What's in YOUR Spam Folder?

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I received an email from a Missouri politician this morning, a man that I actually support, and he was worked into a lather over the fact that Google shuffles some of his fundraising emails off into people's spam folders.  

(Today's email began with the politician promising that he would not be using this particular correspondence to ask for money, but there was, of course, a "Donate" button at the end of the missive.)

I know that Google's email service, Gmail, is one of the most popular in the US because all of my friends and most of my family members use Gmail accounts.  The politician's email today began by saying that over half the email in the United States is now generated through Gmail.  That's a very significant, and concerning, share of the market.  As my correspondent pointed out, it is concerning because Google controls what makes its way into my inbox as well as what gets shuffled off into my spam folder.

The politician further explained that two years ago Google instituted a "verified sender program," a blue check service that ensured political campaigns which complied and got verified, would have all of their emails delivered to the inboxes (and not the spam folders) of the individuals to whom they were addressed.  The politician who wrote to me about this issue, a gentleman of the populist persuasion, said that guarantee helped to considerably increase small dollar donations to political campaigns.

(If campaigns could reach you, they could get their hands in your pocket, but if Google shuffled them off to spam land, donations suffered.)

This year Google has apparently dropped its "verified sender program," and small dollar political donations have also dropped.  My correspondent lamented:

"When emails are blocked, and small-dollar donations dip as a result, politicians begin to rely more heavily on those shady mega-donors and massive corporations who’ve made it their business to muck up our political process. And we already know how dangerous that is for our democracy."

I routinely empty my spam folder and trash folder every couple of weeks because someone told he that will help keep the speed up on my very slow internet connection, so when I went to my spam folder this morning to check, there were only fifty-some communications, all unread.  One was from the politician who had warmed me that Google was filtering away things that I might want to know.  There were, of course, several obvious scams of which I was glad that I had not had to waste time, and an assortment of other ads that were of no interest to me.  Basically, it looked as though Google had done a fairly good job of sifting through the garbage.

But I still understand the politician's point and his concern, and it concerns me that one of the largest corporations in America has the power to pick and choose what reaches me on my desktop.  The politician asked that I help make others aware of this corporate ability to censor what we see in our email, and I have just done that.  

And from this point forward I will check my spam folder before deleting.  I should have been doing that anyway.

Forewarned is forearmed.  If the dictatorship arrives, we are going to need every communication tool that we can muster, and they should be fully operational.

Check those spam folders.  Make it a habit!