Wirebook › Glossary › Spam filter
What is a spam filter?
In one sentence: A program that sorts junk messages and sometimes cleans risky markup; it usually moves whole messages, not single emojis.
A little more
A spam filter tries to keep junk and dangerous messages out of your main inbox. It looks at the sender, the words, the links and sometimes the attachments, then moves likely junk into a spam or junk folder. Some filters also sanitise HTML: they strip scripts and odd markup before you see a message.
Filters almost never nibble a single emoji for fun. When emojis vanish, the cause is more often a cleaner that rejects unfamiliar Unicode, a database column that is too small, or a display font that has no picture — not a cartoon thief.
It's a bit like… A security guard at a party who checks invitations and sometimes takes away risky props, rather than eating the snacks one crisp at a time.
See it in action
- BonusWho stole all the emojis?Interview four suspects in a Byte Bakery chat heist, X-ray the fake paw prints, and discover how autocorrect and a spam cleaner teamed up to frame the cat.7 min · interactive
- 16How can you spot a fake message?Sort a pretend inbox of real and sneaky fake messages from games, banks, parcels and friends.7 min · interactive
- 17What are bots doing on the web?Be a crawler robot on a tiny pretend web: read each site's robots.txt sign, follow links, build a search index and see what happens if you ignore the rules or rush.7 min · interactive