My simple spam monitor

GMail has a very good spam filter. So good in fact, that I switched over my personal email domain to Google's hosted mail solution just to benefit from their spam filter.

GMail keeps mail marked as spam around for 30 days, so you can occasionally check it for "false positives" (emails that were marked as spam, but are in fact not spam).

I used to check the spam box every day and then immediately emptied it. One reason to do so, was the fact that you're greeted by a cute "Hooray, no spam here!" message if there are no spam messages.

Nowadays I hardly ever check the spam box, because the filter has proven itself quite reliable. But since I stopped checking the spam for false positives, I also never clean my spam box anymore. The spam keeps accumulating until GMail throws it away automatically after 30 days.

As it turns out, this box is now a very handy spam monitor. It allows me to quickly see the spam volume for the last 30 days. A few weeks ago it reached a high of just over 1200 messages and currently it's at about 960. So spam is on the fall. Unfortunately most likely it will rise from its ashes in a few weeks. I will know it when that happens, but thanks to the GMail spam filter I will not be bothered by it.