FilterBadRecruiters is a Google Apps Script that processes new messages looking for unwanted email from known third party recruiters. When a match is found, a reply is sent informing the sender that the message is being reported as spam and will not be read. The script then logs matches to a spreadsheet and updates a pie chart displaying what percentage of these type of messages were sent from each domain.
The script fetches the list of known third party recruiters and the contents of the email reply message from URLs specified in the script variables. You can easily modify these URLs to point to your own data or use mine.
- Searches your gmail account for messages that meet the search criteria, looking for sender domain matches against a list of known bad third party recruiters.
- Searches the email headers of messages not matched to a known recruiter for a string indicating they were sent "via" a known shotgun approach mailing list service.
- Applies a label to message(s) that meet the criteria, reports the message(s) that meet the criteria as spam, sends an automatic reply, and outputs details of the message to a reporting spreadsheet,
- The spreadsheet is created if it doesn't exist.
- Messages that do not match the criteria are cached so they are only checked every six hours. However, if the number of new known recruiter domains or via domains change from the last time the script runs, the cache is cleared so that all messages in the search range are checked for the new domains.
- The reporting spreadsheet also contains a chart tab where a pie chart displays what percentage of all the logged messages were sent from each domain. You can take a look at my reporting spreadsheet here: FBRReports
- The script can easily be customized by changing variables to do things like use a different list of known bad third party recruiters, a different canned reply, or a different search range.
- When run, the script creates some variables in the user section of the built in script properties that are specific to your user account. These properties include the current version of the script you are using and the identifier of the spreadsheet in your Google Drive folder once it has been created.
Recruiter domains that send messages matching any of the following criteria qualify for the Known Bad Recruiter domain list:
- Sends unsolicited job postings that clearly do not match your current skills or experience
- Uses an email service mailing list for spamming thousands of candidates in an attempt to farm resumes. These companies include jobdivabk.com, ceipalmm.com, and the like.
These services sometime use names, email addresses and phone numbers obtained from an illegal data breach including the ones inflicted on monster.com and LinkedIn. - Asks for editable copies of your resume and sometimes private data like your social security number.
- Attempts to follow the companies unsubscribe instructions have been futile.
- Install Your Own Copy of the Script - This option allows you to modify the script to use your own criteria.
- Install and Run the Public version of the script - This option is not editable and will default to the criteria in the Publicly available library version of the script. User specific details like the identifier of the Google Drive reporting spreadsheet and the caching of your processed messages are only accessible by the script when run by you.
Note: The public version of the script is only provided for those of you who might want to run it once for whatever reason. I would never recommend running a shared script over making your own private copy. The primary reason is you fully control the changes to the script. If a new version of the script is added later and you want to implement it to get the new functionality, you can always just copy over your existing copy of the script.
- If your account was around in the Google Buzz/Plus or GChat days, you may still have these type of messages in your account. A search range that reaches back far enough may include these messages which the script cannot process as they don't contain the fields it expects. It turns out to be complicated to create a search of every message in your account that excludes messages that aren't actual email. It is therefore recommended to not search back more than a couple of years to avoid this issue. Or to be very specific in the search to only include the inbox or other safe labels.
This release has been entirely rewritten from the original release. It includes a number of new error checks and functionality like reporting. It also caches the messages it examines so on subsequent runs it only processes the messages it hasn't seen before.. The exception to this is when the script identifies a change in the number of recruiter domains or via domains. If this count changes, the script will clear out all the message id cache and search them all again to verify they aren't from a newly added domain.
Hit the Watch button to be notified of updates.
- Optional feature: automate submitting domains that aren't in the current known bad recruiter list that are using a "via" domain. This would probably involve a post of a web form that then updated a spreadsheet. I could then verify new entries on the sheet and add them to the current list. Searching the entire header is more time consuming that just checking the from address for a matching domain so being able to identify those companies using these domains has the advantage of allowing for faster processing.
- Optional feature: automatically file Federal Trade Commission complaint on domains that spam a user with more than x number of messages.
- Optional feature: Attempt to automatically unsubscribe every time a known domain message is received.
I welcome feedback and will happily add any relevant domains you have to the bad recruiter list.
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