[Blahagun]

I've had my gmail address for more than 15 years and the spam filter worked perfectly until the last couple of years when comically obvious spam messages started getting directly into the inbox. At first I thought that my email address got listed in some spammers' databases but it doesn't make any sense, since it has been up for so many years and the spam messages could be filtered with a really, _really_ simple spam filter algorithm.

Obviously something's going on with gmail and I am still not sure what is, but it's definitely not a bug (it has been like this for too long now) and the spammers definitely didn't get smarter (caricature like spam messages).

Does anyone know if Google has recently started offering some paid spam protection or something?

[MrMan]

I am getting multiple spam mails per day now in my main gmail inbox. I think maybe google is offering paid access to companies who send marketing emails? I signed up for a certain kind of service, but didnt use it, and now get many emails per week from competing companies which are spam, but get through.