Have you ever wondered how your email provider determines what email is spam and what isn’t?

If you haven’t Googled it and figured out already, here’s the easy and basic answer: each email goes through a filter that applies a handful of checks on the email. If the email fails to pass a particular check, it earns points. If the email accrues a particular number of points or more, it gets sent to the Spam folder.

For example, if the email subject is in all capital letters, it will get some points. If the email subject has more than one exclamation point in it, it might get a few more points. If the email was delivered from a domain name that is historically known to send spam, it will get a lot of points. If it has particular keywords in it, it will get points depending on how common the particular keyword is in spam emails.

If you haven’t noticed already, a very frequent spam email that many people receive is third-party advertisements for Viagra. Unfortunately for the spammers, most email providers have identified this spam and have become very good at identifying Viagra advertisements. So, the spammers have to be­come creative.

For example, instead of calling the drug Viagra, they might call it V1agra or Vi@gr@. They might not even call it Viagra at all, and just call it "male enhancement supplements."

Yesterday, I got an email with a subject line that I think is so far the most creative subject for selling Viagra: "Buy stimulants for your meaty carrot."

I’m not sure if that is an epic win or an epic fail.