Spam not marked as [-SPAM-]

[#1]

The last 6 spam emails arrived with X-Spam: Yes in the message header.

Recent Plusnet Forum notification emails still contain dmarc=fail but did not contain X-Spam: Yes

Here is a snip from a spam email header that worked :

X-Spam: Yes
X-Original-Recipient: destination@account.plus.com
X-CMAE-Envelope: MS4xfOwUG/gA4TfhJRPHSoqGjPF0yYoliC5rjlH2pgT/wXQESaxdVY5T9I8mC35os+nn00VAr04qNpHNsACuXWBQPfD1GQhhQIFL4hToq5uWv8hMMbONZrdd
 zIEvNpmu4sbPbHV3udvdffddlIQfJHHGjydXbcyUy/J3OaCrDgGzxk4YjFog7pf5C0PfSeuop11Rpj+isd218/RhmiZoDIeimpkfOwSYyzCjDKxsa2u4zz0b
 jMPcv8zZjs4vPXw35KSfkMBSl/PfsuKJBS/+MtqrpeM=
X-pn-pstn-db:" Spam 99
X-PN-Virus-Filtered: by PlusNet MXCore (v5.00)
X-PN-Spam-Filtered: by PlusNet MXCore (v5.00)
Subject: Survey Registration Confirmed

[#2]

A lot of technical discussion here that's way above my pay grade. Question: is PN doing anything about this? I've gone from virtually no spam, not even marked [Spam], to multiple items a day all unfiltered.

[#3]

A lot of technical discussion here that's way above my pay grade. Question: is PN doing anything about this? I've gone from virtually no spam, not even marked [Spam], to multiple items a day all unfiltered.

[#4]

Per subject

• what is the cause?
• any resolution likely?

Getting multiple spam emails everyday for the last 10 days or so and increasing, none of which are marked as SPAM. All look very much like obvious spam. Header inspection typically yields something like 

• X-Spam: Yes
• X-Pn-Virus-Filtered: by PlusNet MXCore (v5.00)
• X-Pn-Pstn-Db: " Spam 99 
• X-Cm-Score: 100.00
• X-Pn-Spam-Filtered: by PlusNet MXCore (v5.00)
• X-Spamd-Result: default: False [24.59 / 5.00]; DBL_SPAM(6.50)

Full headers attached (minus personal identification). Have been content for number of years with handling of spam (default plusnet handling with aggressiveness setting of 4) without having to do very much white/black listing and without having to resort to processing via local mail client

[#5]

The change in behaviour began on or just after 20/10/2025 when I started this thread on the same topic :

https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Spam-not-marked-as-SPAM/td-p/2026611

[#6]

It would seem that plusnet and/or greenby have effectively just turned off any spam marking triggers in their service.

As others above, a few months ago I suddenly started receiving repeated spam/phising emails which weren't even trying to be good enough to get past a competent filter.

The email headers show that they were rejected by the faked email address domain owners as not being from a valid server.  And yet they were still forwarded to me.

These should have been a hard reject.  No need for any fuzzy spam categorisation.

I also see emails that have X-Spam: Yes which have not been flagged as spam

spf=fail (mail.enmail.co: domain of wemkqucfjbam@oecd.org does not designate 217.16.223.153 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=wemkqucfjbam@oecd.org;
dmarc=fail reason="No valid SPF, No valid DKIM" header.from=oecd.org (policy=reject)

X-Spamd-Result: default: False [8.23 / 5.00];
X-Spam: Yes

[#7]

No one has had the courtesy to communicate the changes to the spam filtering.

But [-SPAM-] in the Subject does appear to be dead, superseded  by X-Spam: Yes in the email header.

I have revised my MS Outlook rules and Thunderbird filters to detect X-Spam: Yes in the email header fields.

It is utterly shameful that there has been no statement about this change and it has been left to
curious customers to reverse engineer the changes made by our supplier.

[#8]

I also have messages where it doesn't even look like the system attempted to do a dmarc check or generate a spam score.

So nothng for my email client to check and filter on.

I suspect that this is because they are duplicate messages (of obvious spam) sent at the same time to different addresses (I have multiple) and once the system accepted one, it didn't bother checking the rest.

Which is stupid.  It should at least have kept the same score/assessment even in it didn't want to do the work of checking it again.

[#9]

Indeed it behaves like a an email server farm that does not have the same spam filter build on every device.

[#10]

Can I expect a comment from Plusnet on this issue? If not I’ll contact Customer Service

[#11]

@Leftshark

You'd hope PN would comment but there are numerous topics about this spam problem on this forum but I don't think any of them give a clear response from PN about why this gross spam filter failure has occurred or when it's likely to be corrected.

As for contacting Cust. Serv. I'll be surprised if they can help you either.  They'll probably blame it on the migration process.  Be aware though that there are numerous replies from Superusers on this forum that say Cust. Services tell you stuff that's just not true.

Of course, your mileage may vary.