Or maybe it's a hard problem?

Gmail sometimes lets through particularly obvious spam, of the kind that heuristics could definitely catch.

It's almost certainly a lack of will, or an insistence on filtering in a particular way. (Eg. considering themselves above heuristics, insisting a fancy AI must catch it)

> Gmail sometimes lets through particularly obvious spam, of the kind that heuristics could definitely catch.

I administer email for the company I work for. You might be surprised how often perfectly legitimate email looks a hell of a lot like spam.

  - individuals who can't spell and write stream of consciousness near-nonsense
  - companies forging the from: header with the target's own address
  - companies sending mass mail with red flag keywords from rando cloud instances
  - small companies using personal gmail accounts and including any kind of money-related term

...to name a few. Spam is a hard problem and marketers and scammers (same diff) are working hard every day to defeat any system you put in place to stop their bullshit.

I once ignored an email that was pretty obviously spam. It claimed to be from my bank, but had email links to another domain and not my bank, and a header looked like it was scanned from a piece of paper, badly, and was the only logo on the page.

Turned out to be completely legit. They really were trying to contact me to tell me they didn't get my proof of insurance.

When I told them my concerns, they didn't understand.

The thing is, as a user, I'm going to be very understanding if something that looks a lot like spam coming from an unrecognized address ends up in spam.

Most users are. Some very much are not. Guess which ones tend toward the top of the org chart?

me too! I would not have got my current job if I didn't randomly check my spam folder. Tbf it was a cold email from a recruiter