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back to article Enraged AT&T spam filter eats legitimate mail

Finding fewer emails in your AT&T spam folder? It may be a mixed blessing. AT&T appears to have implemented new spam filters that are catching legitimate emails - but provide no warning to the intended recipients. Over the past week, internet service providers, individual email senders and customers of AT&T-controlled email …

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  1. Morely Dotes
    Paris Hilton

    It's called "karma"

    AT&T refuses to act on spam reports, so seeing their customers - the people who make it possible for them to stay in the ISP business - suffering due to yet another "management" disaster at AT&T cause a bit of schadenfreude.

    Paris, because she's as smart as AT&T's management, and somewhat more decorative.

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  2. Peter
    Thumb Down

    AT&T? So what's new?

    Funny, AOL has been doing this same thing for *years* and no one has complained one bit!

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  3. kain preacher

    no e-mail no spam

    THe worlds first %100 spam filter. Oh you want legit e-mail ??? Well this is the perfect excuse to give to your boss. The e-mail didn't get there. Why are you using our e-mail service for business any ways .

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  5. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Flame

    ISPs suck

    Anyone who relies on content-based spam filters should shut up about their mail being lost. It's their fault for expecting a machine to remove spam rather than holding the senders accountable. E-mail has degraded into one big "Just Hit Delete (for me)" pile of crap.

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  6. Erik Aamot

    I was waiting ..

    It's been freakin' unreal .. original main account @sbcglobal.net was running 70+ spam on weekdays, down to 5 or so per diam now

    second, but most used internet identity had about the same amount, and now, some days ZERO SPAM ..

    remember, on the internet it's AT&T Yahoo! .. pop.att.yahoo.com

    wasn't there an article the other day about Yahoo!mail being the source of 80%+ of all SPAM ?

    eh .. at least it's paying customers aren't getting the systems shit now ... eat that Gmail !

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  7. C. Fuhrman
    Thumb Up

    I suspect that ATT are using PBL on SpamHaus

    People with DNS2Go don't have static IP addresses (that's why they use dns2Go). Email should not be coming from dynamic IP addresses. Spam is sent by zombie computers, which are mostly running on dynamic IP addresses. Because home users (also on dynamic IPs) don't install updates, allowing hackers to turn their PCs into spam-sending zombies.

    Maybe ATT finally got a clue and are using SpamHaus' PBL to block the traffic.

    Don't talk to SMTP senders who are on ISPs that say their dynamic IP blocks don't send SMTP except through their local server. This is what PBL is all about. I bet DNS2Go users have been getting a free ride until now.

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  8. Man Outraged
    Flame

    Not just AT&T

    This is a problem I've had for years, and recently Microsoft Office spam filter has started throwing proper business emails inot my Junk folder. Since I get nearly 10,000 spam emails a month I'd much rather have a few false-negatives than search 10,000 emails for a few false positives. I know warnings back to the sender about mail being junked help the spammers, but there's got to be some indication!

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    @Liz in the story

    If you -rely- on email for work then that's your own problem anyway. Email is the most unreliable form of communication. Why people take it so seriously when we have so many other methods of information transmission is beyond me.

    Paris because I'd like to check out her filters ;-)

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @ Erik Aamot

    I have used Yahoo! since introduced email. I use their Spam filter & find I have about

    1000 emails in my Spam folder. They are deleted after a week in the Spam folder, so this doesn't affect me. If someone later contacts me (by phone,) saying I have not replied & I find their mail in the Spam folder, I mark it as NOT-SPAM & the problem is resolved. Yahoo! Rock!

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  11. Kurt
    Thumb Up

    AT&PEE

    AT&PEE is #1 on my list of companies not to do business with... The users not receiving email will learn that too.

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    ATT Spambotamus

    About 6 months ago my att account had an order of magnitude increase in incoming spam, not clear why, must have hit someone's button. The ATT mail servers also seem to go down at least once a day (I presume by design), the mail folder size is tiny (although they did expand it several months ago, so that now several hundred spams can fit in instead of only 50 or 60).

    I've pretty much given up on them, and will give them the axe after switching hundreds of accounts over to a redirected domain that *I* control, not some privacy hating spam spewing corporation (ATT gets blocked periodically by other domains due to failing to control spam emissions. I no longer send outbound email through ATT, tired of having email blocked.).

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  13. ecsd

    They block and don't inform

    They give a URL for providers to get unblocked. I used it, they said they unblocked us, and then blocked us again. I used the form again and their robot said "you're not blocked." And a blocked user got their bounce header to us showing we were in fact still blocked. AT&T provides no means to determine WHY an address is being blocked, and what with their refusal to unblock us because they don't know they're blocking us, I think it's time to float a class-action lawsuit.

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