Dealing with Spam and Viruses

Google, like any responsible email provider, offers several features designed to reduce the amount 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.

Blocking Spam Messages

Google applies a variety of internal spam 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 past Google's main filter but then is caught on the receiving end. When this happens, the spam message appears in the Spam section of your inbox. You can view purported spam messages by clicking the Spam link.

If Google happens to route a legitimate message to your Spam list (it happens sometimes), just check the message and click the Not Spam button. This will move the message out of the Spam list back into your general inbox.

If you inadvertently receive a spam message in your Gmail inbox, you can help train Google's spam filters by reporting it. You do this by checking the message in your inbox, and then clicking the Report Spam button. This action both removes the spam message from your inbox and sends information about the message back to Google.

Scanning Your Attachments for Viruses

Gmail also takes steps to protect you from email-borne computer viruses. These viruses typically come as file attachments, even more typically as EXE files attached to email messages.

To that end, Gmail automatically blocks the sending and receiving of all EXE files. It's a fairly draconian approach; there's no way around the system to send a legitimate EXE file, so don't bother trying.

Google also scans all the attached files you send and receive via Gmail, no matter what the file extension. If a virus is found in an attachment, Gmail tries to clean the file (remove the virus); if the virus can't be removed, you won't be able to download or send the file.