2026-09-20T23:22:28.549Z
- publishedAt:
Not provided→ 2020-10-22T00:00:00.000Z
SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE
AI Spam Filters Allegedly Block Legitimate Emails Based on Biased Keyword Detection
AlgorithmWatch tested spam filtering algorithms across Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, GMX, and LaPoste. Their findings reportedly showed that Microsoft Outlook’s spam filter flagged emails based on specific keywords that led to racial and content-based biases blocking legitimate communications. Emails mentioning Nigeria or containing certain financial and sexual health terms were found to be disproportionately marked as spam.
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- recordType
- incident-report
- evidenceStatus
- reported
- region
- Global
Reported occurrence date: 2020-10-22T00:00:00.000Z
Evidence & attribution
- AI Incident Database
- AI Incident Database · 2020-10-22T00:00:00.000Z
AI Incident Database, Responsible AI Collaborative; McGregor (2021), Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents. Incident-specific contributor credits are available at each citation link. Metadata adapted; article text excluded.
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
First collected: 2026-09-19T22:50:59.123Z. This is not the publication date.
Observed changes
AIIC observation times, not verified publisher revision times. Up to eight recent revisions.