for what it's worth i just gave up on gmail over privacy. i've returned to mutt via ssh. i realise that's probably too old-school for most, but i've been making notes if anyone want to do the same. http://www.acooke.org/cute/LeavingGMa0.html is the first post with the general setup (in particular, using mairix to replace gmail's tags and search) and http://www.acooke.org/cute/EfficientS0.html goes into detail about how to get spam levels down to the same low level as gmail (ie practically none).