Ask Dave Taylor: Tech and Business

Friday

Does Gmail's spam filtering work?

Dave, I'm very tempted to move from Yahoo Mail to Google's Gmail, but I'm still unsure whether Gmail does a good job of filtering spam or not. I get lots of spam - darn it - and would love to hear that Gmail does a great job of filtering out all of this junk from my mailbox. What's your opinion?

I've been quite impressed with both the functionality and spam filtering in Gmail, actually. Without me paying much attention, my spam folder fills up every day and only once in a blue moon is there a real, legitimate message buried in the junk. Similarly, not much spam makes it into my main mailbox either, so it appears to me that Google's figured out both sides of this problem.

My friend and colleague Aaron Dragushan of Wondermill has a pretty fascinating theory about how Gmail's spam filter works...