Spam Filter

We all know that today there is an increasing amount of messages that interrupt our workflow with advertisements, phishing attempts, and other content of low value. That’s why spam filters are an indispensable tool for your email client to block spam emails and any kind of unsolicited messages. These are programs that allow you to preventively block emails that could be defined as spam based on a predefined set of parameters.

With spam filters, the software usually attributes a score to the message based on patterns and assesses whether it may contain advertising, scams, or malware. Modern spam filters now leverage artificial intelligence to learn independently based on errors and actions performed rather than acting in a more static way based on a predefined set of parameters.

Emails with certain characteristics can sometimes be labeled as false positives and taken out of the spam folder by users. After that, other communications with similar characteristics will be whitelisted and no longer go in the spam folder. That is possible because spam filters work in a dynamic manner rather than being static algorithms.

Here are some examples of common patterns that are used by spam filters to identify spam emails:

• Very promotional language
• Full text CAPS LOCK
• Excessive punctuation and use of emojis
• Too many outbound links
• Too many images in the email

Spam filters will also look at what is the server that sent the email or where the photos in the message are stored. If the server was already flagged in the past by the email client, it will significantly increase the chances that the email will be moved to the spam folder. That’s why it’s often encouraged to send mass emails such as newsletters using dedicated programs and through SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) servers.