Recent massive failure in Sp*m filtering

I am having the same problem - started about 3 weeks ago.  Massive amount of spam is not getting filtered and going to the Inbox.  Looks just like the screenshot posted by brewersfan73.  ATT please do not answer with the same basic response.  Something has changed in the filtering and this needs to be brought to the attention of the technical support team.

So I can't take credit for this, but I'm going to share it here.  In another forum (maybe here, maybe reddit - not sure), someone suggested creating a filter that sends stuff to your Junk folder if your email address isn't in the To:/Cc: section of the email.  Obviously, if you get bcc on regular email, this won't be very effective since it will send these to junk as well, but I'm willing to risk that for now.  So I'm going to use this as a stopgap until AT&T fixes their system.  It seems to be working so far.  Although the people on the other forum didn't have the same luck.

This began for me on February 4. The emails I am seeing are like those @brewersfan73 shared. The good news is that they are hitting the spam folder today.  The bad news is that they are reaching me at all as they are clearly malicious phishing email.

Also it’s interesting to note that today’s change occurred on March 4, and the issue began on February 4….monthly patching perhaps.  

Fyi. They have disappeared completely, for now, for me.  None appearing in the spam folder, either, other than regular spam..  The attacks ended or more likely, the filtering has been restored.  

5 of 6 spam messages landed in my spam mailbox in the past 5 hours, so I'm pleased with that progress! I also set a filter like @brewersfan73 suggested, but it doesn't appear to have caught anything yet.

They've gone away for me too. Just like that. This does mean they have the capability. Not sure why it went and is back, but I'm glad.

Will resolve the thread.

Spam filter still not working and I’m getting flooded with spam messages, unlike others who have had a reduction within the last couple of days. That doesn’t apply here. Tedious to have to manually mark as spam and delete. 

AT&T, chime in here. What’s the fix??

We understand how frustrating it is to have to deal with this spam, @jenahop.

Like how Aminah and @tonydi mentioned before, there's not much we can do to keep spam emails from landing in your inbox. However, you can forward them to us at abuse@att.net so that we can investigate where they're coming from.

You'll also want to read through our guide on how to Protect yourself from email spam. It covers the main reasons people get spam and how you can avoid it.

If you need help with anything else, let us know. Thanks for contacting the AT&T Community Forums team.

Raiden, AT&T Community Specialist

Why is ATT Yahoo Mail not filtering obvious  spam and pretending the need to unsubscribe from trusted sources I have never signed up for, are they trying to get me to upgrade to Y Mail +??

Yahoo Mail has never had very good spam filtering.  Well, that's not quite true....they're really good at filtering legit emails into the Spam folder.

There was a big flood of spam getting into Inboxes over the last few weeks but the reports seem to indicate that as of a few days ago this is no longer an issue.

I get so many spam emails in my spam folder and now in my inbox. Yes, I have set up 97 spam filters. Some filters I keep changing. I have tried “abc.com”, “.abc.com”, “*.abc.com”, “@*.abc.com” and finally “@*.abc.com” with match case. It is now the middle of the month and I think this rendition is now working. Yahoo says mail filters are case-INSENSITIVE, so why did match case work.  Or, is it as others have said, has AT&T fixed their system? I do realize that multiple filters could apply to one email and these filters are prioritized from the top down. Question: Does it matter if I start my list with BEGINS WITH or with ENDS WITH?

I can’t get rid of the domain “xyz”. I am not Generation XYZ and I don’t use GoDaddy. In my spam folder emails I getting weird emails from =?UTF-8?Q?s=E2=81=A3e=E2=81=ACr=F…… When I use BLOCK SENDERS and DELETED EXISTING EMAILS it does not delete.

As for unsubscribing from an email that I NEVER subscribed to, a MAJOR antivirus company warns if it is a legitimate company, use the unsubscribe option. If it is a shady company, do not unsubscribe, just delete. So, I just delete them all.

I don't open, don't reply, don't unsubscribe, don't click links, and don't download attachments in emails. And one email I keep moving from Spam to my inbox still keeps going to Spam. Now I’m getting spam emails in my inbox. Some aren’t addressed to me. I now don’t trust anything in my inbox. I will also set a filter like @brewersfan73.

I wrote this in COMIC SANS MS which does not show up here in my comment.  But I am so frustrated, discontented, defeated, stonewalled, and irked.  I want to escape this nightmare. AT&T, please help us. I will start forwarding some of my weird scam emails to abuse@att.net if you will start helping your AT&T Yahoo clients.

@Padrig  First off, AT&T won't help.  It's not their email service and they look upon the Yahoo Mail service  that they contract for as them doing you a huge favor out of the goodness of their heart.

And you can make filters and block senders until you turn blue and you're not going to win out over the spammers.  They're smarter than the very limited tools Yahoo provides to you. 

And as far as sending emails to the abuse dept.....

After a brief respite, am getting 10+ spam emails a day similar to jeditig66, and they are mostly the same anti-virus protection spam. This is not acceptable as an AT&T mobile, broadband, and cable customer, and is clearly a system flaw as neither my gmail or regular yahoo email account is getting this. AT&T fix your spam filter, you clearly can do something about this! 

What makes no sense to me is that everyone reporting here seems to think this is some sort of failure of spam filtering.  But none of my att.net addresses, none of my yahoo.com addresses, my sbcglobal.net address nor any of my clients similar addresses are seeing any spam in the inbox, not even one!  So it can't be a system wide thing but I sure as heck can't explain it since it's obviously real for some people.

@jeditig66 Err, ok, not sure how that addresses my comment, though.

It's a myth that if you just delete the spam that the spammers will drop your address from the list because they don't think it's a good address.  They aren't "wasting energy" continuing to send emails to millions of people who don't open them just as they don't "waste energy" by sending them to email accounts that have never existed.

My domain gets spam to sales, support, hr, accountspayable etc, none of which have ever existed and which get bounced.  But the spammers don't see, collect or care about bounce notices because otherwise I'd stop getting those spams.

It doesn't cost them a thing to send 10 or 10,000 or 10 billion so they let em fly and hope they get some minuscule amount that hit paydirt because that's still a big number.