<h3>Different email clients have different levels of spam exclusion?</h3>
&#8220;The two American companies, Google and Microsoft, regard spam countermeasures as a critical issue and are fighting against adversaries worldwide. Their scale of revenue is fundamentally different from other companies.&#8221;
These are the words of Yuugo Fujita, the representative of Cyber Research (Suginami Ward, Tokyo), which supports cybersecurity measures. Google offers the email service &#8220;Gmail,&#8221; while Microsoft provides &#8220;Outlook&#8221; (formerly Hotmail).
According to Mr. Fujita, the effectiveness of spam filtering may vary depending on the service provider operating the servers. Indeed, if you have addresses with more than one service, you might notice differences in the volume of spam depending on the email software you use.
<figure id="attachment_400423" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 6000px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-400423"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="03cf6234"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2024/11/9e41b8caaf22a35b8c7a67eebc7aa5cd.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-400423" class="wp-caption-text">To avoid receiving unsolicited e-mail, e-mail software from a business with a high level of security is an option.</figcaption></figure>
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<h3>About 40% of junk e-mail. The basis of phishing scam prevention is the elimination of junk e-mail.</h3>
According to the &#8220;Spam Mail White Paper 2022-2024&#8221; by the Anti-Spam Mail Measures Promotion Council, there is no definitive definition of spam mail, but it is generally considered something &#8220;annoying&#8221; and socially problematic. It is described as being sent against the recipient&#8217;s will, continuing even after being rejected, and reaching a frequency that disrupts daily life or work.
Spam mail includes not only advertisements and promotions but also fraudulent and extortion emails, such as fake billing scams. Particularly, emails impersonating well-known companies like financial institutions to steal account numbers, passwords, and credit card information are called &#8220;phishing scams&#8221; or &#8220;phishing emails.&#8221;
While users are naturally expected to take precautions to avoid phishing scams and other spam emails, email service providers are also reportedly screening and filtering out such emails.
According to the &#8220;Spam Mail White Paper,&#8221; spam mail became a social issue around 2001.
As of last September, spam mail accounted for about 37% of domestically received emails. A significant portion of these emails is reportedly dealt with by filters provided by telecommunications operators, meaning the percentage reaching users is considered lower.
The white paper points out that spam mail has become more sophisticated and malicious. It categorizes spam mail into two types: bulk transmission type and standard type.
The bulk transmission type involves indiscriminate sending of emails using address lists purchased from directory vendors, randomly generated email addresses, bait websites to capture email addresses, or by collecting email addresses from blogs and other online platforms. The &#8220;standard type&#8221; involves exploiting information obtained through some means about specific organizations or individuals, impersonating superiors or business partners, or attaching virus-infected files to steal information.
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<h3>Spam Countermeasures Dependent on the Processing Capacity of Service Providers</h3>
According to Fujita mentioned earlier, both Google and Microsoft in the U.S. offer &#8220;workspaces&#8221; for business use, facilitating tasks and work online. Workspaces include features such as video calls, chat, and schedule management, with email services being one of these features. The convenience increases with paid services, such as expanded data storage. These two companies are primarily engaged in providing email services and have a large number of users worldwide. Spam countermeasures are an important aspect of their core business.
On the other hand, Japan also has IT (information technology) companies and mobile phone carriers that provide email and SMS services.
“They have other core businesses and are not considered to have reached the level of spam countermeasures seen at companies like Google and Microsoft,” says Fujita.
Noboru Ueno, representative of Tricorder (Chuo Ward, Tokyo), which supports cybersecurity measures, also points out:
“Services like Gmail put significant effort into detecting suspicious emails to prevent damage from spam or malicious emails from attackers.”
However, compared to world-leading providers, Ueno adds:
“It seems that Japanese providers do not have very high capabilities in handling suspicious emails.”
It is unclear what kind of spam countermeasures email service providers are implementing in Japan, as disclosing such details could benefit attackers.
<h3>&#8220;Besides checking the email addresses to see if the sender is sending a large number of similar emails within a short period, we also examine the content of the email, including the text, links, and attachments,&#8221; says Fujita.</h3>
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To thoroughly check the content of an email, high computational processing power is required, along with technical expertise and costs.
Regarding the links in the email, &#8220;there is a blacklist,&#8221; says Fujita. As for the text in the email, instructions to send cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, could raise suspicions of criminal activity. If anything suspicious is detected during the check, the email is categorized as spam or similar.
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<h3>A misunderstanding of spam led to trouble with the online application process for public high schools in Kanagawa Prefecture.</h3>
On the other hand, as the pre-checks for spam emails and such become stricter, legitimate emails are also filtered out, and other issues arise.
When a large number of emails with the same content are sent in a short period, they may be considered as advertisements or suspicious attacks. In such cases, troubling issues have occurred, as seen earlier this year.
In Kanagawa Prefecture&#8217;s public high schools, online applications began this year, but problems emerged early. Pre-registration started on January 4, and when applicants used Gmail, provided by Google, for the pre-registration, by January 9, parents began contacting the school with inquiries like &#8220;I haven&#8217;t received the notification email.&#8221;
The prefectural education board announced on January 19 that the system issues were resolved. The cause was believed to be an increase in emails sent to applicants with Gmail addresses, which led to restrictions being placed by Gmail.
However, some view the problem not as an issue with Gmail, but with the school itself.
&#8220;It seems that the school&#8217;s email server&#8217;s technical level was insufficient, causing Gmail to block the emails. The school may not have kept up with Gmail&#8217;s security standards&#8221; (Fujita).
It seems that the emails were misunderstood as spam due to the large number of similar emails being sent in a short time, but the issue is seen as the school&#8217;s problem.
Regarding this issue, in the &#8220;Community&#8221; section of Gmail&#8217;s official website, it is pointed out that, while not an official statement from Google, external observers have speculated that the school&#8217;s incorrect settings led Gmail to reject emails from the server. It seems that the explanation provided by Kanagawa Prefecture&#8217;s education board may not be entirely accurate.
As seen in this case, necessary emails are sometimes treated like spam and cannot be received. As email service providers raise security levels and work to eliminate spam, distinguishing between what is truly needed and what isn&#8217;t becomes increasingly difficult.
Ueno points out:
&#8220;As the security level increases, there is also the issue of false positives, where emails that are actually legitimate are treated as suspicious.&#8221;
Furthermore, he says:
&#8220;Overseas attackers are also using generative AI and other tools, making it harder to automatically filter out only suspicious emails, and it&#8217;s an ongoing cat-and-mouse game.&#8221;
To avoid receiving spam, choosing an email service provider with a high security level is one option. However, this alone is not enough. It&#8217;s important to avoid opening suspicious emails, not carelessly share one&#8217;s email address, and use disposable email addresses when entering email addresses on survey sites or similar, to protect important email addresses.

 Hideki Asai

 Many people are troubled by unsolicited e-mails. Not only advertisements and promotions, but also malicious scam e-mails. According to experts, there may be a difference in the elimination of spam depending on the operator of the server.

Spam Emails and Phishing Scams: An Unexpected Solution by IT Experts

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