Email spam

[Bill]

What have IDNet done to the spam filters?

They're getting over-aggressive, over the last couple of weeks I've found over a dozen perfectly legit messages in the webmail "junk" folder, from companies and individuals I've been receiving emails from for years.

Yes, I know I can whitelist those addresses, but it was working perfectly well up until some unknown point some weeks ago- if it's been "updated" could it be "downdated" to the perfectly adequate level it was operating at before, please?


It's an idnet.com account, if it matters.

[pctech]

Bit of an arms race going on between the service providers and the spammers Bill.

Its quite possible that IDNet have had lots of complaints so have possibly over tightened the filters.

[Simon]

We've not heard anything, Bill, and personally, I've not noticed any change.  I guess the only way to find out would be to ask IDNet. 

[Bill]

Bit of an arms race going on between the service providers and the spammers Bill.

Its quite possible that IDNet have had lots of complaints so have possibly over tightened the filters.

I can understand that, and I'll admit that a lot of the emails are offers etc from companies that could look like spam. But most of these get through without a problem, and there's no obvious difference between those that do and those that don't.

And today I found that it had junked an email fom my ex-g/f with (apart from salutations) a single line of text ("Thought you'd like this!') and an attachment with a couple of amusing (and perfectly clean!) photographs in it!

Frankly, at the moment it would cause me less aggravation if I could turn the spam filters off (apart from the grey-listing, that works well) and rely on my email client's filters!

@ Simon- yeah, I think I'll have to do that

[Gary]

Not noticed any changes here, Bill. There was a spate of spam from Russian addresses ages back I had, I would rather go looking for legit mail than get flooded with spam though. Just whitelist you most important addresses. "Thought you'd like this" is a bit spammy though.

[Gary]

Just checked mine, how obvious does spam get 'from porn.xxx.com"  Glad it works 

[Bill]

Not noticed any changes here, Bill. There was a spate of spam from Russian addresses ages back I had, I would rather go looking for legit mail than get flooded with spam though. Just whitelist you most important addresses. "Thought you'd like this" is a bit spammy though.

The annoying bit is that (probably because I'm verging on paranoid about giving out my email address) I just don't get spam! One a week is a lot of spam for me.

I wonder if the whitelist will accept *@*....

[Gary]

The annoying bit is that (probably because I'm verging on paranoid about giving out my email address) I just don't get spam! One a week is a lot of spam for me.

I wonder if the whitelist will accept *@*....

If you just add your address book it will white list all, Bill. Thats not safe i think though, you may be careful about giving your address out but others may get issues (malware) that you cannot control. That's why I use multiple addresses for safety so I give out a throw away addy to causal friends who may not be greatly computer literate, but even the best of us can get got, so no matter how paranoid, its never entirely in your hands, that's why I prefer good filtering before it gets to me.

[Bill]

If you just add your address book it will white list all, Bill.

I only ever use webmail to check the junk folder so my address book has nothing in it

It could benefit from an RSS feed (updated at midnight, say) to tell you how many junk mails had been received that day and who from... it would save unnecessary logging in to check for false positives.

[pctech]

I don't think this is just an IDNet problem Bill.

I use 1and1 to host my domain mail (which has a customisable spam filter but I've never adjusted it) and some legitimate mails get junked for me too. even the response from IDNet about changing my phone package ended up there today.

[Bill]

I've only just noticed that I can disable the spam filter... but as I only noticed it after I'd whitelisted the addresses/domains I'll leave it enabled for the moment!

Although it's not clear whether that disables all filtering or just any rules etc you've set up.

[Bill]

I don't think this is just an IDNet problem Bill.

I use 1and1 to host my domain mail (which has a customisable spam filter but I've never adjusted it) and some legitimate mails get junked for me too. even the response from IDNet about changing my phone package ended up there today.

I use 1and1 too, but no spam on there... but that's probably pure luck!

I've just had an email from one of the addresses I whitelisted, so that's working OK, but it still puts ***SPAM*** in front of the header- it's clearly letting it through under protest

[Steve]

Sorry my junk mail box is empty.

[Lance]

Turning off the spam filter, as you've now discovered, is possible through the customer portal on a per address basis. It turns off all spam filtering, but doesn't affect grey listing or any rules you've set up.

[Technical Ben]

I can understand that, and I'll admit that a lot of the emails are offers etc from companies that could look like spam. But most of these get through without a problem, and there's no obvious difference between those that do and those that don't.

And today I found that it had junked an email fom my ex-g/f with (apart from salutations) a single line of text ("Thought you'd like this!') and an attachment with a couple of amusing (and perfectly clean!) photographs in it!

Frankly, at the moment it would cause me less aggravation if I could turn the spam filters off (apart from the grey-listing, that works well) and rely on my email client's filters!

@ Simon- yeah, I think I'll have to do that

Sorry Bill, but the "Thought you'd like this!" is an exact word for word match to a many spam emails in circulation and usage. A bit unfortunate, but understandable they filtered it out. I agree it no good if the spam filter does not work though! I use my own rules in Thunderbird. Could you use you current programs to filter out the spam instead of IDNets?

[Bill]

Turning off the spam filter, as you've now discovered, is possible through the customer portal on a per address basis. It turns off all spam filtering, but doesn't affect grey listing or any rules you've set up.

Thanks Lance, that's useful to know

[Bill]

Could you use you current programs to filter out the spam instead of IDNets?

Yes, I think I could. I use the Mac's Mail app, it has it's own spam detection algorithms and will flag a suspect message with "Mail thinks this spam"- you can either agree and bin it or say that it's not. In the latter case it doesn't whitelist the sernder, but I think it does update its algorithms in some way.

It's also got a fairly extensive set of rules you can apply to each message- I use them to sort incoming mail into various folders (50-odd of them) by sender, but it could be used like the rules I use on the IDNet "personal" filters.

For example, almost any conceivable mis-spelling of Viagra or Cialis in the header and it gets binned

[Bill]

Sorry, forgot to comment on this bit:

Sorry Bill, but the "Thought you'd like this!" is an exact word for word match to a many spam emails in circulation and usage.

In my opinion that confirms what I said in the OP- junking an email on the basis of a single matching parameter is too aggressive. It's not as if I haven't had a few hundred emails from the same address in the past- if that isn't taken into account then it should be.

[Steve]

I don't think I'd wish to order any Viagra from someone who can't spell it either.

[Bill]

 

[davej99]

What have IDNet done to the spam filters?

Thanks for this post, Bill.

I never use Webmail so it never occurred to me I might have missing mail. Anyway I checked and found about 50 spams back to 2009, mostly concerning my love life and fortunately nothing genuine had been junked. I have several email IDs so I had better check the rest.

Thanks again for highlighting this issue.

Dave