Look at your junk mail folder and click on “not spam” or the equivalent button for messages that aren’t spam or those you want to go directly to your inbox.

So what can you do to ensure your important messages are sent and received or to check if your spam-filtering program is running amok? To begin, follow some simple steps. For example, if you get a message in your inbox that’s obviously spam and mark it as such, the filter will add the body of that email into a database of sorts and, in the future, flag messages that contain similar content.

The words could be “cheap medication,” “dating sites” or something incredibly lewd, and the filter assumes-correctly almost all of the time-that the email is junk.Īnother type of automatic email sifting is called Bayesian Filtering, which utilizes statistical analysis to “learn” what spam looks like. Whether the filter is one that comes standard with Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail or some other platform or one that a user adds on to help with blocking unwanted messages, many work the same way: but identifying and flagging specific words or key phrases that most commonly denote spam. Ironically, the main culprit diverting legit emails into spam folders are the very tools-spam filters-we rely on to keep ourselves from being bombarded by annoying offers and fake messages that often contain viruses and malware designed to infect our computers and, in serious cases, steal personal information. If the sender and receiver are lucky the message wasn’t crucial: and yet, what if in different circumstances it was? Upon further examination the recipient discovers it got automatically dropped into their spam folder.

and, when you hear no response or feedback you follow up only to find they never received the message. It’s a common and absolutely frustrating problem: you send an important email to a friend, colleague, family member etc.

Gmail spam folder missing