Virgin Media Community

[Zak_M]

I am sorry that you are unhappy with the response provided.  

You are doing all you can to get this resolved, we will provide some feedback to our teams in the hope we can get on top of this further. 

Kind regards,

Zak_M

[ALF28]

Managing spam and settings-

Spam is a wordwide issue and probably unstoppable,  but the older virgin emails suffer more with spam than gmail or outlook.

As spam is from organised outfits, they use breaches of data to get hold of email addresses, (e.g. linkedin breach for example)

Virgin will tag some as spam <spam> if the spam filters in settings are set to "tag spam" and move to the spam folder or inbox.

Virgin are not responsible for the spam emails, so best to take your own actions to control spam emails using filters etc., or by having alternative emails.

One solutuon is to use spam filtering software, or set up your own system of whitelisting using filters to direct emails to folders which is what I do.

Having battled spam for 5 years, it will not stop but does keep changing so manage the spam using actions of discarding, marking as spam, deleting, file to a folder, etc.

I have tried various methods and now filter my known contacts to a whitelist so all the spam is separated out.

Spam/scam emails are very dangerous and can contain malware, trojans etc or phishing links so best to avoid unknown spam and scam, and phishing emails.

Persistant spam email senders can be blocked to spam using the blacklist option which I also use to block many repeating emails.

Updating/changing the account password is good advice.

alf28

[ALF28]

EMAIL FILTERING HICKUP'S- emails going to wrong folders.

I have recently had some emails going to the the wrong folders, and having inspected the filter keywords it should not be happening.

So the filters, as others have mentioned in posts, are not always reliable, especially with "new" emails/new senders/spams.

This results in spam getting through and not being blocked, I had a new newsletter spam to my whitelist today, many of the spams may be spoof as they apear to be from the uk/local  but are sent from servers in the usa and I had not subscribed to them.

I have now changed some of my filters to be more acurate and try to eliminate the mistakes, which means I put the full email address rather than just part of it for whitelisting, and for other filters still use some keywords, but the shorter keywords often end up in wrong folders, for example a keyword "test" will often go to the wrong folder, filters seeming to pick up the 4 letters whatever sequence they are in using random letters in the condition from or subject.

Some miss-filing's  are totally un-explained, and I think the system just gets confused at times so the filters can glitch at times or problems with the settings server.

alf28

[Robbie34]

Today is the first time I have not had any spam for the past few months.

Have Virgin got to grips with the situation?

[ALF28]

Unexpected spam - NEWSLETTERS

My spam has reduced, not sure why but over time spam emails can increase or even stop for a while.

Some spam emails  are probably stopped by the server poviders blocking them,  which works until the spammers switch to other servers, in some cases spammers may have their own servers or pay fees to providers  to send spam or use bulk emailers.

I get newsletters that I have not signed up to and have had approx 50  to date, some are not repeating, other do repeat but only a handful.

It is however unusual to get a newsletter out of the blue, which normally requires subscription with name, address, email and in some cases phone number, so perhaps they are using lists to spam people or others are signing up for me?

In some cases the newsletters may be spoofed or fake versions of a real newsletter.

Some look genuine but as I have not signed up to the newletter I do not click on anything in the email.

I sometimes do sign up to the genuine  newletter and compare that to the unsolicited version received.

I usually do know which newsletters I have signed up to and keep a record of that and which email was used.

alf28

[ALF28]

RANDOM FILTERING

I have had odd glitches with my email filters.

Somtimes email goes to the wrong folder, so I am now trying condition "is exactly" and putting "from" -  the full email address for whitelisting

Forwarding does not always work, the odd one fails to forward.

The setting in one filter "action" file -changed  by itself resulting in emails going to a wrong folder (was set to spam but went blanc)

At present the action part of the filters setting is locked by a red "no entry sign" so although I did update it then locked me out.

I keep trying to improve the filters but think in some cases the filtering can fail or setting change by themselves for some reason.

I have now placed extra keywords to try to eliminate the problems and because most of my spam is from gmail I am filtering all @gmail.com to spam, must be worth a try, as I have no contacts using gmail.

I am now filtering known contacts to the inbox (easier that way) and all other emails to spam using from @ but also including @gmail.com and may add others if needed.

I am also using  blacklisting, which puts many emails into the spam folder.

So filtering can be random and can be a challenge to keep the inbox totally clear of spam, one always gets through.

alf28

[ALF28]

FILTERING-USING "IS EXACTLY"

This did not work on the sender email address, as the from is made up of  a name, followed by the email addess it perhaps need all of this or just the name?

e.g.   FRED <fred @*****.com>

I gave up and now just using from "contains" fred@****.co, I also use from rejex filters.

Pity that virgin do not have a whitelisting option, it would make things easier.

My filters do generally do work but a few odd results recently.

alf28

[ALF28]

NO SPAM EMAILS -for the last two weeks!

My spam emails have all but stopped, not sure why but I hope it continues, just getting the odd few regular ones that I blacklist to spam now.

Virgin media seem to have stopped the spam coming through.

alf28

[boothy99]

Hi shamick59,

In the past I used a filter (I'll link it below) to attempt to stem the flow of crud, which worked pretty effectively, if updated often enough with new additions as more came through.

However, since I started to send the c**p to this government department, via report@phishing.gov.uk  ..... 

(See information here) -

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/report-suspicious-emails

.... I've hardly had any rubbish even into my spam folder over the last few months, let alone in my inbox. The servers sending this crud out seem to be getting effectively blocked. I'd highly recommend giving it a go.

Rather than simply forwarding the spam-crud directly (you could try though) as this might get blocked by Virgin's filters 🤔🤨 !!! ... I tend to "Save-as" a *.eml  file and forward the saved file(s) (as a batch) to the email I gave above. No need to subscribe and it's automated apparently - sending you a brief email of confirmation as soon as they receive your files (so no need to write anything in the email you send).

It took a few sendings of a number of crud, but whoever was sending it out soon got stomped on by the looks of it 😁

The filters I'd set up and used for some time (I've not needed to use or update them since using the phishing service) if you wish to try them are here - take a look at the filters to only give you ideas on what to put in yourself, as they're likely outdated by now. ....

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Email-Filter-Syntax/m-p/4140622#M2506920

[ALF28]

Spam emails-filtering -discarding

Good to see that the spam emails are getting reported by members , perhaps that is why they have reduced.

I  recently found that spam emails can contain trojans and I had one on my computer via an email, although that is rare, found doing a virus scan.

I have modified my filters to "discard" the more dangerous spam senders that are probably hackers, by filtering  some domains and actioned to discard thus avoiding any contact with these  scam emails.

I also use blacklisting and whitelisting as well. 

I try to minimise  the scam emails as they can be very dangerous and now try  to avoid them and reduce the risk of computer malware infections.

The spam emails  may probably have tracking, so by discarding, I will not see them and the sender will get no confirmation the email has been read and might even stop sending to my email address.

This will aslo reduce the clutter and I just view my whitelist.

I mainly get spam/scams from gmail and yahoo senders but some are just made up sender addresses which are spoofed, so I filter them to spam.

alf28