Dateline Jerusalem — Is it just happening to me? Or have you noticed that what is going into your email spam or junk mail folder is not always spam? I can almost guarantee in my spam folder I will find good news about Israel. No wonder so many of my readers say they do not get decent news about Israel. Sometimes they find my essays in their spam folders or they don’t receive them. It appears good news about Israel is being censored or filtered into spam. Sometimes I will send an email to myself and it goes into my spam folder!
Every receiving ISP (internet service provider) uses different spam filtering techniques. Content plays a major role in filtering email. Many spam filters depend on keywords and language in email messages and subject lines when routing between inbox and junk or spam box. That probably is why so many of my incoming and outgoing emails using the word “Israel” in the subject title or the first paragraph of the incoming email are considered junk or spam. Israel seems to be a taboo subject unless something uncomplimentary is said about it. Therefore, I find it suspiciously interesting that all disparaging emails about Israel have no trouble passing the censors into my inbox. Just the major pro-Israel sites seem to be filtered. Is this another BDS boycott campaign against Israel? It does not matter how many times I press the “not spam” button or “send to inbox” button. The next time it still lands in my spam mail folder.
Working to Resolve Problem
ISPs such as Yahoo and Gmail continually change their spam filter settings, not always for the better. Supposedly spam filters judge incoming mail on various criteria. They assign a spam score that determines whether an email will be routed to spam or your inbox. Because it varies, depending on the server, spam for one is not for the other. Sometimes the emails never even make it into the spam or junk folder. They are returned to the sender. On many occasions I send out my essays to family and friends and they are returned to me as Mailer-daemon. In the past, this meant the email address no longer existed, the receiving mailbox was full or there was an error in the spelling of the email address. Now, however, it will tell me the receiving server considers it spam. Sure enough, every person I sent to with that particular email server never received my emails. Their server returned them to me. This was especially true during last year’s war between Israel and Gaza.
Even compliant senders with permission-based lists can find their emails filtered and routed to spam. Filters will reject an email that has too many capitals, exclamation marks and other punctuation, or uses words like “best” and other superlatives in the subject line or body of the email. I imagine that is why emails praising Israel as the “best” or “greatest” or “only” or “first” or at all complimentary are censored. I used to think that if I had too many recipients in the “To” or “CC” field, my emails would be considered spam. Following protocol, I sent “BCC” and limited the number of recipients in each email. Because every ISP or mailbox server’s filtering criteria is different, my mail still can be blocked or tagged as spam even after following all suggestions for spam-free mail.
Biases Keep Popping up
Not only ISPs and mailbox servers determine what goes into spam folders, but spam mail is blocked by Office 365 security gateways, and even by Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Wi-Fi providers. Gmail and Yahoo, for example, have automated systems that detect “spam” by finding patterns in messages and using criteria their email users commonly mark as spam. Therefore, if most of the world is anti-Israel, then pro-Israel emails will be blocked. Some people delete emails by accidentally pressing the “spam” button. Then emails received from that person always will be considered spam in the future.
Since internet service providers in many countries, such as the U.S. and Russia, are legally required to allow law enforcement, intelligence and other governmental agencies to monitor information transmitted via ISPs, the spam filters can become quite aggressive. A person who monitored emails told me certain words are automatic triggers for them. Unfortunately, news and events occurring in Israel incorporate many of those trigger words in the title and context of emails from email address contacts and pro-Israel sites.
Not only do my outgoing emails get filtered into my family and friends’ spam folders, but incoming emails from pro-Israel sites that I want to receive get censored as well. They are directly routed to my spam folder. Therefore, my message this week is check your spam folders. Just because something or someone was acceptable in the past does not mean this week it will be okay. Most importantly, contact your ISP and mailbox providers and demand an explanation as to why your pro-Israel mail is being sent to spam or junk mail. You probably will be ignored, but perhaps enough complaints will improve filtering and censoring criteria.
L’hitraot. Shachar
