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Comment by endtwist | Hacker News Reader

GMail's filter is actually incredibly accurate, and if you periodically scan your spam for anything that shouldn't be in there, you've really got nothing to worry about.

I've only found three or four false positives in the five and a half years I've been with GMail.

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When I used spam filtering I was receiving perhaps ten spams for every valid mail. This made it very difficult to scan my filtered mail. There was just so much of it.

When using Gmail I have a bunch of filters that make it easier to read through my spam mail.

For instance: IF X email is in the spam folder AND contains any of the words (Cialis, Viagra, Rolex, etc...) -> Move it immediately to the trash.

This cuts down the number of emails that stay in my spam folder by a huge margin, and makes it much easier to check for false positives.

That being said, I no longer even bother checking. I've been with Gmail for 5 years and I've never had a false positive.

If you've reviewed the spam folder so closely you're certain you have no false positives, it may not be saving you any time. If you give it a more cursory review, then your claim is really, "I've never noticed a false positive."

so if someone includes the word 'specialist' in an email to you, you would never see it. spe cialis t

Yes, the Scunthorpe problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

After college I worked as a network administrator for a doctors office that dealt with pain medications. We constantly had problems with work mail going to the spam folder when it actually concerned drugs like Vicodin.

The salient point here is the email have to already be in the spam box. If Gmail already thinks it's spam AND it contains any of the keywords, then it gets trashed.

That being said, you still have a point.

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