Spam filter discarding emails despite discard being "off"

[#1]

Hi all,

I disabled the force9/plus.net spam filtering years ago, because it was deleting too much of my wanted (including business) email. However, given the ongoing unreliability of the webmail platform, I have found myself spending more than an hour every day just trying to sort out the spam, so I have gone back to trying the spam filter.
Given the previous problem with losing wanted mail, I have deliberately disabled the "discard obvious spam" function, which means I should be receiving *all* emails sent to me addresses, just with some of them marked as spam. However, the amount of email I am receiving (including that marked/filtered as spam) has decreased by ~90%. Given that ~25% of what I'm receiving marked as spam isn't spam (with the lowest aggressiveness setting), I am concerned that some of the mail which is not reaching me at all is also wanted mail.
Any ideas how I actually force the spam filter to deliver *all* email to me, just with tags or filtered into folders?
Thanks, Bernie

[#2]

I believe "Discard obvious spam" has an effect only on messages which pass source reputation checks. Messages from servers failing the latter will still be refused. If an individual server is incorrectly rated it is possible to get the reputation of that server reset. Do you have a record of sending MTAs from which non-spam messages are being refused?

However in general if non-spam email is being refused I think the only solution is to turn filtering off.

With filtering on, if non-spam messages are being incorrectly flagged and moved to the spam folder, using the Webmail "Not spam" reporting button should help improve the filter performance.

[#3]

Thanks David,

I hadn't picked up on the description of the 1st level filtering which is applied when you enable spam filtering. This is somewhat disappointing, but at least now I know what is going on. Funnily enough, I cannot give you any details of emails failing to reach me because of this stage, because they never reach me ... (unless the sender gets a helpful error message, and has the time, motivation and alternative contact mechanisms to let me know). Certainly I know that I have encountered problems with such reputation filtering in the past with unknown organisations as dodgy as BT and University of Surrey ...
I don't expect perfect filtering out of the box (or ever) - It was my aim to work on the spam filtering performance using the spam/not-spam buttons, as well as white/blacklisting, but this is only possible for emails which get to me in the first place.

Let's hope there's a fix for the webmail instability and poor performance on the horizon!

Cheers,

Bernie

[#4]

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@spraxyt wrote:

...  using the Webmail "Not spam" reporting button should help improve the filter performance.

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Makes absolutely no difference what-so-ever... I tried that a while back but it never worked, I even tried it with something specific that was always being put in the rubbish/Junk, I tried that action multiple times (Forget now)  10 maybe 15 times or more on that one item, absolutely no change, so gave up... As I've now done with almost everything on Pn requiring refinement or control.

I just login to Webmail once a week or so to look in the junk for such things then manually move them out.

I've also given up any hope of Plusnet ever updating its software to incorporate user filters...

It is all very depressing...  😞

Ax

[#5]

Putting things in the spam/not-spam folders won't immediately make a change, it needs to learn over time so multiple emails need this doing with.

[#6]

Not in my experience with a specific mail address many many times, nor with a number of mailings many many times.

It never stopped dumping in the spam/junk/whatever. That's why I gave up and went manual.

The bottom line still is... Your possible hit and miss method, is no substitute for the tried and much used/tested over the years of the "User configurable filter".

Freenetname/Madasafish had them, I'd been using them for a very long time without any problems until you folks subsumed it all into your less than able system.

I mean, you can't get much simpler than...

If to contains "fredz@myaddress.co.uk" then Move to Inbox.

Etc...

It has been hinted that filters are coming, but at this rate of no progress we'll all be dead before it happens.

Ax

[#7]

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@Chris wrote:

Putting things in the spam/not-spam folders won't immediately make a change, it needs to learn over time so multiple emails need this doing with.

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How about the whitelist? Shouldn't that work without extra training? I'm still getting things marked as spam despite being whitelisted!
Bernie

[#8]

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How about the whitelist?

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Now that's worth a question...

As I've entered this arena from another place, I have absolutely no idea how to create a Whitelist in the Plusnet Webmail UI.

Anyone like to offer some hints please?

Thanks

Ax

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[#9]

The white list is not located within the webmail interface. It's in the Spam tab of Manage my Mail, PlusNet Member Center -> email settings.

[#10]

Ah! No chance then, I've been dragged over from Freenetname/Madasafish and the Plusnet Member Center doesn't accept FNN/Madas names or passwords.

Ax

[#11]

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@arturox wrote:

Not in my experience with a specific mail address many many times, nor with a number of mailings many many times.

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Just to be fair, to show I'm not just a GOM. and to illustrate how it fails... I've just repeated the experiment.

Over a period of time, I've sent over 100 postings to myself with a "particular address" and later I've logged in and every single one has been manually noted by me as "Not Spam".

I would have thought if this methodology is supposed to learn/work, that on postings number 101, 102, 103 etc, it should have by now learned that "particular@myaddress.co.uk" (obviously it wasn't that)  is "Not Spam" and not continued to put it in the Junk box...

Ax

GOM = Grumpy Old Man.

[#12]

So... Is this Webmail "NotSpam" facility reallly supposed to learn that a particular thing/address is Not Spam?

Or is it just a  smoke & mirrors job?

Ax

[#13]

It does learn, however it takes more than single reports to do so.

[#14]

What exactly do you mean by that, it's a bit vague?

If I've told it way in excess of 100 individual times, and I've told it in blocks of them, that  xxx@myaddress is Not Spam, why is it not taking note, it must be an exceedingly dumb and useless thing... (If it actually exists).

How many is enough? 200, 1,000, 1,000 000 ?

If it exists, and it takes even as many as 100 it is completely useless.

Has anyone here, ever had it work?

The silence is palpable.

Ax

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Full quote of preceding post removed as per Forum rules.

[#15]

xxx@myaddress

Are you trying to remove *your* email address from being marked as sending spam, or the incoming mails to you?

Apologies for the vagueness but there is no definitive number, if the sender is being reported as spam by other users then this will not be removed and will continue to be tagged as spam.