Mastodawn

While I'm on a roll with my cranky pants today, WTAF cannot anybody at @fastmail write an algorithm that detects as spam the 100 or so versions of this email I get every week?

I can detect them without even opening the email. Yet somehow it's beyond the resources of a very large email provider to crack this?

It's the worst thing about Fastmail. They're a good mob in lots of other regards, but seriously I tag these again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and yet they keep extracting my time and effort.

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@fastmail

How is it possible my mail service can't work out these are spam?

Michael Russell 6d ago

@ewen Well, not filtering out spam IS faster. ;) @fastmail

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@michaelrussell @fastmail

I feel the "learning" part of the system is really not learning at all.

Gmail used to drop legitimate emails into spam but overlook a lot of spam. So maybe this is an upgrade.

Just cannot believe the volume of spam I've flagged, and burner email amounts I've blocked, without the system learning any better.

@ewen wow you get an absolute deluge of these. I certainly hope spam filtering @fastmail steps up. I don't use gmail but it's hard to recommend others move off when the alternatives have these issues that the regular user just isn't willing to deal with (understandably so)!

@michaelrussell

Michael Russell 6d ago

@ewen I have the same issue but as I run my email through my own domain/hosting I just deal with deleting 10 pieces of junk every morning. @fastmail

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@michaelrussell

Little punch in the face every single morning!

Michael Russell 6d ago

@ewen Haha yes a bit like that. The ones that actually but me the most are the ones that pose as a print buyer and string me along as any other buyer would but then switch the conversation to NFTs or some crap like that. I can delete the other spam quickly, these bots are more of a problem.

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@michaelrussell

Have seen one very well crafted email this week that was customised around my public persona, which I assume was AI generated. The future of spam! The future is here!

Michael Russell 5d ago

@ewen I assume I just had an AI one today. Asked about prints, I gave my copy/paste answer so as to not waste time on a bot. Got a follow up question I answered, and then this:

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the pricing link! I've had a look, and I'm very interested in a few specific pieces. Could you confirm the process for ordering and any estimated delivery times? I've also attached a PDF ********* with some further details about my needs.

The link of course goes to a js malware file.

Ewen Bell 📸5d ago

@michaelrussell

Awww man that's a special kind of awful aint it. The PDF is a bit of a give away though, to some of us.

Michael Russell 5d ago

@ewen Because it is never a pdf? I know they get infected too, but this always links to a js file.

decryption 6d ago

@ewen @fastmail lol I get them too, also in fastmail, also report them as spam - I get about one a day for marketing/SEO/digital agency/website services and it is annoying

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@decryption @fastmail

Some days they arrive by the dozen. They just seem soooooo obvious and we keep hearing how clever AI is yet somehow no computer can detect this as spam???

Daniel Schildt 6d ago

@ewen Sounds like a separate spam filtering tool might be useful, but those would run locally and use IMAP to access the email account. 😓

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@autiomaa

Anti-spam services are precisely what an email provider should be good at?

Growing up in Australia there was a very common phrase folks used in such situations... Why have a dog and do all the barking yourself?

@ewen Ms. Gvcfcxsdf, Abigel Hannah is only trying Ewen. Why won't you let her help you with a professionally designed website by Gvcfcxsdf Media Co!?! Rude.

Mike Hindle 6d ago

@ewen @fastmail Yikes! I had the exact same problem when I tried to move to Spacemail. Really is frustrating.

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@mikehindleuk

If only we had some kind of automated machine learning system that could detect patterns and spare humans the tedious work? If only.

Mike Hindle 6d ago

@ewen 🤣🤣🤣

@ewen These make it through to inboxes on our paid google workspace accounts as well. We set up filters for them to get quarantined. Spent hours chatting to google support and they were unsurprisingly not at all helpful. It's frustrating how consistent spam isn't a solved thing.

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@beep

Pretty much tells me that AI doesn't work, if it can't figure out what it's spam and what is not!

Alexander S. Kunz 6d ago

@ewen interesting. I noticed these "throwaway GMail" (and Outlook too) spam accounts have gotten more frequent. Which makes sense, as their SPF/DKIM/DMARC checks out nicely — perfectly legitimate senders! Fun how all that stuff backfired. 😆

That FM can't deal with it is astonishing. Bayes filtering for email has been around for 30-40 years now? I remember running it locally as a proxy, on my own computer. After just a few hours of training it would catch 95% of spam. Ah, the good old days. ;)

Ewen Bell 📸6d ago

@alexskunz

Note sure they're hitting 95% of the spam, but they are catching a lot of spam. So I have to acknowledge that FM is not completely chonking the task.

Meanwhile I waste sooooo much time and attention on things that I thought computers were good at.

In a world with so much awful happening at home and abroad, having some control over a tiny part of one's life feels outsized important. The lack of control over my inbox is really shitting me.