You might get an email that is clearly spam to you, mark it as spam, and then later get another nearly identical message that was still not filtered. It might analyze the contents of the message and identify various characteristics of the message it then records as “looking like” spam to you. When more email arrives with enough similar characteristics, it might be automatically flagged as spam. This is the most common, and currently the most effective, email-program-based, spam-filtering technique.Īs effective as it can be, the problem with looking for characteristics is that it’s difficult to predict what will or will not constitute spam.Once again, IP-address-based blocking is also not effective against spam spammers send from millions of different IP addresses. It might add the IP address of the sender (or the sender’s email service) to a block list.(This is a separate function in some email programs.) Unfortunately, block lists based on email addresses are typically not at all effective in the war against spam – spammers are constantly changing or faking their email address. It might add the sender’s email address to a block list.How email programs use the informationĪn email program may use the fact that you’ve marked something as spam in several different ways: The best I can suggest is to check the help information available for each. There are no blanket rules, and – aside from dedicated apps, like the Gmail and Outlook apps – it’s difficult to make assumptions about exactly how your email program works with your email service when it comes to spam. If you’re using IMAP, when the move is reflected on the server’s master copy, it may be enough to notify the service that this message is spam. When you mark an email as spam, some email programs simply move it into a spam or junk folder. Change, delete, or move mail around in folders on your PC, and those changes will also be reflected in the master copy on the mail server. IMAP does this by leaving the “master copy” of your email on the mail server, and simply maintaining a synchronized copy of your mail on your computer. IMAP is used in desktop email programs to allow you to access your email from multiple different devices and keep everything in sync. Similarly, I have the Outlook mobile app, and when I use it to mark something as junk in my Hotmail account, that information also makes its way back to Microsoft’s servers. However, since it’s dedicated to handling Google Mail, when I mark something as spam using the program, the information is transmitted back to Google’s servers. Technically, that’s an email program (app) running on my computer (the phone). On my mobile phone, for example, is an app I use to access Gmail. Some email services now provide dedicated email programs. Mobile devices have added a couple of twists on whether or not marking something as spam in a computer-based email program will actually make it back to the email service. The result is that it does not affect what email will continue to be downloaded in the future. Particularly if your email account is downloaded using the POP3 protocol, the information about what you’ve marked as spam typically does not make its way back to your email service provider. When you mark something as spam (or “junk”, as it’s called in some programs), you are typically telling only that program that the email message is unwanted.
#Mark text message as spam software#
The first thing we need to know is whether you’re marking it as spam in an email program running on your machine, or if you’re using an email service’s web-based interface via your browser.Īn email program is software that runs on your computer and downloads messages from your email service to your local hard disk. Examples of these kinds of email programs include Microsoft Office’s Outlook, Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, and the Mail program included with Windows itself. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of others. However, some general concepts apply when you mark something as spam. There’s no definitive answer on exactly what happens, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.