Community Support
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6.7K Messages
EMAIL SPAM - What You Can Do To Stop It!
Learn why you may be getting it, how to avoid it, and protect yourself
Who out there loves to be inundated with unsolicited emails? This digital wasteland of mysterious messages clogging your inbox. Also known as SPAM, appropriately named after that mysterious meat-like substance that most want nothing to do within a nutritional diet. Well, if you like SPAM this article is not for you. If you don’t like SPAM like us here in the community forums this article will help you learn how to block/unblock email by sender.
Why are you getting spam?
- Signing up for offers
- Joining mailing lists
- Randomly guessing email list
- And more
How to avoid spam
- Use a different email for online offers
- Don't use your email ID as your user name in forums or chat
- Ask how your email will be used when or read the privacy statements
- Do not reply to spam
- Do not visit sites from spam email
- Check out our How To Avoid Spam section of our spam page for more detailed information
You can block email messages from an unwanted sender. Messages will automatically delete from your inbox, spam, and trash folders. Unblocking is just as easy.
Learn what to look for here.
First, learn how to:
Block an email address
Sometimes it's necessary to block messages from a particular sender. Your AT&T email account makes it easy to block unwanted messages.
Follow these steps to block an email address:
- Log in to your AT&T email account.
- Select the gear icon, and then select Settings from the top-right corner of the page.
- Select Blocked Addresses from the left-hand menu.
- Enter the address you'd like to block in the Add an address field.
- Select the Block button and then select Save. This email address is now blocked, and you will not be able to receive email messages from that address.
Now, learn how to:
Unblock an email address
If you change your mind and want to unblock an email address, it's easy.
Follow these steps to remove an email address from your blocked list:
- Go to the Blocked Addresses page.
- Select the email address you'd like to remove from the Blocked Addresses list.
- Highlight the address.
- Select the Remove button and then select Save. This will remove it from your list of blocked senders, and you can receive email from that address again.
Additional information
Learn more about blocking and unblocking
- When you block an email address, your AT&T email account will automatically delete messages sent to you from that account.
- You'll never see emails from blocked accounts in your inbox or any other email folders, including Spam and Trash.
- If the unwanted email is coming from your AT&T email account, your account may have been hacked. Learn how to identify and regain control of a hacked, phished, or compromised email account.
Have questions or other concerns?
Phone call/robocall fraud
You can report suspicious and unwanted calls to our Fraud Department at https://www.att.com/support/pages/report-call-or-text.
Email scam
Please forward the suspicious email to abuse@att.net.
Text scam/inappropriate text messages
If you receive a suspicious text message, forward it to us. Get step-by-step instructions to report unwanted text messages at https://about.att.com/pages/cyberaware/ni/blog/forward_7726.
AT&T account fraud or unknown charges/transactions
If you suspect you are a target of fraud on your AT&T mobile phone account, you can report it to our Fraud team using the form found at https://attfraud.custhelp.com/app/mobility.
General Scam
We can only assist with things related to your AT&T account.
For possible fraud on a non-AT&T account, please call the customer service number for that account at the top of your bill.
Thanks
AT&T DavidT, ChrisZ, and JohnCS
KeithBrown
Tutor
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3 Messages
5 years ago
Why can't we block email ALL messages by default and and accept ONLY those domains we specify (.com, .net, etc). There are now over 1000 valid top-level-domains available and an unlimited number of sub domains for each of these (.gdxwmr.site, etc) so how is it possible to filter against all of these? It's not... That's why we must take a different approach to foil the spammers.
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poikkeus
Contributor
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3 Messages
5 years ago
By concentrating on the client software, you have more flexibility to direct the Junk Mail results.
Keep up the fight!
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KeithBrown
Tutor
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3 Messages
5 years ago
For example, just this morning I received the following messages:
subject >>> Claim your free bottle of CBD Hemp Oil
from >>> Healthy Report (5khlPX3KTCTD@bluemoon.pw)
subject >>> Learn How a Reverse Mortgage Loan May Help your Credit Card Problems from >>> Get AAG Mortgage (jpakvzmqwn@patchtable.info)
subject >>> Selling Your Home? Access Updated 2019 Realtor Rankings
from >>> HomeLight Top Realtors (gazwxilhons@chainsti.works)
subject >>> Keith Need to borrow $1,000 - $10,000? from >>> Loan Confirmation (Elizabeth@refracturable.xyz)
subject >>> Protect your Home from >>> Vivint Security Provider (izxedvwhmq@wasteejec.mobi)
Every week, or so, these criminals change the domain they use and resend the same ads
And the list goes on... Every week, or so, these criminals change the domain they use and resend the same ads. Like I stated previously, there are now over 1000 of these top-level-domains which makes maintaining a filter-list untenable (att.net limits you to 1000 filters) not to mention that it appears that valid domains can be subverted with garbage/invalid subdomains of .com and .net addresses, re: porbbym@xix.net. Spammer technology has moved up a several notches and the email providers haven't been able/willing to keep up with the problem. The capability to, optionally, filter these expanded domains as a group would help immensely. I'm so tired of spending ~20% of my time each day maintaining my filter list and I don't want to keep changing my email ID every time another site is hacked. There has got to be a better way!
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_xyzzy_
Expert
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15K Messages
5 years ago
@KeithBrown said:
Spammers know the spam fighting limitations of many of the popular free basic email services and construct their emails accordingly. But not all ESPs are like that. You just have to find them and usually be willing to pay for the privilege of using them.
Last time I looked there were over 1500 gTLD's. But generally it is not recommended you block a gTLD even if you could since you run the risk (albeit low) of blocking something legitimate.
While not perfect yahoo could improve there spam fighting ability with a few simple changes (not sure about their implementation so "simple" might be an exaggeration). First allow contacts to override the spam filters, Second, allow user defined filters, with at least their limited pattern matching capability, have precedence over the yahoo spam filters and adding a discard (drop on the floor) option when there is a match. Blocked addresses then wouldn't be needed at all. The yahoo user defined filters are not the most general pattern matching in the world (i.e., no globbing or regular expressions) but it's better than not allowing their use at all for spam fighting.
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poikkeus
Contributor
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3 Messages
5 years ago
If you’re looking for more specific advice, things like OS, current ways you’re trying to stop spam, and the same of your email software are going to help you come up with a solution. One thing is for sure: relying on AT&T’s webmail software probably won’t solve the problem.
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DRMCDRMC
Contributor
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1 Message
5 years ago
Good morning
I am inundated with spam from .DE how do you block the .DE
many thanks in advance
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_xyzzy_
Expert
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15K Messages
5 years ago
@DRMCDRMC - If the stuff is already going into your spam folder, nothing. If it's going into your inbox then you could define a filter to match all sender email addresses that ends with .de and send matches to the trash. Case doesn't matter with email addresses (unless yahoo is that stupid). Of course if you do this, should you ever have a valid sender in Germany they would be taken out too.
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limeybiker
Tutor
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5 Messages
5 years ago
does not work.
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Bears45
Contributor
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3 Messages
4 years ago
no what can i do so i can check my email on my mobile phone the new email address i created
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1325_Ameanergirl
New Member
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1 Message
4 years ago
I need to figure out how to get my emails to go thru. I am having to work from home and email is my primary source of communication with our customers. Please help. Below is what it sends back when I attempt to send out an email.
host hotmail-com.olc.protection.outlook.com [104.47.57.161]
SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined sending data block:
550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [3.224.216.214] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3140). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [DM6NAM11FT042.eop-nam11.prod.protection.outlook.com]
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