Filtering SPAM in Gmail 2006

Am I missing something here? Gmail now puts my email arriving in Gmail now has "***SPAM***" in the subject line of junk mail which makes it very visually identifiable to a human. It seems to be entirely accurate so far in what it marks in that fashion really being crap.

However when I decide to trust it and set up a filter to fling all those messages into my SPAM folder so I never have to look at them, it appears that the asterisks are some sort of wildcard and I can't make a query to identify those messages without grabbing everything that has "spam" in the subject (e.g. "Re: your question about spam filtering").

Was someone at Google just not thinking? Or being too obscurely clever for the rest of us to follow? Tips appreciated.

===

Kevin set me straight. (Thanks!) It must be coming from the TextDrive mail handler, so it's a case of incompatibility between their flagging and Gmail's search functions. I'll put in a request for a change for a different typographic treatment when the flag gets added.

Comments

Filtering SPAM in Gmail

Am I missing something here? Gmail now puts my email arriving in Gmail now has "***SPAM***" in the subject line of junk mail which makes it very visually identifiable to a human. It seems to be entirely accurate so far in what it marks in that fashion really being crap.

However when I decide to trust it and set up a filter to fling all those messages into my SPAM folder so I never have to look at them, it appears that the asterisks are some sort of wildcard and I can't make a query to identify those messages without grabbing everything that has "spam" in the subject (e.g. "Re: your question about spam filtering").

Was someone at Google just not thinking? Or being too obscurely clever for the rest of us to follow? Tips appreciated.

===

Kevin set me straight. (Thanks!) It must be coming from the TextDrive mail handler, so it's a case of incompatibility between their flagging and Gmail's search functions. I'll put in a request for a change for a different typographic treatment when the flag gets added.

« | Main | Found! »

Blog (noun) A weblog or similar brief journal usually containing links and commentary thereon. Term coined by Peter Merholz.
Visit Typepad or Blogger to start your own. (I began with hand coding, then switched to Blogger when it first became available, then to Movable Type when I wanted more control over my weblog and to have it hosted at a place of my choosing (Hurricane Electric). Now I use Typepad, built by the same folks who made Movable Type and I love it).

You may write to Dinah @ this domain.

Except where otherwise noted all content is copyright 1965-2012 Dinah Sanders. Please do not repost my writing or other creations elsewhere. Instead, copy a tiny bit and link to the rest. Thanks! Images are copyright of their original creators. MetaGrrrl logo and photos by Dinah are copyright 1965-2012 Dinah Sanders. Inkspot Books and the Inkspot logo have been Service Marks of Dinah Sanders since 1993.