Every day now, at least a few spam messages get through, sometimes with recurring types or themes–for example, spam with email addresses that read “???@???” with absolutely no message, or a very specific address pattern, like “12345@12345.br”, with only the repeating number changing. Seems like once I identified these as spam, Eudora should be able to filter very similar ones in the future, but no, they keep getting through.

Today, I just got a new spam that Eudora absolutely should have gotten. The Subject line of the email read,”Spam from Vasya.” That right there should have been a small clue for the spam filter, one would think. The message read,

Hi my diar friend!

This is the spam message for you.

Vasya

And there it ended. Now, I know that the filters look for specific tricks and stuff, and this was a simple message with no images or links or anything, but still… OK, so I sent it to the Junk folder, where it automatically won a spam score of 100%, supposedly “teaching” the spam filter how to recognize it in the future.

Five hours later, the exact same message, with a different “sender,” sailed right past the spam filters. So, if the spam filters don’t learn to keep out addresses and they don’t learn to keep out content, then what the hell do they learn? Or do they not “learn” at all? In which case, what the hell good are spam scores?

On top of that, most messages from new writers that are authentic wind up getting shunted to the spam folder.

And this just a few days after I praised Eudora for the Mac after having dealt with the Windows version. I might just start looking into Apple’s Mail program. I passed it up a few years back when it was still young. Maybe it’s gotten better since then. I mean, I very much like Eudora’s flexibility, plentiful preference settings, and the powerful search capabilities, enough to overlook some of it’s warts (persistent small cracks in the interface, and the inability to search and check mail well at the same time). Maybe I should be somewhat satisfied that 98% or so of the spam is getting filtered out, but I think Eudora needs a serious refresh in that department. In the meantime, I’m looking into options.