If you legitimately receive Spam, do you report it to GMail?
July 17 2008 by 
Adam
Often times I subscribe to people's blog posts when I leave a comment, because I'm interested in other folks' comments as well. Unfortunately, this occasionally means that a spam comment ends up in my inbox:
My question is this: Should I report this as spam? I mean, I did kind of ask for it (not really… but yeah… but no). The last thing I want is for GMail to start filtering all blog comment emails as spam. I think this is where some transparency with Google could help. What exactly do they do with a message after we mark it as spam? Or heck, give us configurable white/black lists. What do you do?
Posted in Meta | 
8 comments
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:32 AM
I should mention that I agree with Todd, it is OK to delete the spam messages. Just do not mark them as Spam. You will continue to receive the updates from the comment thread.
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:32 AM
@Adam, so weird that we have had completely different experiences on gmail. I wasn't in the early early early beta, but I have been on there for a long time. It's pretty much my primary account even though I run my own domain with a mail server.
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:32 AM
Adam, I delete my gmail daily and I still get stuff (even from the same thread). Not sure why you're having issues. :)
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:32 AM
@Todd: With my first GMail address, I applied judicious use of the delete button and brought down the spam-hammer hard. Less than a year later, I was constantly getting, "Didn't you get my email?" phone calls. I ended up getting a new account and changing my methods (delete nothing, report spam carefully), and so far I don't think I'm missing anything (>1.5 years later).
@Leif, @Jason: That is, more or less, what I figured. I haven't reported any of these. But still, it kills me to archive messages that advertise for knock of handbags, and things of that nature. Really, it felt like this is a problem that lots of people are having but nobody was discussing, so I just wanted to bring the discussion up and make sure we're all aware of what we .
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:32 AM
You should NOT report these emails as spam. They are not unsolicited emails sent directly to you. You did, in fact, request for these emails to be sent.
If you choose to report them as spam, you may inadvertently add your favorite blogger or his/her IP address/Mail server to Google black lists, oops. Remember, technically, that email was sent to you by the blogger.
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:32 AM
Hold on there, cowboy. That is comment SPAM.
Comment SPAM (for people who might read this and do not know) is unwanted email generated by jerks who find popular blog postings with lots of comments and they add their SPAM comments to that entry which in-turn sends that SPAM to everyone who subscribed (i.e. you) to that comment thread.
If you report that as SPAM, then the blog's owner is the one you are reporting as it came from his/her mail server legitimately.
The first thing I would do is to unsubscribe to the comment thread. Most times the comments are made on really old posts in hopes that the blog owner won't notice.
If the comment thread is something you think is important and that other people might legitimately post comments on, I suggest that you contact the blog owner and inform him/her of the SPAM comment (that they already received as well) and suggest that they turn moderation on for that blog entry. They might just turn comments off completely, which will kill your hopes for future comments.
Bottom line, don't involve Google in this. Reporting it only hurts the blogger.
As for Google thinking something you deleted is always SPAM? Doubtful.
I am sensitive to this issue because I am trying to decide what to do about my own blog... do I turn comments off on posts older than three months? Or do I just need to moderate my whole blog? Both feel a lot like censorship, but then again, not that many people comment on my blog.
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:32 AM
@Todd, I have come to believe that deleting email is a bad idea in GMail. I'm convinced that after I deleted slews of older emails from folks that I wanted to continue *getting* email from, they were spammed or lost in the ether.
I should have mentioned in my post that my habit now is just to archive this sort of spam. I still report spam emails sent directly to me (or to the various google groups I read), but I'm worried that reporting comment email containing spam could have unintended and undesirable consequences. :(
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:32 AM
I would just delete it for now, but yes I agree... what does google really look at when you report it.