Ask HN: Are junk email filters getting worse?

by mdni007on 5/8/2023, 6:54 PMwith 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 victorbjorklundon 5/8/2023, 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 ftxbroon 5/8/2023, 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 DamonHDon 5/8/2023, 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 helph67on 5/8/2023, 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 nickfromseattleon 5/10/2023, 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 novoshieldon 5/9/2023, 5:32 PM

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