Weaker spam filters in att.net/Yahoo mail suddenly?

@dbstein 

...and setting up filters to catch spam is not correcting the problem

If the stuff is already classed as spam that overrides user specified filters so your filters will not work.

I created filters to block domains

Blocked addresses consisting of only the domain should work but are rather useless since the spammers are constantly varying the sending domain.

I've also noticed that many of the settings are no longer available such as how many emails to display in folders.

I don't recall that ever being an option.  And all the settings that existed in the "old" "full featured" webmail I think are in the "new" webmail.  The "new" is the "full featured" with some stuff reorganized and a new splash of paint.

Hi! I don’t understand your first comment. They aren’t classified as spam and no matter how many times I mark them as spam, they are not “learned”. That’s why I created the filters. This way, they go into a folder I created and then I mark them as spam (hoping spam will start catching them). This all started happening after the “new “ mail was implemented. The spam filters were never that good but over the past few years they improved to where I received very few spam emails…. until the “new, improved” email was rolled-out. The phishing option is also gone so does that mean they never really did anything differently with phishing emails? One good improvement is that the next email is no longer marked as read when something is marked and moved to the spam folder.

There is no way to actually block domains in the new mail. I created filters for domains in addition to words or phrases that always appear. I agree about the domains. They also change phrases to add or remove spaces but the spam filters used to catch all of that. I use outlook so when an email makes it into my inbox, I always know there is a new domain or phrase. I’m not sure what happened but the spams filters have become very weak.

As far as features being the same in new mail, that is simply not true. The number of emails in folders is no longer displayed – we have to now hover over the folder. Also, there far fewer themes – no landscapes and not even a handful of solid colors. As far as the number of emails displayed, it was under options, general and then there was box for Messages/Results per page. There were about 5 or 6 options ranging from 10 per page up to 200 or 250. The last time they changed the email view, it was gone but you could bounce back to basic, change the number and then go to the new version but now there is only classic and new and neither has the option. Just google and you can see what the screens looked like.

BTW-is there a way to delete or hide views and starred?

Thanks!

@dbstein 

Hi! I don’t understand your first comment. They aren’t classified as spam and no matter how many times I mark them as spam, they are not “learned”.

If the att/yahoo spam filters determine an incoming email is spam (i.e., it classifies it as spam) then it filters it into spam ignoring any filters you may have created.  So they are spam as far as the spam filters are concerned.  You can keep flagging stuff in the spam folder as "not spam" but there is no guarantee the spam filters will get trained nor how many times you have to keep doing that until they do get retrained, if ever. 

Or to put it the other way, your filters are only executed for stuff destined for the inbox, i.e., the att/yahoo spam filters did not consider that stuff as spam.  You are free to flag stuff in the inbox as "spam" and it will move into the spam folder but like trying to train stuff as not spam marking stuff as spam can take repeated attempts and here too there's no guarantee it will work nor when.

I don't know why the spam filtering suddenly  changed.  I don't think it's due to the "new" webmail.  It's may be the spammers found yet another weakness in the spam filters that could be exploited.  Maybe yahoo controlled by OATH has something to do with it.

As for "features" that were removed.  It is what it is.  If you say so I'll take your word.  I just don't remember every lille UI detail because the webmail was not my primary way to access email  (I use Thunderbird) and yahoo is not my email service provider (ESP). I only keep it around to try to answer questions in these forums.

Yahoo designed this stuff.  They think they know how to design an email UI and how to run an email service. And as for spam they know better than you what is and is not spam in your own email.  And if it is not obvious all of that was me being sarcastic.

Finally you could send them feedback (a whole log of good that will do) if you click the settings gear and at the bottom right click the "Give Feedback".

Thank you. I guess I'm not explaining myself. I know that my filters only impact mail going into the inbox. My point was that the spam filters never catch them and they keep going into the inbox so I created filters to direct them to a folder I created so they don't keep going into the inbox. 

I spoke to at&t when it started happening and, of course, they said there is nothing they can do. With all the hacking and identity theft, you would think they would take security more seriously and force yahoo to do something or move to another platform. So many people are complaining but they don't seem to care. I'm an IT consultant and I've never seen a company so careless with security. It's also scary that this weak email has the same password and user code as the main at&t account - they can't be separated. At least they haven't had any major server hacking lately. I removed all my personal contacts from yahoo years ago so if there was another massive hacking, there were no address to send to. I have them in Outlook and only have some government addys and a few merchants thinking the spam filters would check for a contact before classifying as spam. Silly me! Thanks again for your insights.

@dbstein 

My point was that the spam filters never catch them and they keep going into the inbox so I created filters to direct them to a folder I created so they don't keep going into the inbox.

I did a test about a month ago on the att/yahoo filters and it appeared to me too that it wasn't working.  I just chalked it up to more "quality programming" from the yahoo "professionals"!  Since there is no clear channel to report such things to, and since I don't actually use the att/yahoo as my ESP, I just let it go. Also I wasn't 100% sure I wasn't doing something wrong testing it out although there aren't a lot of places to go wrong with their limited filtering in the first place.  In addition no one else was reporting the problem.  Even a google search didn't turn up anything.  You are the first one to mention it.  

You say "So many people are complaining" but I don't see any threads specifically singling out the user filters except for the ones that say they write filters to intercept spam going to the spam folder and they don't work which of course is true.

I don't have a suggestion on how to pursue this.  You can't call yahoo since they will just say "it's att's problem".  You can't call tech support because odds are they won't even know what you are talking about or as you found they brush it off.

Maybe other users reading this would also confirm to add weight to the claim there's a problem.  But 25 posts into an existing thread on spam is probably not a good place to attract attention.  So I suggest you start your own thread with a title like "Webmail filters are not working" or something similar and see if you get a bunch of "me too"s to add weight that there really is a bug.  Make sure you emphasize they aren't working in general even when they are supposed to, i.e., when the incoming email is not spam.  Hopefully that might attract ATTCares attention.

I have set email spam filters to direct certain continual spam mail to go to the trash bin automatically. However, this is not working. Why? How do I fix? I have reviewed the raw message and done everything that AT&T says to do to redirect emails but they still end up in the Spam folder instead of the Trash bin. Any ideas?

I have set up filters to redirect some of the Spam mail directly to the Trash bin. I have tried to set up filters as AT&T says to do. However, the email still go to the Spam folder and not to Trash. Any ideas?

@Sheman 

The att/yahoo spam filters have precedence over user defined filters.  So if the spam filters think a message is spam there is nothing you can do to override it.  It's going into spam.  

It's reported blocked addresses still work but since there is no pattern matching in yahoo blocked address, i.e., all you can do is block specific addresses or entire domains, those are useless for handling spam anyway since spammers vary the sending email address (smart one anyways).  So even pattern matching wouldn't help there even if they supported it.

@Sheman

That's correct.  Your filter is not even looked at if the spam filters already classed it as spam.  But I also said that I believe blocked addresses still work but are generally useless against spammers because they vary their email address.  However in the example you are showing always has the constant domain brickworks.com.  If that is the case you could add brickworks.com to the blocked addresses (don't include the @) and then you will never see them at all (assuming blocked addresses still work on spam as others say it does).