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October 29, 2007

How Gmail Blocks Spam

While Gmail doesn't filters all the spam messages that could reach your inbox, it certainly does a better job than other webmail apps like Yahoo Mail or Hotmail. Gmail's filters are constantly improving and an important ingredient of their effectiveness is the use of community signals. Every time you click on the "Mark as spam" button, Gmail uses that information to block similar future messages not only for you, but for all Gmail users. But spam is also evolving and it's harder to block, especially when it uses images and literary texts.

"Many Google teams provide pieces of the spam-protection puzzle, from distributed computing to language detection. For example, we use optical character recognition (OCR) developed by the Google Book Search team to protect Gmail users from image spam. And machine-learning algorithms developed to merge and rank large sets of Google search results allow us to combine hundreds of factors to classify spam," explains Google. "Gmail supports multiple authentication systems, including SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DomainKeys, and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), so we can be more certain that your mail is from who it says it's from. Also, unlike many other providers that automatically let through all mail from certain senders, making it possible for their messages to bypass spam filters, Gmail puts all senders through the same rigorous checks."


The spam in Gmail is also the subject of a promotional video that encourages to use Gmail if you want to "get back your time". The video reminded me of an old email account from my ISP: it received so much spam that it was almost impossible to find the genuine mail and the 10 MB of storage were insufficient to collect all this junk.


Maybe Google should make greater efforts to filter spam in other services, like Google Groups, Blogger or YouTube. The experience from Gmail could be useful.

165 comments:

  1. I agree with your last line. Google should filter spam from blogger. I can't tell you how many blogs all contain the same crap such as 'Cialis Buy' , 'Buy Viagra' and so on.

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  2. What an irony that Adsense serves up another anti-spam service :-)

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  3. It is to bad that Google can stop all the mail that has been identified as spam at their server and not letting it get to the individual accounts and just dump it there..

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  4. I find that GMail does an excellent job of identifying spam. I have used hotmail and yahoo but since getting GMail when it first came out, I would NEVER use anything else.
    GMail and Google ROCK!!

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  5. They have forgotten a curve on their graph: FALSE POSITIVES!!!

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  6. I don't agree here. Gmail may be good in blocking SPAM but the best of the lot is AOL. I am active yahoo,gmail and aol mail user. I think twice before giving my gmail and yahoo ID but never care about AOL ID. Yet, my AOL spam folder is "always" empty. Gmail's spam folder become very fat very soon. Yahoo is the worst. (I never used hotmail). Never had issues with AOL. If you don't believe me, try it out.

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  7. I heartily agree that Gmail does an excellent job in spam filtering - better than any other email filtering that I have used. I would make better use of Yahoo! except that tons of spam gets through their filters. I've even got all of my POP email accounts now going through Gmail because it does the best job of removing spam. In the two years that I have been using Gmail, I would venture to guess that it has let fewer than a dozen spam messages through, and has falsely identified even fewer non-spam messages. Google definitely has their act together when it comes to spam filtering.

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  8. It is better that Google sell her mighty of spam filtering to ISP and enterprise users who want to host their own mail servers. I expect Google Exchange will be out to market in a few years.

    More at
    http://webandlife.blogspot.com/2007/07/google-exchange.html

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  9. google bought postini, which is the best spam blocker to date.

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  10. It is to bad that Google can stop all the mail that has been identified as spam at their server and not letting it get to the individual accounts and just dump it there..

    Google doesn't block spam emails. They just go into the spam folder instead of the inbox. You can see all of your spam for the past 30 days there.

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  11. I believe Gmail is the best SPAM filtering system so far.

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  12. I think Google should share this technology with the world so we can eliminate spam once and for all... everywhere.

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  13. Great article, more people should realize how much better Gmail is at fighting Spam. I used to run my own mailserver and was just getting overwhelmed trying to keep up, once Google Apps for Domains came out I gave it a go, and I've been very happy I did. As another poster said, I even route outer accounts thru Gmail because of the spam filtering. I guess the only thing I'd prefer is that they just block spam before it reaches me; will there be false positives? Probably, but that percentage is so small I don't care; we have to cut at some point, I'd rather go with how they're lining things up.

    I guess having the same email address since 2001 gets you on quite a few spam lists, but as long as Gmail keeps up, I'll be a happy camper.

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  14. Do us a favour. Choke on your copy/paste blogspam, mmmkay?

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  15. so..... where's the 'HOW'? I was expecting a phat way to optimize SpamAssassin and ClamAV with Postfix. This is just Googlite Pr0n. Everyone's gonna be feeling mad shitty when Google turns on us and starts turning over personal info. Wait.... too late

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  16. @last anonymous:
    What blogspam? I didn't submit this to Digg, so it's not my problem. I wrote about this because it was interesting for this blog and quoted from Google's page because I couldn't invent all that data about Gmail's spam filters.

    This blog is not written for Digg, Slashdot or another site, so I shouldn't be responsible if you can't filter the good things.

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  17. Ok... I praise very often Gmail spam system.
    Usually, my Gmail account has from 1000 to 2000 emails in it. In other words, I receive monthly that amount of spam!

    Many comments, as well as original post, make sense... But I couldn't stand Techmine's comment. So I just wanted to comment on his statement about AOL and Gmail accounts:

    -If your spam folder is EMPTY, it means it's NOT WORKING!

    - If your spam folder is BIG, it means it's WORKING perfectly!

    - If your spam folder is EMPTY and you still don't get any spam in Inbox, it means that either the service deletes your emails for you (means you can't retrieve false positives if there are any) or you simply don't get any spam (which means commenting about it's spam filtering is DUMB, cause you never tested it!).

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  18. I have written an article about gmail and spam. Check it out http://dpanic.googlepages.com/spam.pdf

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  19. interestingly, my gmail account gets a hundred or so emails in my spam box each day. my hotmail account gets none. NONE.

    i'm not convinced if that's good spam filtering or whether my gmail account is a target for spammers.

    either way. i think it's odd ... especially since my hotmail used to get a lot of spam.

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  20. Using Gmail with Firefox knocks off my internet connection - not always but at least 80% of the time. Using Blogger (another Google site) does the same. I now use Interent Explorere for Google related sites and Firefox for the rest. I would be grateful to hear from anybody who has had the same problem and knows of a sloution.

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  21. While Gmail does a fairly decent job I have to admit I'm not impressed. The way I have things setup there are two spam filters in place before my mail gets to Google's servers. Spam STILL gets through.

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  22. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  23. To those who praise a zero-spam account and despise some spam or false positives getting through: imagine you go to your doctor for a check-up every day and he/she hasn't found anything, not a cold in 20 years... would you be just happy or a bit suspiscious?

    BTW, this article really doesn't explain anything about how the filters work, but the video is funny.

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  24. I do love Gmail mainly due to the spam filtering. I can post my email any where on the web and it doesn't matter as all spam is caught.

    Not even I get a lot of spam because of that, I have two accounts, one public and one private, and my private one still gets loads of spam despite only a select few people have it (you can count on your fingers).

    I recently moved all my girlfriend's accounts to gmail (using POP) and she has noticed the differences straight away (and loves having all her emails in one place!)

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  25. buy c1alis! buy v1agra!

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  26. I feel they tried a little too hard to make it funny...sorta fell flat..but at least the music was done right.

    Also Gmail is great, but I call BS on the OCR technology.

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  27. Hahahahaha

    Coolest video ever. Great article as well. I've been using Gmail for a while and even though it looks spartan it's much more usable than hotmail, which I was using previously.

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  28. Gmail sucks at identifying spam.

    Example: one of the newsletters I receive.
    It often goes to the spam box.
    Despite being listed as a CONTACT.
    Despite being listed as NON-SPAM!

    Fix this shit, Google.
    We need whitelists and blacklists.

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  29. A great topic to investigate: how can we all neutralize spam? Google's technologies could be applied to their blogs, as you note, which are veritable spam notepads. Microsoft could make available free patches to any version of their operating system, licensed or not, that do essential things like install a firewall and turn off windows networking. We could also encourage MS to fix IE, instead of running away to Firefox or (better) Opera.

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  30. Hm.. great stuff... and a funny video from Google... have to love a company that can make jokes and not be totally executive & business like.

    And ofc if they could create a spamfighter program for use in email clients like outlook, thunderbird (ofc thunderbirds learning spam filter is quite good), etc.

    That would be worht quite a bit of money I would think.

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  31. I dumped my Yahoo account after nearly 10 years of use because the spam filters are worthless. I would get 20-30 spam messages a day. Since switching to Gmail nearly a year ago I have received 1 true spam message in my Inbox.

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  32. Hmm... In the last 5-6 months I have deleted as much spam from my Inbox as the Gmail filters have picked out for me... Stuff like:

    UK LOTTERY WINNER
    MICROSOFT REWARDS PROGRAM
    YOU'RE OUR WEEKLY WINNER
    etc...

    I don't care how Gmail collects the stuff, just do a better job at it. Somehow the spammers have found a hole in the protection; it's time to plug whatever hole that is.

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  33. @The Average White Guy:
    Your comment was classified as spam by Gmail :)

    ReplyDelete
  34. How come I get no span in Hotmail, but 10-20 messages a day in gmail?

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  35. Google is effective because it uses the Bayesian Spam filtering Technique.
    If you miss the spam, it will the last time, because, once you label it it will learn how to and what to. The learning accumulates and thence the graph shown in this post
    http://ajabgajab.blogspot.com/2007/07/bayesian-spam-filtering.html

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  36. Gmail is fantastic... I don't use the web interface.

    I forward all my email accounts (about 10, accounts like 'sales' and 'service') to my gmail account and then have them forwarded to my *1* account.

    Almost perfect... And fast too!

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  37. I'm learning Esperanto!

    :)

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  38. If i dont want to partipiate, how i can disable\remove spam folder?

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  39. Although gmail does very good job on eliminating spams, I feel that false-positive rate is rather higher compared to other providers. I must say false-positive is much less desireble than false-negative.

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  40. Techmine said "I don't agree here. Gmail may be good in blocking SPAM but the best of the lot is AOL. I am active yahoo,gmail and aol mail user. I think twice before giving my gmail and yahoo ID but never care about AOL ID. Yet, my AOL spam folder is "always" empty. Gmail's spam folder become very fat very soon. Yahoo is the worst. (I never used hotmail). Never had issues with AOL. If you don't believe me, try it out."

    That is what gmail does best, lots of storage so that if you do get a message marked as spam you might have the option to undo the spam tag. lets face it, how much space are you actually using from the available pool. FTA, gmail uses user feedback to help improve the spam filter. What I might call spam doesn't necessarily make it spam.

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  41. I kinda have different opinion on this.

    A SPAM FILTER cannot be judged as working better, if we see less of SPAMS on our SPAM folder. It is entirely dependent on the policy on the mail server, that scores the message. Lets say : any message below 5 gets into your INBOX, between 5 and 15 gets into your SPAM folder, and above 15 is deleted from the server.

    I was expecting Google give us those statistics [ scoring rules/heuristics or policy ] to actually compare with other spam filters, and this article is just vague.

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  42. Does Gmail offer some type of Feedback loop for senders to process user complaints?

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  43. Interesting post. I receive 100+ spam mails into GMail account but, only 1 or 2 make it into Inbox, where as on Yahoo, I get more than 25% of spam make it into the Inbox.

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  44. GMAIL rocks. Just one SPAM I got in the last two months (out of 2000 + genuine mails). I also visit the spam folder just to make sure everything marked by GMail as spam is indeed spam. Perfect. Never marked a genuine one as SPAM. Look at aol/Yahoo or Hotmail. After 20 days, I logged on to Yahoo Messenger and been notified that I got 37 new emails. I checked and ALL Spam ! An yesr back, I stopped giving out my Yahoo as my contact address ! Waiting for a GOperating System, GMessenger, GDisk Management software, GAntiVirus, lol.

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  45. Anonymous halsevil@yahoo.co.uk said on Tuesday, October 30, 2007:
    "Using Gmail with Firefox knocks off my internet connection - not always but at least 80% of the time... I now use Interent Explorer for Google related sites and Firefox for the rest."

    Same happens to me; when I open "span" folder, Firefox 2.x ceases to respond.
    But both Firefix 3 (beta) and IE run fine.

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  46. Gmail seems to work pretty well for me. I use email sparingly:3-10 a week but I may get 300+ spam, so it is a great hassle-free (almost) system. I have a very low % of false positive. Gmail is 99% effective. And getting better.

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  47. Gmail makes a good spam filter
    http://www.iopus.com/guides/gmail-spam-filter.htm

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  48. Isn't working that great anymore :(

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  49. How can I block any emails with pharmacy or in foreign languarges?

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  50. Create a filter that automatically sends to trash all the messages that contain pharmacy. Gmail also has an operator for finding messages written in a certain language: lang:russian for Russian.

    You could enter something like:

    pharmacy OR lang:russian OR lang:chinese

    in the "Has the words" box to block all the messages that contain Russian / Chinese text or "pharmacy".

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  51. I think as a Paying member of Gmail we should have that option to turn off the spam filter.

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  52. Gmail's spamfilter is great at putting spam in the spam-folder. I guess since Google is generous and gives a way several gigabytes, they think they can just dump all junkmail on their users. I still have to go through masses of spam each day to see if one valid messege happens to be there. It would have been better if identified spam never reached the inbox at all, if let's say a thousand users have identified that particular spam as spam (high probability it is spam then). Also, I don't see how spam can come to one of my gmail accounts when I have never ever typed it or posted it anywhere? Does Gmail sell our addresses to spamfirms or what?

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  53. "...spam never reached the inbox at all,..." I meant "account" and not inbox, 'cause it doesn't reach the inbox!

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  54. << Also, I don't see how spam can come to one of my gmail accounts when I have never ever typed it or posted it anywhere? Does Gmail sell our addresses to spamfirms or what? >>

    Use your brain. Spammers have all kinds of ways to build databases of email addresses. For example, if they know bilhopper@aol.com is a valid address, it's reasonable to test if billhopper@gmail.com (@yahoo.com, @hotmail.com etc.) are valid addresses. There are also databases built automatically from common names, words etc.

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  55. It is very interesting

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  56. I thought Google Spam Filter was a good thing till I noticed it was zapping a lot of my business related emails from non-spam sources.

    Why Google. Why?

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  57. Why doesn't Google turn it around and use their filters to stop the spam originating from gmail accounts? I find that blocking everyting from google over email or usenet stops nearly half the spam I get and it's very fast and doesn't need OCR technology.

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  58. I've been told by some of my friends recently that they discovered my gmail e-mail in spam folder(including in gmail also).
    Is there a way I can find out was it in reality "blacklisted" or smth, and for what reason?

    Regards,
    Andrey

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  59. Google doesn't use blacklists, it only filters email messages. Obviously, some email addresses and some domains are more likely to send spam, but the messages aren't blocked just because they're sent from these addresses.

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  60. hey i know gmail block spammails. But i didn't know how they stop. But after reading your blog i made it clear. Thnkx for such a gret post.
    Anti Spam Software
    Windows Server Monitor

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  61. True, I started receiving spams in my comment part of my blog until I enabled the picture verification utility there.
    However, my gmail account is the best one when i think of spams. Even yahoo is not as successful as gmail is in blocking spams.
    In 4 years of using gmail I have received less than 100 spams and this feels awesome.

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  62. The problem is that g-mail also blocks genuine e-mail!

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  63. Why on earth you don't allow the use of a filter to "Mark as spam" I do not know.

    I hate having filters that send stuff straight to the bin, when I am 100% certain it should be marked as spam and go to junk. It makes my bin messier than it should be.

    Thanks for your time,

    Steve Daniels

    ReplyDelete
  64. I agree that Gmail has a tough job of trying to track and block spam... but I just want the ability to turn the spam filter off and choose for myself. For me the risk of false positives is not acceptable, whilst for some you, you are happy to take the risk or you regulalry check online. Fine, so let the user choose what suits them. The spam filter nearly just cost me a significant portion of money. I 'pop' all of my gmail through to my Outlook, and check gmail online only when travelling. I have an investment planner who recently was trying to send me an important email with a financial deadline. After days he rang to find out why I hadn't replied. I told him I hadn't received it. He sent it a few more times but it just didn't get here. Finally he said 'Can you go online and check, we've been having problems with gmail lately', and lo and behold there they were, piled up in my spam folder, along with a couple of others from my accountant and friends and so forth (actually more false positives than real spam). We nearly missed the deadline. Lucky because I didn't even think of checking the web base gmail. So whats the story? I have received many emails from him previously, and still some of his were getting through at the time, but it selectively targets others of his. He is from a small, local, reputable financial planning company and was using his personal company address (ie. he doesn't spam) from a legitimate domain. So why was he blacklisted? Secondly, what legal responsibility does google have to it's users? They could cost this poor guy a lot off money/business just by not letting him get his emails through to even established clients. I asked him what he can do about this known problem and his reply is 'Nothing, Google is a powerful and faceless entity/enemy and there is no one that will help - once blacklisted thats that'. I now wonder what other legitimate emails have expired and been deleted from my Spam folder. I have multiple email addresses used for different things and normally don't get much spam to my business ones because I use them cautiously. Quite simply, why can't Google just gives its users the choice to enable spam filtering dependant upon our needs.

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  65. OK. I got a Geico quote for car insurance. Next day I have more than 20 spam messages in Gmail spam about car insurance. I noticed the same with other emails before. It seems to me that Google is selling email addresses by received content. Did anyone else have this experience???

    knops1@gmail.com

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  66. @Jean:
    From where did you get the quote?

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  67. I like the way "Jean" complains about receiving spam; then goes and leaves his full address for the friendly bots to collect!

    My experience of spam handling on GMail is that after foolishly signing up for a competition website in a brief moment of desparation, I ended up having to create loads of filters on individual words and bits of domain names, and I get the same constant spam in my bin ("trash" to Americans) ...the same named stuff... usually about 50 a day, with the occasional non-spam amidst them.
    My daily GMail routine involves a quick scan of the contents of my bin; then "select all" and "mark as spam".

    I very rarely get anything unwanted in my inbox... maybe at a rate of once every three months maximum at a guess.
    What does annoy me, is that the same stuff keeps appearing in my bin, and no amount of "marking as spam" seems to result in any part of the e-mail being stored in memory to be perpetually filtered straight to my spambox... though it does occasionally happen.

    Perhaps I'm missing someaught?

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  68. i totally agree. Google spam filter is very effective. I love it.

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  69. why the hell are you lot worried about it - best cure for spam - simply ignore it, meanwhile I have to waste time every month salvaging my requested emails from the spam muncher & if I am but one day late it is gone forever, adding to contacts, marking as non spam etc do nothing - the same senders are shot down again & again - plus a few new ones each week - otherwise I do like gmail.

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  70. Google is not good. I have so much spam. I get hundreds of spam from google. I hardly get any from yahoo. I feel google does not try to stop this because they are making money off us. I am thinking about not having google for my e-mail address any more.

    Diana

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  71. Gmail spam filter is great for most personal emails, but what about the other side of the spectrum - business users that have false-positives of staff and/or new clients/contacts...they wouldn't be too impressed with a filter like that.

    (from a student's view; using it as your contact email for potential employers...2 false-positives out of 35 received emails, almost 6% error rate)

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  72. Gmail doesn't mark as spam the messages from your contacts, but there are some exceptions. You can also create filters to never mark as spam messages that meet certain conditions.

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  73. I am a new user and I am now getting over 40 spams items per day!! What's up with Gmail "supposedly" improving their spam filters?

    Not good service to your customers!!

    Anonoymous in West Chester, Ohio

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  74. I have been using Gmail as a spam filter for three years now and there is not much I can complain about.

    When working as our web administrator I forwarded all personal, webmaster, abuse etc. addresses to my Gmail account. Out of 30.000 spams per month only 0-2 got through every day. We used to have SpamAssassin and a couple of other solutions but they were worse in every imaginable respect. They let spam come through and they lost valuable messages like big orders, sales letters and so forth.

    It does occur every now and then that Gmail eats one of your messages but that is a very, very rare case. And what on earth could one do with this flood of crap (all in all 50.000 spams/month to just five people). I do not think there will ever be a bullet-proof system.

    As for myself I would be prepared to pay for Gmail filtering it it were available separately.

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  75. I like GMAIL best, bit there is feature in HOTMAIL that I love. Hotmail allows you to block all e-mail from addresses that are not included in your contact list. I wish GMAIL could implement something like this.
    Mario

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  76. Yeah hahaha, Gmail catches thousand of spam messages while Yahoo only hundred or so. Good job gmail.

    ReplyDelete
  77. I can identify and relate to several of the posts on here...I had been with Gmail for months and had received NO spam at all. Having a momentary lapse, my quote request wasn't for car insurance but for a car loan. Next thing I know, poof, my mail was immediately bombarded with spam, from ALL kinds of sources, and yes mainly regarding car loans.

    I was ticked about it at first, but over time, after tweaking various spam filters and settings, and using the "Mark as Spam" feature, the bulk of it goes right where it should, in the Spam folder. I can easily skim through there and see if any legitimate messages went through, which now is a rarity (over 6 months since the last).

    Before Gmail, I was using Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL...none of these has the spam filtering that GMail does. I still have them, but am slowly weaning away from those accounts in hopes of closing them. I go to check on them very sporatically now and its always the same, 97% or more is all spam. Now there are occasional legitmate items that come there, which I will route to Gmail, but very few.

    Anyone who complains about the filtering, is either impatient, and expecting instant results; or isn't using the filters and settings correctly. It takes time for the filtering to work for each individual account in the way the user expects. I'd much rather have most or all spam going to one place that I can check instead of needing to check the inbox and the spam box. Is is a perfect system--definitely not; is there room for improvements--of course. However, as I see it, the folks at the helm are listening to the feedback they're getting and making changes where they can. As someone mentioned before, no system is perfect, however this one is pretty darn good.

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  78. I think there should be an option for those who would find it useful, to stop/bin the spam before it even reaches the Spam folder. I just don't want to see it at all.

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  79. What I don't understand is that I hardly ever get spam in my hotmail or yahoo account: Junkmail folder or inbox.

    My gmail account gets an abudance of viagra, online degrees, knock off watches etc etc etc Why do I have to see this. I don't want them in my email account at all. Can't they block these things? I'm going to migrate back to hotmail or yahoo. At least I can control what goes into my account.

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  80. well i do agree that i dont get any spam into my gmail inbox. but i am always wondering why does gmail receive most of the spam than any other email servers. I have been an active user of gmail since about 2 years and that of yahoo since 7 years, but i do get a lot many times spam in gmail than in yahoo.
    Recently i have to delete a 1000 spam emails in gmail within a week time while i got about 10 spam mails in yahoo..

    I wonder if gmail is spamming the emails to prove their spam filter better or if gmail accounts are more susceptible than other accounts.

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  81. my youtube comments going directly to spam folder,why?

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  82. how to convert my gamil account in to the new version?

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  83. The interesting thing is that my gmail address is a very non-standard letters and numbers and I started getting spam from the first month - and I hadn't really started using the account yet. I believed that Gmail had been hacked.

    Oh well.... it's free,

    Regards, Irv

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  84. When i started using my gmail account i didn't have problem with spams but in last 4 months its flooded with spams even i get spams in languages i dont knowlike chinese or arabic how can i stop it

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  85. Do you get many spam messages that aren't detected by Gmail? Don't forget to flag messages as spam instead of deleting them. Gmail will learn from your actions and you'll receive less spam in your inbox.

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  86. How do I get my WebSite off the Spam List...

    I own a Web Hosting Company and everytime I send out an e-mail, It's marked as spam.

    This is awful.

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  87. I have a gmail account that gets no spam, knock on wood, so when my wife decided to go digital I had her open a gmail account because I didn't get spam in mine. Within a week she had spam in her Spam box, very little ends up in her inbox most gets filtered. Now she doesn't get putting her email address everywhere, mainly she uses email to correspond with her kids, and a few friends.

    The only thing I can figure is here id is pretty generic like grammiexxxx@ and mine is not it's unrelated terms put together.

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  88. I have many a client who has a gmail.com account, even though they paid for a subscription to their newsletters, they mark me as spam even though there is an unsubscribe link at the top of the mail.

    The thing is that I don't ever receive messages that their mails have been identified as spam. I really think gmail should offer some sort of feedback loop system because sometimes email is in the spam folder and it isn't spam.

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  89. Yeah I think Google is too "effective": we have a problem with false positives. We can't send email to ourselves!

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  90. well i think its google they are a search engine sending spam to your email even tho its in the spam folder it still there to look at, i get over 70 spams a day Thats Good ?? my email is only used for people i know ,so where is spam coming from how they get my email address ?

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  91. As many have said before me, Google should block the spam at their server level and not forward it to our mailbox.. Why go through the extra step of having to remove the spam? C'mon Google.. Get with it!!!!
    Block the spam at your server.. DON'T SEND IT TO ME PLEASE... That is the only complaint I have with G-mail..

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  92. AGREE !! STOP SPAMM IN THE SERVER !

    I hate to use GMAIL anymore.
    I hate spam and gmail doesn't do anything with it.

    Why i need see in my email account Spam : (260)
    to get in and delete ?

    What is that ?...

    Sorry but i think google goes back in technology.
    And i'm not talking about gmail server fall couple weeks ago, youtube servers are slow and etc.

    With all the good stuff that google has they have lot more problems.

    Sorry for that.

    I'm going to search another email provider service then Gmail till it be fixed

    ReplyDelete
  93. Gmail also has a problem with identifying legitimate email as spam. Gmail sends EVERY email from @live.com to spam by default. Sounds like petty back-biting with MS.

    ReplyDelete
  94. @Dave:
    Can you prove that "Gmail sends EVERY email from @live.com to spam by default"? I can prove that your affirmation is inaccurate with a single email received in my inbox from a live.com address. Gmail's anti-spam rules aren't that simple as you might think and sometimes even the messages sent by Google services are flagged as spam.

    ReplyDelete
  95. I don't think my GMAIL account is curving spam, I've created so many filters using the words (i.e) {Viagra, viagra, Sex, SEX,... etc.} and yet, every day, I get the same emails from 25 different email addresses... So if its being filtered, its being recycled right back to my spam section...

    ReplyDelete
  96. I have the opposite problem with Gmail spam filters. They are blocking my e-mail to people who want it. I only send out an e-mail every 3 or 4 months to people who really want it and Gmail's spam blockers block my e-mails. I have sent them e-mail to support@gmail.com but they don't respond. How am I supposed to tell them to quit preventing my e-mail messages? I have a list of less than 200 people. rharding2007@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  97. Sometimes inbuild spam filtering doesn't seem to work. In that case gmail provides a good way to get rid of spam. You can actually alter your gmail id before submitting to doubtful sites.

    Here is how you do it.

    http://codeforfuture.com/2009/06/24/how-to-alter-your-gmail-id-before-submitting-it-to-any-doubtful-site/

    ReplyDelete
  98. "@Dave:
    Can you prove that "Gmail sends EVERY email from @live.com to spam by default?"

    Don't know why but my emails sent from live.com to 2 different Gmail account (with 2 completely different emails) went to the junk mail folder :{

    ReplyDelete
  99. @DAVE: I have experienced a nasty blow from gmail.
    Whenever I send mails to gmail id from
    @live.in id it goes to spam of gmail.This is horrible and disgusting.Why dont this people keep their cold war among themselves.On the other hand we are gettng affected lots of imp mails are not ben properly sent.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Just one problem...I NEVER got all this random spam crap from any of my other email accounts. I have a couple on yahoo and on hotmail, and the only "spam" I got on any of those accounts were things that I signed up for, and later didn't want. I haven't given out this email address to anything not related to its intended purpose (school-based mail), and yet every day I am getting the standard Viagra/cialis, dating, college student surveys on drinking, etc.

    I never signed up for this, and I never got these spam messages until we switched from Postini Wiscnet to Postini GMAIL...so, I am led to believe that is is all Google's fault. Way to go, google.

    ReplyDelete
  101. I feel Google is taking lot of steps to prevent the spamming and it has been bit successful in it. Previously before a year, I use to receive lot of spam e-mails. But, after I have started using the spam filters in the e-mail. I have been able to cut off nearly about 60% to 70% of the spam e-mails.

    ReplyDelete
  102. @Dave and Michael
    I signed up for a liveID using my gmail (to use the MS help forums). Gmail flagged the registration email as spam.

    ReplyDelete
  103. My normal routine involves a quick scan of the contents of my bin; then "select all" and "mark as spam".

    I very infrequently get anything unwanted in my inbox... maybe at a rate of once every few weeks maximum at a guess.

    ReplyDelete
  104. I think nobody know how exactly google do it

    ReplyDelete
  105. Although gmail does very good job on eliminating spams, I feel that false-positive rate is rather higher compared to other providers.

    ReplyDelete
  106. Here are my email stats, listed in this order:

    1. Account Name.
    2. Date I started using it.
    3. What percent of my email I use it for.
    4. How many spams I get per week in my in box.
    5. How many spams I get per week in my spam folder.
    (note, each account has the same handle address)

    Yahoo, 1998, 94%, 1, 4
    Gmail, 2005, 6%, 0, 12
    Hotmail, 2006, 0%, 0, 0

    ReplyDelete
  107. I have both gmail and yahoo accounts and I don't get a lot of spam in the gmail inbox, but I get tons of it in the spam folder. With yahoo, I hardly ever get spam in my inbox and I may get 2-4 a day maximum in my spam folder. In my experience, yahoo filters spam much better.

    ReplyDelete
  108. I think that GMAIL is the best web mail on the market. Filters work really great. Thanks for the great post!

    ReplyDelete
  109. Google's spam filtering works nicely - ESPECIALLY for a free product. I havent found anything any better EVEN paid services. I rarely get any false positives and am able to check once weekly or so thru my spam box to make sure nothing legitimate ended up there accidentally.

    ReplyDelete
  110. I have always sort of wondered how google performed there spam filtering.. Thanks its a lot clearer to me now.

    ReplyDelete
  111. I think google and gmail are crooks and get paid high dollars for spam themselves! e.g. I'm a small business owner that has customers sign up for my monthly newletters and periodic specials and discounts that always end up in their spam and very rarely get seen even though they signed up for my services. Yet when I open any email or when a customer opens mine there are tons of "paid ads" on the right side of the emails to try and lure my customers away...crooks I tell you!

    ReplyDelete
  112. Give me a nice, simple algorythm that sends any message coming to me from anybody NOT on my contact list, and I will be a lot happier!

    ReplyDelete
  113. I get hundreds of mail written in Cyrillic font, and every one is SPAM - guarranteed! Why, oh why can't Gmail offer a filter to dump anything that's not in a Western font?

    ReplyDelete
  114. Create a filter for lang:ru and you can delete Russian messages.

    ReplyDelete
  115. Ok so Gmail is fine, but what about spam on my blogs?

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  116. The way I have things setup there are two spam filters in place before my mail gets to Google's servers. Spam STILL gets through!

    ReplyDelete
  117. Google has a very vast technology to make out the difference between spam and a genuine thing.The way it works is awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  118. GMAIL, PLEASE MAKE A FILTER THAT WILL DELETE SPAM FOREOVER. I have kept my gmail address confidential since the beginning but I am getting 3 TIMES the amount of spam from a year ago. ---that's now 200 per day. GMAIL, PLEASE MAKE A FILTER TO DELETE SPAM FOREVER.. I'M SICK ON SEEING PAGES OF SPAM IN THE TRASH. PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  119. I think, to make it experience with other services gmail always a head of them making this type of filter and technology. currently whatever they are providing none of them are not doing

    ReplyDelete
  120. Whenever I send mails to gmail id from
    @live.in id it goes to spam of gmail.This is horrible and disgusting.

    ReplyDelete
  121. is there a link to delisted an email domain from gmail's anti-spam?

    ReplyDelete
  122. Thanks for the Article on spam emails. I have a blog based on scam 419. Scam baiting is the best practice of pretending interest in the fraudulent scheme offered by scammers in order to manipulate them. In simple terms, you enter into a dialogue of spammers simply to waste their time and resources. At the same time scam baiters will help to keep the real victims away from these Nigerian 419 scam and scammers. This blog is to alert the People from Spam Email.An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. For further Contact : nigerianscam419@gmail.com
    Url : http://www.scam419.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  123. When working as our web administrator I forwarded all personal, webmaster, abuse etc. addresses to my Gmail account. Out of 30.000 spams per month only 0-2 got through every day. We used to have SpamAssassin and a couple of other solutions but they were worse in every imaginable respect. They let spam come through and they lost valuable messages like big orders, sales letters and so forth.

    ReplyDelete
  124. I have been really happy with gmail. It seems that it is able to know what is spam and what is not. It was nice to find out some of this information. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  125. There should be an option to halt ALL unwanted mail from even reaching the spam folder. I find it very annoying having to go there and delete the f'n junk.

    ReplyDelete
  126. I am simply appalled at how STUPID some of you people are. Are you seriously trying to say there should not BE a spam filter, but that all emails suspected of being spam should simply be automatically DELETED? You'd never be able to find any false positives that way! Morons!

    As for me, I'd like a way to turn the spam filter off. Even if I put in a filter to keep certain messages from going to spam, since they WOULD have gone to spam without my filter, they do not trigger my vacation responder. If Gmail thinks my friend's email is spam, even if I specifically tell it otherwise, my friend will not get an automatic response while I am on vacation. That's bullsh*t.

    ReplyDelete
  127. is it wrong to mark all unwanted mail as spam?

    ReplyDelete
  128. EMAIL ALERTS THAT PAYPAL ACCOUNT PASSWORD HAS BEEN ALTERED have begun to be diverted into gmail's Spam folder this past week.

    It opens a security hole because customers will not know when their Paypal account has been changed fraudulently.

    I tried to alert Paypal, but couldn't get past their Customer Services' assurances that "our technicians will be aware of this issue..."

    With so much at stake, could gmail give these notices special immunity from the Spam filter????

    (Yes, I could perhaps set up a "never send to spam" filter - if my browser could access the newer version of gmail (which it can't) - but the problem would still remain for users who don't know they are affected....)

    A larger intervention is needed to prevent people from failing to learn when their Paypal account has been taken over without their knowledge.

    PLEASE, GMAIL, CONSIDER GIVING THESE NOTIFICATIONS A SPECIAL STATUS. THEY DON'T EVER BELONG IN SPAM!!

    Also in this past week communications with my eBay trading partners are also going to Spam. This began at the same time.

    Good luck with anything you can do to solve this! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  129. I am flooded with spam mails in my gmail account,thi is really frustrated.I wanted to know from GMAIL spam blocker team that "Are you intentionally allow those mail for getting money from those emailer company?" or SPAM blocker has a bug or hacked by Chinkus?

    ReplyDelete
  130. I'm am getting obvious scam emails from a gmail sender i.e., "Western Union is holding $50, 000 in your name..."

    To whom at gmail and/or Google should these fraud attempts be reported?

    ReplyDelete
  131. I really have lot of spam lately
    -Gynexin-

    ReplyDelete
  132. Since days I'm searching for the problem.

    All emails sent from my website email service to a gmail account ends up as spam...

    I checked if the server's IP is blacklisted but it's not.

    Gmail may filter all spam perfectly but removes a lot of 'important' messages, too.

    ReplyDelete
  133. Bien que gmail ne très bon travail sur l'élimination des spams, je pense que le taux de faux positifs est plutôt supérieurs à ceux d'autres fournisseurs. Je dois dire de faux positifs est beaucoup moins desireble de faux négatifs

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  134. That's good google gmail is blocking spam! :)

    ReplyDelete
  135. Gmail isn't blocking anything, learn your terms. They are accepting everything, making spam sources mark the target addresses as 'OK' which attracts eben more spam. So they aren't really blocking anything, and by such actions they actually attract more and more spam, supporting it in a way so to speak.

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  136. I don't agree here. my Gmail is blocking SPAM but also marking stuff that is spam that is not spam.

    ReplyDelete
  137. Google needs to allow wild-card filtering of spammer e-mail addresses so users can avoid getting any spam at all.

    ReplyDelete
  138. You can change the last part of your email account to googlemail.com instead of the normal gmail.com! It’s another nifty way to no give out your main email address and can seriously help clear your Inbox of spam or junk email.

    ReplyDelete
  139. All I know is I get alot of spam from my gmail account. It sucks.

    ReplyDelete
  140. Honestly, i dont care that much how the system works, i just woished it were more effectice. I still get spam every once in a while and its so irritating!

    ReplyDelete
  141. Seems like Google has finally improved its filtering function to another level, I can tell from less and less spam I received recently.

    ReplyDelete
  142. I really enjoy reading the post, thanks for sharing I really like it, I already bookmarked it, thank you guys.

    ReplyDelete
  143. Oh got i am receiving so much of spam mails these days, i never knew this how google works to stop the spam mails but one thing i would like to say with all those spammers out there, google is doing pretty good job.

    ReplyDelete
  144. I agree that Gmail is the best webmail app in blocking spam messages.. Yahoomail is the worst.

    ReplyDelete
  145. Agree with Jon.. Have been using gmail for ages now and hardly 1-2 spams per month is much better than what yahoo / hotmail allow..

    ReplyDelete
  146. I wonder how serious companies and their newsletter avoid ending up at Gmail's spam folder? Is there something to be done for this?
    Thanks in advance..

    ReplyDelete
  147. They've got the most use search engine, they have started the google plus and now, they are making an operating system...way to go for google company, eh. It's like the concept of "distributors will own the market"

    ReplyDelete
  148. Google's "spam filter" is using a shotgun to kill flies - a lot of "butterflies*" are getting whacked too. *(legit emails from other sources)
    Ranv09

    ReplyDelete
  149. I use gmail for all my email accounts. The only thing I don't like is the advertising. They know what's in your emails.

    ReplyDelete
  150. It seems so typical to me that after decades of spam with most of all email traffic being a complete waste of bandwidth to everyone except organized crime, there is no political will to do anything about it.

    Even if you can't track down the spammer, for goodness sake, kick the bot-net zombies off the internet. And after that you can go after the people actually paying for this kind of advertisement and put them out of business forever.

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  151. Many Google teams provide pieces of the spam-protection puzzle, from distributed computing to language detection.

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  152. Yeah, GMail does a great job!
    And, best of all, it's free. It adds up if you think that lots of businessmen use GMail to handle everything for them.

    ReplyDelete
  153. Actually i mark some addresses as spam day after day and everyday i get more of the same, googles spam filtering seems to be very selective

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  154. Maybe Google should make greater efforts to filter spam in other service.

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  155. Fascinating information here, although I do think Google is making a big mistake with the recent Google penguin update.

    Sally

    ReplyDelete
  156. Gmail can also be an inconveniece to anyone trying to email customers. I've had outgoing mail blocked and my account even locked down because the spam filter thinks my business emails are spam.

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  157. I wish that when I gave instructions to delete spam forever that Google would do so. I continually receive spam from addresses that I have deleted forever.

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  158. I hope i can get answer of my question. where do i get information about gmail spam filtering ?

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  159. More and more legitimate e-mails are put to spam by gmail. Google is going down, we are moving from their "gmail at own domain" service to own e-mail server.

    ReplyDelete
  160. I don't use gmail very often but............. I am amazed how much SPAM arrives to my outlook box from gmail addresses. This morning 5 emails all same basic message, all from different gmail addresses.

    I realise many of the above comments are about preventing the receiving of these messages but surely gmail (& Yahoo) could ( & should) do much more to stop this rubbish being sent in the first instance.

    Viagra and a tinyurl can't be too difficult to indentify

    ReplyDelete
  161. Howdy! This blog post couldn't be written any better! Looking at this article reminds me of my previous roommate! He always kept preaching about this. I most certainly will send this article to him. Pretty sure he'll have a good read. Thank you for sharing!


    Gynexol Reviews

    ReplyDelete

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