I'm currently in the midst of some sort of spam storm. Years and years ago, I set up a filter: any email that doesn't contain either "Kevin" or "hairy" in the subject line is to be trashed. This cleared up my spam problem immediately: it's the rare bit of errant pork that makes it past the filter and into my inbox. If I were to guess at a stat, it'd be something like 1 in every 100,000 pieces of spam that makes it past my filter. And Gmail uses a rudimentary AI to "whitelist" frequent correspondents such that those correspondents don't have to include "Kevin" or "hairy" in their subject lines for me to be able to see them.
Still, I troll my trash folder every day to pick up legitimate emails that have been trashed by my filter. I normally average about 15-20 pieces of spam per day, with maybe one legit email appearing in the trash once every, oh, two to four days. But over the past 48 hours, I'm been bombarded by a torrent of junk mail, all of it filled with misspellings, stupid emoticons, and non-English characters. The spam ranges from "fuck my pussy" to "you've just been paid $1000" to "delivery delayed" messages in a weird combination of English and French to "don't let your Norton antivirus expire" nonsense. None of this is truly bothersome since it all ends up in my trash, but since I troll through my trash every day, the job is slightly more difficult as a result. More muck to muck through.
I've been through waves like this before, so I imagine the current torrent will once again subside to a trickle in good time.
I still do the "Hairy Chasms" subject line just to be on the safe side, but I wondered if I had been granted spam immunity by your filter. I haven't checked my trash for months; I'll take a gander this morning, just in case.
ReplyDeleteWell, you don't even need to write "chasms." That was never part of the filter. At this point, you could probably send an email with neither "Kevin" nor "hairy" in the subject line, and your correspondence would still end up in my inbox.
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