtering Out Spam!

I sometimes find the way Google reveals the inner workings of their technology and the way they open up for end users quite amazing when compared to many other large corporations. This is visible in quite a few examples, ranging from their Tech-Talks recorded and published online, to the way they have been clear and open about their policies, including the recent controversial move to use all user accumulated data across their umbrella of services. I know there have been anomalies, like the recent spat with a startup in Kenya, but in general there seems to be a great deal that Google is giving out to the world.

Explaining Google's Gmail Spam Filtering

It’s no exaggeration to say the Gmail has a spam filtering system that works amazingly well - it’s probably the best among the more famous free email providers out there.

This article is about a recent improvement they’ve added: Above each email message in your spam folder is an explanation about what made Google’s automated techniques decide why that particular message was identified as spam.

From the emails I had in my spam box today, here were the reasons provided:

This looks like a generic message in which they don’t want to reveal how the spam filters work, but the others below look more interesting.

Okay, here we see that the filtering was done on the basis of content.

Interesting. Other people have marked messages from this guy as spam, so he’s gone in the spammers’ list.

Straightforward explanation.

I used to think that the phishing alert bar would appear only if others marked the same message as a phishing scam. This message seems to indicate that “similar” messages were used to steal personal information, so it might not have been the exact same one.

I found this recent addition quite interesting since it provides an insight in the way Google’s spam filters work.

I’ve seen users of other email providers sometimes complain of eBay phishing emails ending up in their inboxes and looking like regular emails, but seldom with Gmail.

What do you think about Google’s new spam filtering explanations?