Gmail™ in 10 Minutes, Sams Teach Yourself, Second Edition

Lesson 17. Dealing with Spam

In this lesson, you learn what spam is, how Gmail handles spam, and how you can best manage the spam you receive.

How Google Deals with Spam

Google, like any responsible email provider, offers several features designed to reduce the number of unwanted spam messages you receive in your inbox, as well as reduce the risk of computer virus infection. These features are applied automatically, but it’s nice to know how they work.

When it comes to that junk email we call spam, Google applies various internal filters to identify spam as it enters the Gmail system, and thus block it from appearing in users’ inboxes. In most cases, you never see the spam; Google blocks it before it ever gets to you.

Sometimes spam makes it ...