[GTO]

Gmail has fantastic spam filtering and it does weed out 99% of the email spam from hitting my inbox.

Unfortunately, once in a blue moon, a genuine email or two also ends up in there. I am one of those personalities who diligently checks & empties the spam folder once every day.

But come to think of it, the last useful email I found in there was 3 months ago or something. Worth going through it everyday for just 3 - 4 genuine emails a year that might have ended up in there?

How do you handle it? Do you even check your spam folder or just completely ignore it?

[Fuldagap]

I check Gmail spam once every week so that I don't miss any important email. Sometimes gmail puts financial emails too there.
Gmail spam is fantastic compared to outlook/hotmail.

A Microsoft id is extremely prone to spams and also nefarious login attempts several times every single day. I've had to change the Microsoft settings a lot to get rid of those spams and those attempts. Whenever i have to login to Microsoft now, i have to use a dummy login id to get to the original one.

Never faced an issue on gmail.

[Eddy]

I check my spam folder regularly.

It is fun to keep up with the various tricksters like Nigerian prince wanting to share his inheritance with me, Dr wanting to set up a hospital in India, risk free 40% annual return investments etc.

[GrandTourer]

Originally Posted by GTO

How do you handle it? Do you even check your spam folder or just completely ignore it?

Attachment 2602118

Just checked my spam folder as soon as I saw this thread. One recent hospital bill and one email from my bank was in the spam folder.

I don't generally check it at regular intervals, but this is now a reminder to do that. I do agree that Gmail's spam filter is pretty accurate, but like every other model, you do get a few false positives every now and then.

I believe some of the genuine businesses need to retrain their people who generate these emails to ensure they follow basic etiquette so as not to end up in the spam folder. The hospital bill that went to spam had maybe half a sentence saying something on the lines of "here's are your documents" and an attachment. Similar with the bank email - they had the information in an image, so the email body was essentially just an image.

Both these are major red flags in any spam filter, and I'm not surprised these emails ended up in spam.

[Y@SH]

Always check it once a week, and delete all.

I even go to the extent of deleting OTPS/ Credit Card alerts, Online order/payment/delivery confirmations (Zomato, Amazon etc), Bank/Stock Broker Updates, newsletters, etc from my inbox. The only reason I do this is to reduce my carbon foot print. Its very simple, just open the relevant mail, copy the From address for eg (shipment-tracking@amazon.in, order-update@amazon.in, <noreply@zomato.com> etc and search all in GMAIL, then select all and delete, hardly takes any time
I recommend everyone to do the same! Read More here

[rajeevsulu]

I check my spam folder every day. Gmail, by the virtue of it's excellent filters, filters "genuine" mails at times. So, I check and delete.
Cheers

[Cool Piscean]

I check my spam folder and empties the spam folder regularly.
At times I have found important bank emails in spam folder so I have made it a habit of checking regularly.
Also as Eddy has mentioned its fun to read emails from tricksters!!��

[Jeroen]

I check it now and then. And empty it now and then. Of course, whenever you have to deal with somebody that insist they send you an e-mail, but you never received it, I also check spam. I would say in 99 out of 100 cases those people claimed they send me an email, simple did not.

Jeroen

[TorquePull]

I check my spam folder once in a while, look for any important mail and then delete the rest. Even genuine businesses end up there, due to the sheer number of pointless mails they send and the occasional important mail also ends up there. So, it is important to check them on a regular basis.

[Night Raven]

I check the spam folder only when I am really bored ( which means even team bhp has nothing interesting to read, which means it is fairly rare )
Haven’t really missed any important mails in the spam folder, mostly gmail does a good job to make sure only spam ends up there. It is indeed a good way to kill time and to have a hearty laugh.

[avdhesh15]

I've got a calendar reminder set weekly to check the spam folder across my personal and work emails. It takes hardly 2-3 minutes and is worth the effort.

[Satkaj]

Made an habit of checking Spam. Always found 1 or 2 useful mails in it.filter out useful ones if found any and delete rest.

[arnieshwartz]

I don't check the spam folder regularly, just on occasion, like if there's double digit unread count displayed. Give the folder a quick once-over before emptying it.

From time to time, there's the odd email erroneously routed there, but so far I'm yet to encounter something that was super important and missed, because it was identified as spam.

[StarrySky]

If I am expecting an email and it gets unreasonably delayed, I check the Spam folder to see if it has been routed there. Otherwise, I never bother to check it.

[ToThePoint]

Its a old habit that's been carried over. In the early days spam filtering wasn't all that robust and quite a few important mails always ended up there and some still do. So make sure to mark them 'not spam' and just empty the rest.

Offer related mails like Credit Cards even from genuine banks end up in spam most of the times.

If I haven't received an expected mail then again checking spam folder is wired to my brain at least.

Besides that's it's some fun too like how Eddy mentioned, you get a gist of all types of frauds in the spam folder first before you hear them in news - from having a video of you which would be released in the wild if you don't pay ransom; your drive will be encrypted if you don't pay up, FedEx parcel scams etc.