Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, GMX, and LaPoste email inbox sites showed racial and content-based biases when AlgorithmWatch tested their spam box filtering algorithms. AlgorithmWatch sent hundreds of emails to 10 email accounts on the listed sites, and noticed emails would be filtered into the spam box if certain words were within the body of the email. A Nigerian students internship application was marked spam, but when the word "Nigeria" was removed it was delivered to the inbox. The same applied to a "sex education" email that was forwarded to inbox after removing "sex". A Joe Biden speech went through when the words "loan, investment, billion" were removed.

Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, GMX, and LaPoste email inbox sites showed racial and content-based biases when AlgorithmWatch tested their spam box filtering algorithms.

Unclear/unknown

Race, National origin or immigrant status

Harm to civil liberties

Machine learning algorithms used to filter spam emails out of inboxes

Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, GMX, LaPoste

Information and communication

Perception, Cognition, Action

Language recognition, content filtering

spam filtering

Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, GMX, LaPoste, SpamAssassin, AlgorithmWatch

Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook

2020-10-22

2020-10-22

Unclear/unknown

Unclear

No

Communications

inbound emails