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Ask HN: Are junk email filters getting worse?

by mdni007 on 5/8/23, 6:54 PM with 9 comments

For the past 2 years I've watched my outlook email inbox devolve into a cesspool of junk and phishing emails. I need to go through about a hundred junk emails daily to find just a handful of actual legitimate emails. I noticed recently that my gmail inbox has also started to spiral out of control for the past few months. I feel like it was never THIS bad before. With all this growth of AI and LLMs I would think that seeing emails in my inbox promoting male enhancement drugs promising 4 more inches would be a thing of the past. If that wasn't bad enough these emails are often flagged as important (in the case of outlook).
  • by victorbjorklund on 5/8/23, 7:42 PM

    Dont think it is the filters that are getting worse. It is the spam that is getting better at avoiding the filters.
  • by ftxbro on 5/8/23, 6:59 PM

    > With all this growth of AI and LLMs I would think that seeing [spam] would be a thing of the past

    Wouldn't you guess the opposite, that the spammers are using the AI and LLMs to be more effective at their spams?

  • by DamonHD on 5/8/23, 7:18 PM

    Last time I looked the levels of SPAM attempts on me has dropped from ~10k to ~4k attempts per day (over the last few years), so I don't think that things are getting worse in general for everyone.
  • by helph67 on 5/8/23, 10:47 PM

    Close your gmail account and only use search engines that respect your privacy. E.G. DuckDuckGo. You might also investigate browser extensions uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger.
  • by nickfromseattle on 5/10/23, 3:00 AM

    I am receiving an increased amount of spam hitting my inbox (O365).

    It appears to be other mail servers that were hijacked sending me txt files.

    Sometimes 5+ per day.

  • by novoshield on 5/9/23, 5:32 PM

    no - junk mail is getting harder to discern and philter (sic)