Blueyonder Spam Filter

[AlanHo]

Blueyonder users might be interested in this.

I use the anti virus and spam filtering service provided free by blueyonder broadband. I have recently discovered a problem with the spam filtering.

I am the neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator for our road and get irregular communications from the police by Email - at least I used to get them. I originally set up the blueyonder spam filter to delete all spam on the server which seemed to work quite well. However - after some months I realised that I had not heard from the police for some time and checked with them. They confirmed that I had missed 3 messages. The blueyonder spam filter appeared to be the culprit.

I therefore changed the settings on the spam filter to Tag messages as spam rather than delete them. I also added the police Email address to the "Allowed" list on the spam filter. The spam filter is supposed to deliver messages from "allowed" senders without passing them through the spam checker. To test the settings the police agent sent me a test message which arrived OK.

The following week amongst 200 actual spam messages, I received a message from the police, a Neo Planet circular Email from Craig and a Tesco message all tagged as spam.

It appears that the blueyonder spam filter treats all messages with multi-recipients as spam - this accounts for the police test message reaching me OK but the circular being tagged. However - the "Allowed" list was clearly being ignored.

I have had a long discourse with the blueyonder help line who are not able to clarify the situation - the anti virus and spam software is by a third party and they have little control over it. They have made a few suggestions but the evidence is that none have worked.

Hence my conclusion is that the blueyonder "Allowed" list cannot be trusted. If you set the system to delete spam you may well find that emails from addresses listed in your "Allowed" list will not reach you if they are addressed to multi addresses. The system may have other foibles - but I lack the means to test them.

[andsome]

You just can't beat Mailwasher. You can see ALL the e-mails while they are still on the server, and delete those that you don't want and download the rest. Any e mails from addresses that you have put into the BLACKLIST are automatically ticked for deletion, but they won't disappear until you click on 'Process mail'. I would NOT trust any program to auto delete, I like to have the last say.

[AlanHo]

I have mailwasher but no longer use it.

I have a rather difficult spam situation. I do some recruitment consultancy work from home - hence my Email address is on hundreds - if not thousands - of applicants, candidates and clients computers. I am too modest to claim a record for spam and virus receipts - but my daily ration can be in the hundreds.

Hence my preference for deleting spam at the server to avoid the need for me to manually scan hundreds of messages to isolate the few genuine ones.

The Blueyonder spam filter does a good job in general - except only for the problem I have described with the allowed list. I am hoping they get it sorted so I can resume having spam automatically deleted.

[andsome]

See what you mean.

[AlanHo]

Can someone please help me here - this is my latst communication to blueyonder followed by their reply

This message follows two previous ones on the same subject and a long telephone conversation with Oliver on your help desk who asked me to write to you again if his suggestions did not work.

My problem is that your anti spam system is treating certain messages as spam – even though I have included their addresses in the “Allowed” list. If I select the “Delete” option they do not reach me and if I select the “TAG subject” option they are forwarded to my inbox with the subject line tagged as spam.

At Oliver’s suggestion I deleted the allowed list and re-entered the addresses again, I also lowered the sensitivity setting for spam but it has not cured the problem – hence this further message.

Another anomaly is that you are treating [email protected] as spam inconsistently. I receive a weekly newsletter from this company which is treated as spam in your system plus regular Emails advertising special offers etc which are not treated as spam – but both from identical Email addresses.

I would like go back to having your system delete spam automatically – but cannot do so whilst items included in the “Allowed” list are being treated as spam and thus deleted.

Will you please pass this problem on to the software developers so that the problem receives proper attention.

Their reply....

Thank you for contacting the eContact team

For the mail addresses that you have added to the whitelist, is this the Reply To: address from the headers, the From: address, or the

Return-Path: address. It needs to be the return path address that is added as this can be different to the other 2.

Mails coming through the spam filter are not only assessed on the source address, it is content as well that gives the score to mark specific mails as spam. That's why some mail from worldstart.com is marked as spam, and others are not

I need help in determining what they mean and how I set about determining which address is which and how I reveal it.

I use MS outlook by the way.

Thanks in anticipation of your advice.