wiki:faq/email/understand-spam

Version 2 (modified by Enrique Rosas, 12 years ago) (diff)

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I'm getting too much spam! Help! What can I do?

Versión en español:¡Estoy obteniendo mucho spam! ¿Ayuda, qué puedo hacer??

May First/People Link cannot control the amount of spam that you receive via email. Usually, the amount of spam you receive is based on how long you have had your email address, how many people you have given it to (including when you sign up for services on a web site), whether your address is published on many web sites, and factors that we can't control.

Many providers tell you that they can control the amount of spam you receive. What they really mean is: their computer systems make a guess as to which messages you are getting are spam and then either delete them or outright reject them. While this system works for a lot of messages, it also can accidentally block non-spam messages, particularly mass emails sent by activist organizations that have no other way to reach a broad audience. For this reason, May First/People Link refuses to block or delete any mail. Every message sent to you will be delivered to you.

This approach does not mean that you have to inundated with spam.

May First/People Link will also guess which messages are spam and will mark those messages (most notably in the subject line, by adding "*SPAM*" to the beginning of the subject. This is our way of saying: alert - we suspect this message is spam.

The first question to ask yourself if you are getting too much spam is: are you getting too much spam that is accurately being identified by May First/People Link? Or, are you getting too much spam that is not being identified by May First/People Link.

If the spam is being properly identified, then our servers are doing the right thing and now it's your turn to tell your email program to filter messages that have been properly identified by May First/People Link into a spam folder. By filtering your messages into a spam filter, you can always look to make sure no mistakes were made about what is spam. For directions on setting up spam filters, please see our faq on filtering email for spam.

If the spam is not being properly identified, then please open a support ticket and let us know. Keep in mind that no spam detection system is perfect. Depending on how much email you typically get, you can expect to see one or two spam messages squeak by per day. If you are getting a lot more than that, please let us know.