Spam filters constantly capturing valid emails - driving me mad!!

[louiscar]

I am so sick of the spam filters grabbing messages which are totally valid.
There is nothing I can do that will change this. The so called "learn" function does NOT work in the least (not in my client anyway) and all whitelists are ignored completely.

Here are some of the domains VM insist on putting into the spam folder no matter what.

blindsuk-newsletter.co.uk
blinds-2go.co.uk
wdstore.com
evga.com
bbcgoodfood.com
panasonic.eu
greenpeace.org
hotukdeals.com
companieshouse.gov.uk

That's not the whole list either and it's just driving me spare because I cannot for the life of me change this ridiculous behaviour.

[ALF28]

If you go into the virgin email settings ( log into  virgin mail) spam can be set to go to the inbox and tagged as spam.

Alternatively switch off virgin spam filtering and leave your email client to sort the spam.

Most email clients use whitelists but webmail has less options. I use thunderbird  in windows and find it good, it marks spam but does not put in the spam folder.

Virgin web mail may be a better alternative, some email providers or clients will class genuine emails as adverising spam and I get that with gmail webmail.

The emails may have some spam content so are being classed as spam.

If they go to the spam folder they will be deleted after 30 days, I place spam manually into the spam folder myself or use filters.

Make sure you have not blacklisted the emails in virgin settings or they will go to the spam folder.

I whitelist my email contatcts by  filtering  them all to the inbox in virgin webmail, but do check you have not selected to put spam into the spam folder, but to put all emails to the inbox to avoid the problem.

Some emails may look genuine but are spoofed versions and I get a lot of them.

There is always the option of switching to another email such as outlook, has few issues with spam.

Also checkyour email client spam settings, which may be in the account and directs spam to a specific folder which could be a folder of your choosing,not the spam folder which has the risk of loosing the emails after 30 days and can not be recovered and could be important.

alf29

[Beth_G]

Hi louiscar,

Thank you for posting on the Community Forums.

I'm sorry to hear that your spam filter has been blocking legitimate emails, I can appreciate this must be quite frustrating.

This is something which we can certainly feedback - I would advise to please take a look here for information and tips on how to manage your spam filters.

@alf29 has also provided some great advice on how to manage what emails are set as spam.

Kind regards,

Beth

[louiscar]

Thanks Beth but as I've said the so called learning and whitelist features simply aren't working.

I have not added all messages to the contacts in VM webmail, but many I have simply don't work so I gave up on that ages ago. I may try putting the list above in there just to see.

The learning feature is not clear whether this can be done by the client or "has to be done" in webmail. I use a client so it would be a pain to keep going to webmail to move messages from spam to the inbox and I think many moons ago I even tried this. A client using IMAP rather than pop 3 should be ok I'd imagine as this is simply manipulating stuff that is on the server and not locally so the email system should take note of spam being moved.

Finally I have addressed the options which you point to in my reply to alf29 in so far as I need to have some kind of spam filter and not have to deal with a cluttered inbox. There are few options and features that would solve the problem I have but the spam filter algorithm can be fixed your end.
Stopping some normal emails for what reason, I have no idea but, your techs might be able to find out from looking at the emails in question.

Forum emails, BBC good food , newsletters, there is no rhyme or reason but it happens all the time.

[ALF28]

Spam filters in virign email settings-

SPAM settingsSPAM Settings

Reject All SPAM messages   (option1)

Move message to Spam folder    (option2)

Flag a message as SPAM but deliver to Inbox    (option3)

Turn off all SPAM filtering     (option4)

I use the  option 3 so everything goes to the inbox, and any identified spam has a tag <spam>, some spam may not be tagged.

It is not possible to have it both ways,  blocking spam "selectively", it could be virgin are blocking your emails because the sender's ip address is used for spam, it is the responsibiliy of the sender to write email code so that does not get blocked, and to send from ip addresses that are not on spam block lists.

It may be more difficult to have all email going to the inbox, but filters can be set up to direct email to a named folder  such as "bbc"

Listing your contacts in the address book may help and whitelistinng should work, but if you select options 1,2,3 this may overide your email client so option 4 would filter no spam  so the email client would than filter spam, but no guarantee that the email client will not also block your emails to spam if they have spam content.

You could open another account in yahoo.com or outlook.com for the emails newsletters and use the account just for newsletters, as a throw-away email

address. ( means subscribing to the email newsletters with a new email address but could still go to spam, but worth trying this)

I use gmail and that can also put genuine  emails to spam, so the issue is not just with virgin.

If you do not want emails going to spam, simply switch off spam filtering  option 4 and then blacklist any emails you do not want in virgin webmail and they will go to spam, click on the email you want to blacklist and press the icon with 3 bars and select blacklist sender, that will stop repeating spam going to the inbox and dump it the spam folder.

The spam folder can be dangerous because, after 30 days the emails will be deleted.

The only other way is to do as you mentioned and move the emails from spam to the inbox, some email  providers then remember the email is not spam, but virgin email "does not have whitelisting" which would solve the issue but not available.

There are often clashes between email provider (virgin) and any email client, thay can overide each other and some results are unpredictable, I use both virgin web mail but also use thunderbird email client to view my virgin emails.

It is unlikely that you will get this resolved by the ISP (virgin) or the email senders, so wise to set up the options to your best advantage, and avoid losing any emails to spam folder which deletes the emails and only stores the last 30 days of emails.

I also use other free email services, but there is "no support" unless you have paid email sevice but most do have a community that can help such as gmail, virgin, etc.

alf28

[coenoby]

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@louiscar wrote:

Thanks Beth but as I've said the so called learning and whitelist features simply aren't working.

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I was going to reply earlier but @ALF28 has beaten me to it.

Basically my experience backs up what ALF28 says.

I have a number of email accounts with several different providers and I have always used email clients to manage them. I used Thunderbird for several years but for a long time now I have used Outlook. I have always turned off the email provider's spam filtering, including VM, and relied on the client to filter out the spam.

Like ALF28 I have VM's spam setting set to "Flag a message as SPAM but deliver to Inbox".  If they are really genuine Outlook puts those flagged  as spam by VM into my inbox which suggests that might help solve the problem you are seeing.

It does send the occasional genuine email to spam but I have got the Outlook spam (Junk) setting set to "high" which might explain that.

My experience with Gmail is that its spam filter works really well and I like that fact that it tells you why it has decided the email is spam. If you have issues with spam or genuine emails being sent to spam, then in my experience Gmail is the best email service to use, no question about that.

In addition to what ALF28 has posted, I would just make a couple of points:

!) I would expect that VM uses a third party spam filter rather than developing their own. but that is something VM are not going to confirm or deny. My point is that VM probably have no direct control over how the spam filter works so to coin a phrase, "it is what it is".

In fairness though, last year there were many.many complaints about the fact that VM was not picking up obvious spam emails and some forum members posted details of how people could set up their own filter rules in Webmail to stop spam getting through. That situation seems to have improved and the filters do seem to be more proactive.at picking up spam which is a big step forward.

2) Regarding the obvious false positives you are seeing.  In addition to the spam filtering, VM do check all incoming email to determine whether it has been "spoofed" - that is had the sender's address falsified so it appears to come from a genuine organisation but actually comes from a scammer.  . Many large organisations use  third party email services to manage the distribution of their bulk emails, such as newsletters. Looking at your list of domains that may apply to several of them. The BBC for example.

Unfortunately, if the third party email service has not configured the email settings correctly that can make their emails look suspicious to VM. From what I have seen, VM do that checking on incoming emails before they go through the spam filter. That can result in those suspicious emails ending up in spam  even where the domain is on your webmail contacts list.

Sorry to go on at length. I would sum up by saying you should certainly try changing the spam setting in VM webmail as per ALF28's post and see how your client reacts. If you are not happy after trying out for a while you can always change it back again.😉

Coenoby

[Lee_R]

Hi @louiscar

Please can you try the advice given by ALF28 and coenoby?  And let us know how you get on?

Regards

Lee_R

[louiscar]

@Lee

Of course

@Alf28 and @Coenoby

Thank you both for taking time to help another member, with such detailed replies. Your time and effort is much appreciated.

Just to give an example of the crazy things going on: As many might do with VM and having several email addresses I have 2 main emails that tend to be used more than any other. I have all emails from other accounts forwarded to my main one. My secondary one is receiving forum replies from evga.com. That gets through (on my secondary) without being put into the spam folder however, the forwarded version to my main email is tossed in there every time. As I say no rhyme or reason to it. 🙂

I think I will take the advice you have given and try the option to have my spam emails marked. As Postbox auto filters only operate on the inbox I may have a chance at figuring out something that may work although I'm not sure if I can put and exclude in the message filter - not that sophisticated but I need to explore a little more.

If not I may well move to another client and try Outlook maybe - I know around the late 90s I did use it and it was fairly good.

Thanks again all all, I'll report if I find something that works.

[coenoby]

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@louiscar wrote:

I have 2 main emails that tend to be used more than any other. I have all emails from other accounts forwarded to my main one. My secondary one is receiving forum replies from evga.com. That gets through (on my secondary) without being put into the spam folder however, the forwarded version to my main email is tossed in there every time. As I say no rhyme or reason to it. 🙂

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Thanks for coming back and thanks for taking the time to read and digest the rather long replies you got from @ALF28 and myself .

Your remarks I have quoted above possibly bring in another factor, if I'm interpreting them correctly.😉

When you refer to "main" and "secondary" accounts I am assuming you are referring to VM accounts and the email account that the evga.com emails are being forward from is a non VM account?

From experience i have found that 'forwarding' emails to an address - as opposed to receiving then directly from the sender or downloading them from another account via POP3 or IMAP in an email client, can cause problems. I did have some examples of that but I cannot track them down at the minute. From memory I think it may be because they can fall foul of the VM anti spoofing measures I mentioned in my post.

In truth a lot of the confusion with the way email service providers (not just VM), manage "spam" is that they use the spam folder as a dumping ground for emails the service provider "does not like the look of" (totally non technical phrase there LOL) for some reason.

There can be a whole range of reasons why emails may seem suspicious which we as users are not made aware of.  All we see is an email that we know is a genuine gets marked as 'spam'.. That's why I like Gmail's feature of giving you their reason for marking an email as spam.

Your set up with various email addresses sounds similar to mine. I would suggest thinking about how you manage moving emails from one account to another and try to cut down on forwarding emails where you can. For example, you can use VM Webmail effectively as an email client to move emails from a non VM :email account into a VM email account. See here for details on that: https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-mail-how-to-check-emails-from-another-account 

Sorry I cannot give you an instant solution instead I seem to be adding more complications. The truth is though that it is a complicated area, especially where you have multiple addresses with multiple providers.

Coenoby

[louiscar]

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@coenoby wrote:

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@louiscar wrote:

I have 2 main emails that tend to be used more than any other. I have all emails from other accounts forwarded to my main one. My secondary one is receiving forum replies from evga.com. That gets through (on my secondary) without being put into the spam folder however, the forwarded version to my main email is tossed in there every time. As I say no rhyme or reason to it. 🙂

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Thanks for coming back and thanks for taking the time to read and digest the rather long replies you got from @ALF28 and myself .

Your remarks I have quoted above possibly bring in another factor, if I'm interpreting them correctly.😉

When you refer to "main" and "secondary" accounts I am assuming you are referring to VM accounts and the email account that the evga.com emails are being forward from is a non VM account?

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No, I have several VM accounts. Let's say em1@virginmedia.com and em2@virginmedia.com .

In webmail settings for "em2" I have set that to forward all mail but in the case of em2 only it's also set to leave mail on the server rather than delete it.

All evga.com emails go to "em2". To be clear also the emails are from support and a forum so the email addresses are supportEU@evga.com and forumnoreply@evga.com so I can safely say what it doesn't like is "evga.com".

So em2 retains these messages and after VM forwards to my "em1" address the mail is immediately put into the spam folder.

To be fair I think when this first happened em2 was rejecting them too however, I tried whitelisting them by putting a rule at the top of all other rules which simply says if "=evga.com then file to inbox". Auto forwarding also has "process subsequent rules" ticked.

I did this on em1 but they still get sent to the spam folder. I know the logic of my attempted "whitelist" appears to lack logic especially if the spam filter operates after that but it seems to have worked for em2 and I'm seeing less go stray on em1 but it's too early to say since I only did all this just before starting this thread. I think BBC still gets caught but some of the ones on the list haven't posted recently but evga has several times.

Hope this reads clear, it's late ... 🙂