AT&T's Spam Filter Gets A Bit Too Aggressive
from the why-no-recourse? dept
You can certainly understand why ISPs offer spam filters. It's a service for users who don't want to be totally bombarded with spam. But what I've never understood is that these ISPs rarely give the user a chance to circumvent the spam filter themselves. If most people want to ignore it and assume all spam is spam, then so be it. But what if some users want to make sure no legit emails are getting through? Witness the latest chatter about AT&T's "upgraded" spam filter that is apparently eating up a ton of legitimate emails with no indication to the receiving party. It's surprising that AT&T would do this, knowing (as it must) that back when Verizon became too aggressive with its spam filters, it lost a class action lawsuit and had to pay out a few million dollars to annoyed users. Either way, it's a reminder not to use your ISP's email solution.
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It blocked our outbound Sneakemail... by Anonymous Coward on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 4:56pm
which strikes me as more than a little incompetent. Sneakemail is vehemently anti-spam. That's why we use it.
~ me
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Re: It blocked our outbound Sneakemail... by Anonymous Coward on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 5:00pm
Most ISP will block outbound mail that uses port 25.
Now I know that AT&T Will allow it, but you must tell them to Remove Port 25 Blocking.
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by Wolf on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 5:57pm
"But what if some users want to make sure no legit emails are getting through?"
Might this have been written a little more clearly?
Like "but what if some users want to make sure legit emails are not being filtered out?"
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by Anonymous Coward on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 6:14pm
And yet emails with "Rep1icaWatches" or "V1agraCia1is" in the re line get through --
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It's not just the biggies by Bryan Price on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 6:37pm
I get free hosting through an old school friend. He has the spam filters so tight that half of what I want won't get through the filters, and yet plenty of spam goes right through. No spam folder to look through, if the email is on a blacklist, it just drops the connection. And if his system determines that it's apam, it doesn't deliver it. If it thinks it might be spam, it puts a nice warning on the subject. Nice even on those that really aren't spam.
And I was thinking that AT&T was my ISP. Actually, it was, but AT&T sold the whole smear to Comcast for Craptastic service.
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More Please. Good Stuff by Amanya Wannahearfrom on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 10:08pm
That tip you left at the end of article about not using ISP email solutions. That was very telling, in an arena I was unfamiliar. Thank you.
I suggest more of that, do not fear telling what we already know (some will always know) but tell us to remind us, and inform, as you really ARE (whoa!) more informed than average tech-joe. Therefore you enlighten many with your little added views, as long as they are not turned into "You should" but left nice and general, just what you are familiar with.
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ISP Mail is not a bad thing. by Nick on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 10:38pm
"Either way, it's a reminder not to use your ISP's email solution."
As an ISP, I've got to relay that I'm insulted. I work VERY hard to ensure our spam filters are as accurate as possible while maintaining a low false positive rate. I also feel very strongly that automatic spam deletion should ALWAYS be OPT IN ONLY.
Perhaps using a large ISP's mail solution may be problematic, but if you have a small ISP don't just ignore their mail solution.
We are a small ISP, but we spend a lot of money on anti-spam software & subscriptions; and find that our filtering is often more accurate than that provided by hotmail & yahoo mail - yet end users insist on using poorly filtered "freemail" services because "it has good spam filtering".
Half the battle is in choosing the right software. Here's a tip: it isn't Spam Assassin. SA is quite possibly the *worst* choice you can make for anti-spam. It's terribly inaccurate, and the learning procedures don't work very well. On top of that, it requires gobs of CPU to run.
The biggest shortcoming of SA is that it's open source. While I am a big supporter of open source, what is normally a good thing works against SA. The spammers have programmers too. They go to the same site that mail server admins use, download the same source, then figure out how to worm their way right through the tests.
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at$t by rkme on Mar 25th, 2008 @ 11:42pm
I have a screen shot of an at$t employee and myself in im at dsl online help. I had been waiting for a key to unlock some software and at$t blocked my whole acct. and couldn't tell me why because of security reasons. I had to ask "who's security"? I explained that if it wasn't for me the acct. wouldn't exist. I asked him if it got stuck in the spy vac. Took me 3 hours (and the week they held it) but I got the key. Now I'm trying to get the upgrade key. AT$T blocked my yahoo mail acct.too. But as you all said there's hot horny teens and dogs available in my inbox. What a joke. I paid for the software I'll probably get sued too.
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ORDB by Michael Armstrong on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 7:40am
Well, there is also the fact that ORDB, which was retired in December 2006 just set their systems to return false-positives. It seems there are some sysadmins that haven't removed ORDB from their filtering and the ORDB folks are tired of it.
Couldn't you just see AT&T having used ORDB for their filtering but never bothered to remove it when it was retired?
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Yep... by Lexrst on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 7:52am
I have been fighting with AT&T for the last couple weeks trying to get a mail server I administrate off their 'improved' RBL. Every time I talk to them they want to know my AT&T account info. I AM NOT AN AT&T CUSTOMER... I just want to send mail *to* AT&T's customers. This is apparently a foreign concept to them.
I finally told one of the tech support reps that *he* was the AT&T customer I was trying to send mail to. Even that tactic failed.
Part of the problem is that even though mail was failing to *all* AT&T domains (swbell.net, sbcglobal.net, att.net,etc), they kept insisting that all those domains had their own individual mail server systems. If that's the case, how come all the bounce messages refer to att.net?
Morons.
Their employees have absolutely no sense of customer service.
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Re: Yep... by hubbax on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 8:21am
http://worldnet.att.net/general-info/bls_info/block_admin.html
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by abusive on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 9:27am
Yes most solutions don't allow users to claim suspect emails as not spam this is frustrating, and you still get the Watch and Viagra spam as the previous poster stated. Meaning that, with all their efforts and pain and misery they cause with filters its all for not. Or its an allowed known server ignored by the filter possibly a customer of the ISP thats blacklisting your church social newsletter.
Look for another provider or even a free service like Gmail.
Admitted world high volume emailer Scott Richter is some how linked to scamming people into so called free ringtones and collecting his money through who??? you Guessed it verison, at$t, sprint after they take their cut. Alleged by CBS news
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/22/eveningnews/main3867197.shtml
http://www.yout ube.com/watch?v=FVfIKsummxo
Have a happy
-Abusive
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Same problem here by Brian on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 10:17am
I'm am getting so frustrated with sending mail to any sort of AT&T domain. I work for a small financial services firm and we run our own exchange server internally. In the past 2 weeks, I have had dozens of emails bounced from att.net, ameritech.net and sbcglobal.net mailboxes because we have been placed on the RBL. Problem is, I check all of the RBLs and my domain and IP are no where to be found.
I've submitted this to ATT and they tell me that we are unblocked and in fact have never been blocked.
Then another message gets bounced 20 min later!!!! Argh... They really need to start communicating across their own domains to solve these problems. I've got frustrated users and no suggestions for them at this time.
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by Josh on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 10:51am
if you are being blocked you need to fill out http://worldnet.att.net/general-info/bls_info/block_admin.html like was posted before.
Also if spamguard is checking your mail you can turn it off in the mail preferences.
You can also log into your webmail account at yahoomail.com and check the bulk folder to make sure your mail isnt in there. If it is, check the check box to the left and click "Mark" which will mark it as not spam
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by Brian on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 11:17am
Josh -
Not sure if you were responding to me or the world, but I did fill out one of those forms @ http://www.att.net/bls_rbl. That's how I got an emailed response from them telling me I had never been blocked. Interesting thing is that the email they sent me only referred to bellsouth.net and att.net, while my bounces have been coming from ameritech.net and sbcglobal.net addresses.
Sounds to me like someone at AT&T pressed the wrong button.
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Comcast does the same thing. by Tony Yarusso on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 5:27pm
Only after someone contacted me about my lack of response to something did I find out that Comcast was blocking and deleting mail too, with no way to see what messages were blocked nor manually whitelist addresses. I managed to contact their support techs, and their response was basically "you didn't want that mail - trust us".
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AT&T Spam Filter by fastoy on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 7:54pm
I intentionally route my e-mail through bellsouth.net to take advantage of their spam filters. If anything, I have perceived that their filters, while still good, have been somewhat LESS effective over the last couple of weeks. I've attributed that to new tactics by the spammers. In any event, my bellsouth.net account has a Mail Guard folder that holds 7 days of e-mails considered as spam so that I can review them.
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AT&T (attglobal.net) by Terry on Mar 26th, 2008 @ 11:53pm
I use an attglobal account. It offers me options that I can take or not. For example
1. Use the ISP auto-filtering or opt out of it
1.a. if yes, deliver spam stamped with *Suspected Spam* or
1.b. move to an accessible spam folder for a 2 day retention
2. Create a few filters of my own based on From, To, Subject, Received, Message body - contains/does not contain - test value
[AND size restraints]
[AND date after / before]
Then various actions
3. Create a block list for blacklisting
4. Create an accept list for whitelisting
5. Out of Office message
The user accessible spam folder has options to report false positives and move them to the inbox.
Now I don't know if all that applies across the board to all AT&T offerings - I know there are several - but I thought it would be useful to inject a few deflationary facts into the hot air.
(Of course, I also use MailWasher as a front end to mop up any spam that evades the filters, but that is under 1%).
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Re: by Gelcube on Apr 8th, 2008 @ 11:08am
Brian, try this one...
I finally got off AT&T's draconic blacklist for their internal domains (such as swbell.net, att.net, etc.), but customers who have their domains hosted by at-at are still rejecting our email. Why can't this mega corporation get their act together? I swear I'm about to go postal.
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AT&T BS! by Steve B on Apr 11th, 2008 @ 7:11am
The mighty AT&T still think they are the only game in town. Poor service, 30 minutes of recordings to MAYBE get to a human on this side of the world. It is a crock!
I had a dedicated dial up line for years First they throttle the data from 56k to 28.8 (on a good day) then the line got static & cut out. The service was so messed up I couldn't even pay my bill online at home. After trip after trip by service who couldn't find the noise. I finally just had them cut the lines & I am now using Verizon wireless Broadband (At&t has no DSL in my area either)
They just all around SuCK!
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Spam-blocking filter by Jessika on Apr 14th, 2008 @ 2:00am
I use Gafana.com as a mail client that blocks spam. And I would say that it bloks spam just perfectly - I don't get these stupid "free viagra" or "congratulations you won" messages. Before Gafana I used many other services but none of them was really helpful.
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Spam-blocking filter by Jessika on Apr 14th, 2008 @ 2:38am
I use Gafana.com as a mail client that blocks spam. And I would say that it bloks spam just perfectly - I don't get these stupid "free viagra" or "congratulations you won" messages. Before Gafana I used many other services but none of them was really helpful.
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Re: Spam-blocking filter by Cole on Apr 15th, 2008 @ 5:51am
Oh hi, I also use the same service! For me it also sounds cool - protects me from all possible spam in my mailbox.
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by John on Apr 29th, 2008 @ 3:59am
I get the impression that AT&T's blacklist comprises blocking the world, untill someone requests an unblock.
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