Yahoo! Mail Beefs Up Its Anti-Spam Support
I think, by now, you are all familiar with Mark, our resident anti-spam czar. If not, Mark has graced this blog a number of times before. Most recently he conducted an anti-spam workshop in addition to letting us know how we’re cracking down Lottery scams on our corporate Yodel blog. Today, he’s back with more great news on how he and his team are working to keep you safer for 2009. So without further ado, here’s Mark….
——————————————
At Yahoo!, we take spam seriously. And as I’ve told you before, we’ve got some of the smartest computer scientists in the world working to ensure Yahoo! Mail users receive all the mail they want…and none that they don’t. It’s a huge challenge and the bad guys are always out there trying to make a buck with their scams, but we’re committed to helping keep you safer online.
One way we’re turning up the heat on the spammers is by utilizing even more state-of-the-art technology. Recently, Yahoo!’s anti-spam team has been using a “supercomputer” consisting of thousands of individual PCs — part of our open source Hadoop project — to help detect spammers. We’re teamed up with several top universities on this research, looking for more ways to find and block the bad guys even faster, before they can do their damage.
We’re also out there working with partners big and small to help reduce spam across the Internet. We’ve seen some promising early results from one such company, a startup named Abaca, and our hopes are high that together we can block even more of these messages by looking at spammers’ behavior in addition to the contents of their spammy messages.
Closely related to all of this is that we need to ensure the right messages still get through, that we don’t throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. With the help of our friends at Return Path, we’re relaunching our Complaint Feedback Loop for commercial e-mail companies. With the CFL, legitimate companies receive notification when users mark a message as “spam,” and those companies can then use that feedback to help them fix the problems on their end. For example, a company may have used a confusing subject line, or accidentally sent to the wrong mailing list; with the CFL, we can get that information to them so they can quickly correct the problem.
As always, I’ll close with a reminder that, if Yahoo! Mail does let something slip through into the wrong folder — either allowing spam into your inbox or mistakenly putting a good message in your Spam folder — please use the “Spam” and “Not Spam” buttons to let us know. Clicking those buttons sends an immediate and powerful signal to our systems (and to me :) so that we can quickly try to correct the problem. It’s the best way for us to get better, and to continue keeping your e-mail experience great!
Mark Risher,
Anti-Spam Czar
- Subscribe via RSS
- 157 Comments
January 20th, 2009 at 6:13 am
I hope you can control Spam a little better, I get 5 to 9 daily. I do send them to the Spam folder, but I get just as many the next day an on and on. Good Luck
January 21st, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Right on Karen you can read minds!
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:19 am
I wish my emails would make it into my clients spam folder instead of being refused by Yahoo’s mail server
January 26th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
sounds like a similar problem that i am having. last 48 hours all mail sent from my work address to my wife’s yahoo and my own yahoo have never even reached the spam. had this checked by my own IT guys no problem with my work mail program, just yahoo blocking the mail. what good is spam control if its blocking normal mail.
time to move on after 10 yrs i guess, especially when they dont respond to the feed back.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Is that what’s happening?? I’m pretty new at all this computer stuff, and I have been getting that awful e-mail that keeps telling me that I’ve won tons of money from some foreign country from a relative who died in a car wreck, an airplane crash, and who know what else!!! I keep putting them in that Spam folder, and I now have over 78 of them. I WAS sending them all to the F.B.I. in Washington DC!! My Daughter told me to just put them in the Spam folder, but nothing happens to them. They just STAY there!!! I’m pretty frustrated with this whole mess!!!!
January 28th, 2009 at 11:26 am
LC,
Grieve not fair maiden. I find the average is 10 spam to 1 real, or higher! Since my E-mail is set to permanently reject anything else from the site (after I spam file it) it keeps it under control. Check your settings to ‘tighten up” your mail box. After one weekend off I had over 300 in the spam file. Dump them all!
For problems receiving mail you want, make sure that the E-address is set Accept in your spam filter. I accidentally blocked one of my contacts and and to clear the block so I would recieve it again. God Bless you and all you do,
Larry H.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
How do you set your email to automaticlly reject emails from a source after you mark it as spam? The right emails go into my spam folder. I I keep getting spam from some of the same addresses over and over. It would be great if Yahoo could just block email from an address after I’ve marked it as spam. I’m getting 40 to 50 a day, some from the same addresses. If I can get them blocked, maybe I can get the number reduced. Is there a way to totally block them or do they just keep dumping in the spam folder?
February 9th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
For Larry H. ~
Thank you SO much for the information. You have told me more than ANYONE I know. I will check the addresses in my Spam folder, then add them to the ‘blocked’ file. I sure hope that will do it for all those SPAM letters. Here I was hoping that I WAS RICH, but….no such luck.. Oh well, I AM rich when it comes to having good friends and e-friends like you all. Thank you, again. You are most kind, and definately a Gentleman!
LindaCarol
January 20th, 2009 at 6:16 am
I subscribe to the daily update from “Cute Overload,” a very popular website. 7 times out of 10..it ends up in Spam. I dutifully click the ‘not spam’ button…..then, the next day, it ends up in spam. Always, always, always.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:46 am
Try adding the sender’s address to your address book (there is a button next to the address when you read their email). That should mark it as “safe” and it will be delivered to your Inbox even if other recipients mark it as spam.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Great news regarding the CFL, can you let us know the when you will be taking applications again?
January 20th, 2009 at 7:33 am
And I just won $1,5000,000 in the British lottery, according to the message in yesterday’s Inbox. Always room for improvement, but on a positive note most spam ends up right where it belongs, in spam.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:57 am
CFL relaunch is great, great news ! When it will be back ?
January 20th, 2009 at 8:24 am
The CFL is now live at: http://feedbackloop.yahoo.net/
January 20th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Interesting. Today more spam got thru to my Inbox than ever before.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Not sure your Spam filter is getting any better. In my case its actually getting worse. I’ve got more spam the past few days then I usually get in a week or two
January 20th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I subscribe to the daily update from “Cute Overload,” a very popular website. 7 times out of 10..it ends up in Spam. I dutifully click the ‘not spam’ button…..then, the next day, it ends up in spam. Always, always, always.
You can fix this by adding the Sender to your Contacts. Then it will go to your Inbox
January 21st, 2009 at 9:15 pm
I already tried that. It does not work. Sender IS in my Contacts….email still reverts into Spam folder after I click “not spam” for the millionth time.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:10 am
If you add the sender to your safe list, it will over write all the filters. Maybe you are not doing it properly, or the sender is not using the same address for communication.
January 24th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Your reply about adding to the safe content overriding the filters is incorrect. Secondly to those that suggested turning on Spam Guard it is on. Thirdly the person who said Google does not have the spam Yahoo does is correct. And to those who are getting 10 Spam messages a day you don’t have a problem. I get 10 spam messages an hour. I have set up a second spam filter and I am getting many. I have taced the Spam mesages and found that most of them are coming from Japan, Asia, Australia and other foreign countries. It looks like these addresses could be identified and blocked.
January 24th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Since I have been using Yahoo mail since the 90’s I think I know how to set up in safe list. Certain messages from the same sender using the same email address on the same computer goes to SPAM and others go to the inbox.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I also set up a filter. THAT also does not work.
January 24th, 2009 at 9:19 am
I agree
January 20th, 2009 at 9:47 am
You absolutely need to add the ability to search the SPAM mailbox.So often I need to find something that someone sent and it takes me long minutes rifling through the thousands of spam messages to find it. Why can’t I use search!
January 20th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Personally, I’d rather have spam occasionally than allow Yahoo, or anyone else, the right to deny every AMERICAN the right of free speech and free press. Surely, adults have the sense to know when to delete a message or close out a spam box.
What idiots we are to let others control rights!
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:49 am
Under “Options”, you have the capability to turn off the redirecting of spam to your spam folder if you want. Or you can subscribe to an email service that does not filter spam at all.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have better things to do than waste our time dealing with spam.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
….I also agree 2 u! every individuals, have there freedom 2 say, everything they want 2 say to others, as long. they know if it is harmful then….
January 20th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Can you add an option to auto delete messages with dates ahead of real life? Invariably I get real messages sent to the Spam folder so I search it on a regular basis. But I’m always wading through 20+ emails that have a date somewhere in 2038. Obviously the spammers are doing this to make sure their message is always at the top. I want to have an option saying that if an email is more than X number of days ahead in the future that it doesn’t even go the spam folder and gets automatically deleted. No legitimate email is going to come from a server that is that far out of whack with the current time/date.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I agree with this, and the comment about searching spam. These are my two biggest gripes with Yahoo’s mail interface. I need to be able to search the spam folder to see if I’ve missed a particular message, and I don’t want to see a pageful of emails from thirty years in the future.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
[...] morning ReturnPath and Yahoo announced the new Yahoo FBL has gone live. Signups are being accepted at http://feedbackloop.yahoo.net/. [...]
January 20th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
The problem is that Yahoo blocks TOO much. I have missed out on important emails because of the faulty spam protection, so I have to go through my spam folder with a fine toothed comb so I don’t miss out on a business message, etc. It sort of defeats the whole purpose of a spam filter to begin with.
I’ve had numerous issues – and like the person above, I am on several mailing lists that alert me of things, and no matter how many times I click “Not Spam” it always goes back there. Yet, stupid messages that stay at the top of my inbox until I delete them with a “sent” date of 1/1/36 (yes, that’s January 1st, 2036) aren’t caught.
Let’s put it this way – if I get an email from oprah.com, I want it – but I don’t want Viagra ads dated 20 years in the future. I don’t comment on stuff like this often (only here because it appeared as a link in my Yahoo homepage) but both of those things should be very easy – I mark a sender as No Spam, I should get their email. Someone sending spam with a date 20 years in the future? Should be marked as spam.
I’m constantly worried I’m going to miss something, so I’ve taken to using a Gmail account for crucial stuff I cannot miss because I’ve been dealing with Yahoo and spam for years. It’s great you have super computers working on this – but they aren’t doing a very good job, and if they can’t tell when I mark something “no spam” it’s not spam and that messages sent from 20 years in the future aren’t valid, then you guys are wasting your money.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I agree with a few things Adam said.It was kinda true.I never got spam at all,except that I sent wrong emails then a reply showed up”Mailer_demom….’or something like that,I mark it spam,then it come in spamed ,after some time then they come in to my inbox.I joined a few web…let’s say it like this.
I join a game called meetoto which needs email adds to work.Every time,they said they have sent something to me which my Yahoo! toolbar never detected.Luckily,I will always check my email,so I won’t miss a thing.
My mom used my email add to get emails from my aunt,she aslo use it to sign in a few web, which came in….spam.No matter how I mark as not spam, I come in inbox,later,come in spam.
My inbox change the last time I went in,it kinda scared me,it aslo beacame slower to load,why’s that so ?I hope yahoo can give me an explanation.
Well, I hope yahoo can make it better for us all ,I do ,really.
January 20th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I dutifully move mail to spam and it continues to appear in my inbox. Same emails from same email addresses over and over again. Can “my” spam blocker be broken ? Is there a secret to calling it spam so it automatically goes to spam instead of inbox?
January 20th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
If you’re the anti-spam Czar I hope there’s a coup very soon! Your mail filters do not work at all – forget all the other nonsense and just fix them. Try this experiment – filter all your emails with “viagra” in the subject line to the trash – send yourself an email with “viagra” in the subject line – it comes straight into your inbox! Are you happy with that situtation Czar? It’s a disgrace. Yahoo! should be ashamed.
January 20th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
How’s this – you lose $1 off your annual salary for every Viargra email that gets through my mail filters? How long would it take you to fix then?
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Dear Alex,
I hope Yahoo stops offering free email programs to angry people like you!
And one more thing: If you do spell Viagra correctly, it will get caught up by filters ;)
Just appreciate the hard work that Yahoo anti spam team is doing to make the Internet a better place for us and stop being angry…that would help too :)
January 20th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I agree with the comments above on the future-dated spam. Does it REALLY take “some of the smartest computer scientists in the world” to implement a rule that mail dated so far ahead will not be delivered to our inboxes? It will not solve the whole problem, but it will be something. And yes, why does mail marked “not spam” or with a contact list address be considered spam or not get through to an inbox? Seems logical to me, and last thing I knew, computer language operated best on simple logic. Thanks for letting me vent.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
This article is a cruel joke, right?
Today — for the second day within a two-week period — I’ve been DELUGED with spam, with MANY HUNDREDS of seemingly obvious spam messages (all peddling fake degrees) shooting right through Yahoo!’s spam filter.
If you can’t figure out a way to recognize and screen this obvious stuff, what the hell good are you?
January 20th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Hear, hear Bill. I say get rid of the the “smartest computer scientists in the world” and get a few moderately competent guys in to fix some pretty simple and obvious flaws.
January 20th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
While I agree Yahoo could do a lot better in stopping spam, there is one very important rule in helping stop spam. NEVER post your email address online anywhere and I mean anywhere. This is how your email gets in spammer lists.
For example I have two yahoo mail accounts, one that is public and one that I keep private. The personal account I post online (forums, blogs, etc) while the other yahoo account (private) has never been posted anywhere online. This email account has NEVER received any spam in 2+ years. I use this account for critical stuff only.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
BS!
January 20th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
For 3 days I have been unable to log onto my yahoo account from my home desktop computer. It is not an isp problem. I can log on via cables in other parts of the house with my laptop.
It does not seem to be a virus. I have cleared the cache.
The problem computer is verisigned.
I emailed yahoo for help three days ago – no response.
What other options are there?
January 20th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Use gmail.
January 20th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
an irreplaceable aspect of spam battling with be community effort… people have speak up and report spam!
January 20th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
For the most part, I’m happy with the anti-spam efforts by YMail. I now get only about 30 spam messages a week, compared to the 300 per week I used to get. The ones I get now are almost always “future dated”, with dates 3 or 4 days in the future, or from 2038. It should be relatively simple (though I’m not a programmer) to filter out future-dated messages. Legitimate users cannot future-date emails (right?), so they can only come from spammers. If they could be filtered out, I’d get virtually NO spam.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Yahoo gets more spam then a can of spam!
I have won so much money and have the best penis in town from all the spam!
This guy needs a new day job!
January 20th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Your spam filters do not work!
January 20th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Of course spam is there 1 letter on week,
but on Russian services it more more more more ……
I`m wish Y! Mail be a Leader, best in e-mail services.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Y! Mail It`s free & working good.
You pay on others bus. serv. & revise 10 spam letter in a day.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:13 am
I am tired of getting spam, from these other countries, I am getting 2 and 3 a day, how can we stop this Shirley
January 21st, 2009 at 5:14 am
Make it easier to earse email and add to block folder.. Also why not allow blocking of a domain instead of just an address. Most of my junk mail comes from 8 domains with an unlimited number of addresses. Being able to block the doamin would end 90% of my junk mail. I already have almost 300 email addresses blocked and mostly from the eight domains.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Just put the domain in the block field. that’ll fix it.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:28 am
Why are we here if Yahoo is not the best? Helpful critique was asked for – not slamming.
1. Occasionally when I email something to myself, I know to always look for it in Spam despite having put myself into my Contact list. I’m mailing from my Ip and yet it’s considered spam.
2. I used to be able to copy and paste the address of a page into an email rather than save it to favorites or bookmark. I can’t since the changes to the new & improved Yahoo came out.
3. Sometimes when I open something in draft, despite saying 100KB
(for example), I find that all of the updates I did have disappeared and only the original is there -maybe 5KB worth. I have to send it to myself
(and retrieve it from Spam), in order to make sure I don’t lose any of it. The downside is that Yahoo wants to test me to see if I’m a spammer because I’ve sent so many emails in a short time.
It would be wonderful if any of these three problems could be fixed – if not all.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:42 am
better spam control???? B/S!
January 21st, 2009 at 6:52 am
Spam makes the experence of the enternet very unpleasant and complicates the process.
February 6th, 2009 at 4:11 am
I agree with you
January 21st, 2009 at 10:06 am
If you’re making it better, well good for you & us.
So far the spam filter works great, no complaints.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:41 am
I’ve seen a sharp decline in spam in the past year. It is rare for me to get more than 5-6 per week. I often only get 1 or 2 over the course of a week and I rarely miss emails that I’ve signed up to get. This is compared to a year ago when I was getting 20+ spam emails per day.
My one complaint is that there is no longer the option to add spam senders to the blocked sender list by clicking the spam button. I don’t like adding spam senders to the blocked sender list manually, so I’d love to see this option brought back.
I almost didn’t recognize the spam czar without his furry hat. :)
January 21st, 2009 at 12:01 pm
For those of you who see emails from 2030, try turning on SpamGuard. It is ON default by maybe you turned it off years ago and dont remember.
In the new Mail:
Go to OPTIONS – > SPAM -> X Control SpamGuard: Automatically send suspected spam to my Spam folder
that will catch all postdated emails…
January 21st, 2009 at 3:25 pm
“that will catch all postdated emails…”
No it doesn’t. I get several post dated emails in my inbox every week and I’ve never turned off spam guard.
Yahoo’s spam filters simply do not work. Spam gets through to my gmail inbox about once a month. Dozens of spam emails land in my yahoo inbox on a daily basis.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Agreed – no need to be condescending TURN ON SPAMGUARD (if that’s your real name, LOL).
We all have the Spam filter turned on, yet these messages from the 2030’s are still coming.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Why can’t I search and find past emails like I used to be able to? The range now seems to be about a month, whereas previously my search would produce results from years past. For me this is a huge issue. Advice?
January 21st, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Why can’t I search and find old emails like I used to be able to do?
Now the time range has been reduced to about a month it seems. For me this is a crisis. Please advise.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:45 pm
It’s not working. Last couple of days I’ve seen a large increase in spam.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Why does my Gmail account get have one spam message in the Inbox a day, but my Yahoo mail account has 10-20 a day? How could there be such a disparity? Fix that before you create any other new features.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
[...] Yahoo announced that its internal antispam team has been using a “supercomputer” grid made up of [...]
January 21st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I can’t beleive how I STILL get a dozen or more emails daily from people waying they represent Yahoo, The FBI, Fed-Ex, and I have inherited a million dollars or more. ANYONE can see by their return address that they are NOT the FBI as government address end with “.gov”. I cant see h ow ANYONE would fall for ANY of their pranks. I hit everyone of them up with the SPAM button. Yahoo told me to NEVER reply TO them, as that is what they are waiting for, and if you DO…you are on thier NEWEST LIST. Selling ideas is one thing, but taking advantage of anyone like they attempt to, is really roo much
January 21st, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I’m just curious why Yahoo accepts mail, even if they correctly identify it as spam, future-dated more than 24 hours into the future. Every single one of these is spam, and my spam folder is full of them. Having them in my spam folder just means it’s more I have to review to weed out any possible valid e-mails. The future-dated spam should automatically be bounced and never make it to my account… even the spam folder!
January 21st, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Yes, I’m with everyone says he has alot of spam on his yahoo email account and anather like gmail .. have alitil of sapm
But yahoo most famous of each other and prey propaganda disseminated through which
im works in orange company (jordan) and we Provide email hosting service and we have a same problem “spam” but when we change the domain from wanadoo name to orange Diminish the spam becouse this domain “orange” is anew.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I don’t see any improvement. I am getting twice as many SPAM messages and when I designate them as SPAM they still keep coming. I have taken all the suggestions to heart to keep from adding my email to their data bases. I still get a lot of email that is not directed to my address but use wildcard email addresses. Those should be easy to catch and stop.
When I report a phishing email it comes back that yahoo can do nothing as it was not sent from one of the yahoo members.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Personally, I like the spam filtering. Yes, a few messages get through, but it’s no big deal to delete them.
One suggestion, though, is to make sure you can always read email headers without opening the email itself. Often I get a “the message is still loading” error even though I can open the email itself. There are times that I’d feel safer if I could read the headers first.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:39 pm
How about taking one of those geniuses and giving us real IMAP…
No matter what you do apparently, YMail is overrun with Spam…
January 21st, 2009 at 10:15 pm
No offense, but I really doubt why so many people got their inbox full of spam.
I have use the same Yahoo email accounts over years. While a few spam unvoidably will go through the filter, it is very rare and.
As someone else has pointed out already: one should never post their email address public.
Also, I find the alternative email address (included in Yahoo) very useful. I can easily create disposable email address in case I have to submit my email address or post it onto the net. Those disposable email address can be accessed and managed under the same original yahoo email account. When things go wrong, I can simply delete that address.
It works flawlessly for me. I strongly suggest everyone to give a try.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:07 pm
How did you post this message? It says “E-mail (required – never shown publicly)” on form :)
Spammers are way beyond “robot the pages and gather mails” now. There are worms, viruses who collects e-mails and they sell them in bulk.
People give their other mails from other providers publicly and they never get spam to their inbox. How does they manage to do it? That is the question. If a mail provider accepts basic “lottery” spam to inbox, spammers already know it and they will target that mail provider.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:29 pm
I get these Nigerian and English lottery and “you have been left a lot of money. Please contact us.” scams. The ones using the name of an FBI agent are also interesting.
I don’t identify any of them as spam. I put them in a folder I created and eventually complete a report to the FBI. They are patricularly interested in anything using the name of an agent. I met with a couple of special agents about a month ago to discuss certain scams I received. They particularly mentioned there on-line reporting function. The address is http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
January 21st, 2009 at 11:03 pm
There are promises and reality. In reality, my 5 manual setup filters beats Yahoo! anti spam.
Subjects: “lottery”, including “!!!!” (very common Korean spam),”congratulations” and mortgage
Body: Korean charsets in headers.
It catches like 2-6 in a week which should be very educating that your system doesn’t work.
Not just that, we can’t use the industry standard, safe “spamcop.net” too as we can’t forward mails as attachment. Which genius decided to remove that feature?
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:46 am
Not to be too off topic- appreciate the beefed up spam support, but when is the new Sync coming out?
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:29 am
I am daily receiving at least 20 emails asking me to purchase on line medicines for sexual enhancement. I constantly mark these as spam, but they continue to pour in unabated. Can’t you prevent these stupid message from coming?
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:29 am
If you take spam very seriously, then the results of your work are extremely disappointing. I get about 20 spam, and 2 real messages each day. And I’ve tried those “spam” buttons – they do nothing. Nor does creating a filter to delete simple mails such as viagra promotions.
If it were not for the cost of telling people I changed email addresses, I would have moved to gmail! But I’ve started that process and will move unless something gives…soon.
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:56 am
Hi,
While I think the spam filtering generally works, for one project I have worked on, we have a mailing list service which goes through a careful 2-step sign up process to ensure people actually subscribe to the service, and that we don’t spam people. We try hard to make sure our mailing lists are not spam.
However, we often see a few Yahoo users hit “spam” as a means to unsubscribe (even though we provide a quick and clear way to unsubscribe). Understandably users are sceptical of unsubscribe despite our best attempts at credibility and believe they might get put onto another list. Others miss the unsubscribe option. Other see that pressing Spam will just stop that email going to their inbox in the future.
So, whatever you do, please try to address false positives and people using the spam button to “unsubscribe” legitimate emails that they actually signed up for.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:11 am
I cannot receive any e-mails from France – yahoo is blocking orange.fr and wanadoo. Is there any way round this?
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:40 am
[...] of Dharmaraj’s departure from Yahoo, the Yahoo Mail team added their own announcement, as Yahoo Mail has implemented new anti-spam measures, which Yahoo hopes will lead to less attrition from Yahoo to other webmail clients like GMail, and [...]
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:55 am
For the person who asked about blocking domains, that’s possible. I don’t remember the details off hand, but it’s a capability already. What I’d like to see is a button that puts a spam sender, or domain into the blocked list, rather than just a SPAM/NOT SPAM button. The spam filter catches most spam into the bulk folder. I just don’t trust the filter so I look thru BULK anyway, not the emails, just the sender and/or titles. I agree with others who’ve said the SPAM/NOT SPAM buttons don’t seem to have a permanent effect.
Thanks
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:06 am
[...] Risher, Yahoo’s “anti-spam czar,” described the move on the Yahoo Mail blog on Tuesday. He also described other efforts to cut down on spam: One way we’re turning up [...]
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:27 am
I am misionar and I am interested for people. I have a special file in romanian language, excel format, that I send to spams maker. I advise you to prepair diferent kind of files for spam makers. Good fil for you!
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:33 am
Our companies emails are getting blocked by Yahoo recently. These are emails that our customers opted into, and even emails that they are paying to receive. We’re telling our customers to leave Yahoo and get an email elsewhere.
I understand Spam is a huge problem, and it’s a fine line between getting rid of most of it, and not getting rid of non-spam emails, but the current situation at Yahoo isn’t working at all for our company if we can’t send emails to actual customers of ours.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Hate the new format!! I know this doesn’t relate to Spam (which I don’t have much a problem with). But I don’t know where to leave the message that I find the format to be very cumbersome. Trying to access my e-mail has become much harder (not easier) if I can even get into it. I keep having all kinds of problems just trying to read my e-mail. Just my 2 cents.
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
While you are at it, automatically block e-mails from the future. It is one thing to get e-mail that is a few hours in the future as the sender could be in a different time zone. It is quite another to get e-mails from more than 1 day to the year 2038.
I know to automatically delete anything later than 3 hours ahead. At least they have killed the messages dated earlier than the Internet was invented. I used to get a bunch of “new” e-mails dated anywhere from 6 months to 1900 A.D. old.
On the new Yahoo!, I switched back because I spent time having problems with it than I did being able to use it.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Hello!! This is my first time in one of these discussions! :D! Anyways, the spam filter does so work! In fact, it is AMAZING!!
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 pm
[...] to change that perception. Mark Risher, Yahoo’s “anti-spam czar,” posted on the Yahoo Mail blog on Tuesday. He described some of the efforts being used to cut down on spam: One way we’re [...]
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:57 pm
I just sent a new line originating from a windowslive.com address in the UK. It says to please call and gives a +44 70… phone # telling the recipient, please feel free to call. THIS IS FRAUDULENT! The +44 70 numbers are free to the criminals but it costs to callers a lot. They make it look legit by putting Microsoft’s web addresses, etc. on it. Please don’t respond.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 am
In my experience, Yahoo’s spam filter is one of the better ones out there. I appreciate what you are doing to combat spam, and if I can help in any way, I will. Just ask.
Just one suggestion, which others have already made – email with a send date several years in the future should be automatically rejected before the “to” address is even examined – it shouldn’t even go into my spam folder. Delete before routing.
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:55 am
i get so much spam..like 50 aday..are you controlling it
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:03 am
I get a lot of spam apparently from myself. Investigation shows that the from IP address is wrong, from countries like Russia and Turkey.
Since my email address is a yahoo one, it would be good if the spam filter checked mail appearing to come from a yahoo account and rejected any with a false IP address.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:29 am
“I get a lot of spam apparently from myself. Investigation shows that the from IP address is wrong, from countries like Russia and Turkey.”
That is true. TurkTelecom ignores spam complaints.
” it would be good if the spam filter checked mail appearing to come from a yahoo account and rejected any with a false IP address.”
This is where reputation based spam filters come in. Gmail seems to have perfected theirs.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:35 am
Today I got 30 Spams in my inbox, all worth of couple of million dollars. I dont know, how these people get the email addresses.
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:17 am
Yahoo’s spam filters still suck!
Here’s an example from today. Most days are similar or I have more in the inbox. Sometimes it’s equal 419 mails in the inbox and Spam folder when I wake up. Stupid stupid stupid.
Today I have 13 419 scam mails in my Spam folder and 7 in my inbox. Why can’t Yahoo detect the 7 and throw them in my Spam folder too??? The spam I receive at this address is 98% 419 mails and <2% enhancement, and a small fraction of porn. It can’t be that hard for Yahoo to detect a heck of a lot more than 50% to 60% of the 419s and put them where they belong.
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:47 am
Re: spam – I have used my last rule of the 15 you get w/free Yahoo Mail to direct anything that is not addressed to me to the Trash. Why do I get the same SPAM sent to names that only have a letter or two in common with mine? And I agree with the other posters here – the 2036 etc dated mails are ALWAYS spam. Spamguard IS ON – besides the spam in my Inbox,, there is tons in the Spam folder also.
This seems like something you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to fix, if I can set up a rule to fix it.
Thought about upgrading to paid Yahoo mail, but all the complaints here have scared me off. Only the fact that I’ve had the same email address for over 10 years stops me from going to gmail. Good luck to you, you have your work cut out for you!
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 am
how do you stop pop ups and redirect in yahoo???
Rick
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:11 am
May be the day of “email” is over. With twitter and a plethoria of IM’s communication with email has become more bloated, consuming and not very productive. I have thousands of messages in hundreds of boxes. text messaging is still active but today I have “twitter” with that message.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:42 am
I was shocked when I saw the remarks about “IMPROVING SPAM PREVENTION” In my opinion, you’ve made it worse! I’ve received more spam in my mailbox over the past month than I received in the entire previous year! What’s up with that? !!! I mark every spam email as requested but it isn’t getting any better. It’s very annoying having to scroll through the “bull****” ads to get to important email. FIX IT !!!
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:52 am
My wife has the Plus account. She ia having incredible difficulty in sending e-mails. She attempts to send an e-mail but it never goes out. The little “Outlook SEND/Receive Progress” window shows the mail trying to go out and the task bar says “sending message 1 of 8″. Sometimes more sometimes less. If we close outlook and reopen it the e-mail will go out immediately. I am pretty computer literate and maintain our household lan which always works. I can send e-mails from my computer. Any ideas?
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I have a very small home business and I am over run with spam. I have at times had 300 to 500 in a period of a few days. The spammers are using my email and domain address. For example: from info@johndoe.com to info@johndoe.com or from me to me by me. The problem is if I block my own addrees I will not get the real emails from customers that I need. When I forward to abuse, their full headers disappear. I have had real email from customers end up in the spam folder. Therefore forcing me to go through hundreds of the spam to check for real emails from my customers. It would help to be able to forward the full headers to abuse for follow up. I also have had this domain for some time and wonder if it is possible for an update to the older domains to enable the forwarding of these bad emails to your abuse division?
January 24th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Because of the new “type this word to avoid spam” thing, I m not able to send emails from my yahoo account. I m not a spammer. But I m not able to read that stupid picture to understand and type the same letters. with in a week, if this isn’t changed, I m moving to gmail.
January 24th, 2009 at 12:14 am
found the project name. “Captcha” with carnegie mellon univ.
Guys, test it before you launch. Dont test your developers and QA. Test with real users. if they are able to understand that and use it.
I m not able to send any email for the past 2 days.
January 24th, 2009 at 3:44 am
Since you allow me to block 500 addresses, and at least 300 of the 400 I have blocked are from yahoo.com, please give me more than 500 to block. If you cannot do that, have inactive web addresses disappear from my list. I have no way of knowing who is trying to spam me once or 50 times per day
January 24th, 2009 at 8:20 am
I’m getting tons of spam from spammers using a technique that if you preview or read their incoming email, they grab the email address that it was sent to and then start sending additional spam to you using that address as its origin. So, not only am I getting my normal amount of spam, but I’m also now getting spam sent to me from me! And the amount of spam sent to my other Yahoo addresses is increasing also sent from the address that was on that original email I read. What makes this even worse, is that the address this seems to be originating from is a vaild email address that I use for business and have forwarded to Yahoo for reading and organization. It’s not something that I can easily change.
January 24th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Not sure your new Spam filter is working any better than before. In my case, it’s actually been getting worse. I’ve been receiving more sexually-oriented spam the past few weeks than ever before.
January 25th, 2009 at 5:20 am
[...] Read more here: Yahoo! Mail Beefs Up Its Anti-Spam Support | Yahoo! Mail Blog [...]
January 25th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Message from Yahoo, when i tried to reply to an email:
finish sending this message and help us fight spam, please enter the character string as it is shown in the box below.
Trouble seeing this image?
YES YES YES. image is too much messed up for me to send the email/reply to it..
Character string shown:
Why do I have to do this?
This step helps Yahoo! prevent spammers from using Yahoo! Mail, and helps to ensure that your email will be delivered.
Character string verification technology developed in collaboration with the Captcha Project at Carnegie Mellon University.
January 25th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
In recent months, most of my spam has gone directly to my spam folder. About 20 spams a day are starting show up in my inbox. what’s changed? Whatever you were doing right please go back to doing it.
January 25th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
It seems that the spam filter don’t work on weekends. I get tons of spam in my in box on Sat.& Sun., but not during the week. Must be the czar don’t work weekends
January 25th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
What I don’t get is why the same spam e-mails keep being accepted. I need a way to go through my spam folder and mark an e-mail so that it will auto-reject e-mails with the same exact title as the one I mark. Oh sure, things get in to the spam folder appropriately enough. However, 20 copies of the same mail for weeks on end continue to end up there to be sorted through. A spam folder is great, but some ‘auto-reject’ training is what’s needed.
I don’t need gadgety “connections” filters to surface what the system thinks I want. I need *control* over what I see. “Better management” of my inbox starts with you keeping the crap out. Let us add to the autoreject list directly. Even if we have to provide you with two seperate emails linked together to show it really was a spamup, I don’t care. Get the basics down right, then add options, don’t force things on us. You’ve been doing it for YEARS, and its why I only come to Yahoo now to criticize it in hopes they will learn how to treat customers.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:11 am
I also receive numerous spam messages every day. I would say I get about 20 a day. I always mark them as spam. Yet, I get 20 the next day too….. What do you do with these spam notifications?
January 26th, 2009 at 7:55 am
does this work
January 26th, 2009 at 8:01 am
I have tried twice to get help with mt mail…anybody?
January 26th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Can anybody recommend a decent third party spam filter that actually works. I run a small business and get 10 – 15 spam a day. I wouldnt mind paying $100 or so a year that stops spam before it reaches my pc. I have my yahoo account now for about 5 years and cant changeit now .
January 26th, 2009 at 11:24 am
I keep marking items as spam and then put them on my blocked senders list and block their @xyz.com. I still continue to get their emails. WHY????????? If your spam-blocking is working so great, maybe you need to re-evaluate your parameters! S
January 26th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Your spam service is terrible. It gets worse by the day. Clicking on spam is a joke and a waste of time. Please try something new. Your spam system sucks. I get 30 to 40 viagra spams daily. Your spam team is incompetent or your spam program is obsolete and ineffective.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
I am now getting spam that shows it is from me to me……about 12-20 of these daily selling viagra and drugs. Also some of my mail is now showing up unread in the trash rather than the in box….
And then I get the 4-5 daily requests to help people move millions into the USA or that I’ve won some remote lottery…..
It’s really getting worse and worse and worse….
Could sure use some help here…..
January 27th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Not sure why but now every other mail i send from our domain ( ) is now getting ‘deferred’.
its not spam and its pretty annoying.
January 27th, 2009 at 5:05 am
All of these comments are interesting. I have virtually no spam, and the few items that are re-directed to spam are usually items that “could” be considered spam by others. To my knowledge, I also get all of the mail that I’m supposed to. Maybe the solution is to use the disposable addresses. That’s all I use. I never use my original email address, and have any incoming email to that address filtered to delete. I’m VERY happy with this setup.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
When will regular mail search work like it used to? I used to be able to search for mail that was more than a few months old. No more. This question is asked over and over by many different users in various comments section and I’ve never seen it answered. Thanks!
January 27th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Seriously- in the last 6 days I have more acai berry, watch, penis growth and other spam than I’ve had in the entire 20 years I’ve had email. It’s getting worse. Not a clue why- I have my filters on, and even wrote up some additional ones trying to kill the spam..not cool. I came here when I saw my 52nd email of the day- from nz address, headers from ru, and oh yeah, a detail about how I can be Just Like Oprah. not cool.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I just saw the new feature for email chat however I have 2 yahoo email addresses and the one I get the chat on is one that I never use hence I have no contacts, whereas the one I always use does not have chat on it for some reason so why is that the case and how can I change it??
January 27th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I was yesterday harm by yahoo,my box whrere i store all the office information couldn’t open again till now.I happy with this yahoo security programm and i will be in support but please i am peading this company to open that box for me,i promise to be faithful and cooperative with every condition given to me.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
I was yesterday harm by the yahoo authorities,my box where i store all this office imformations was closed and couldn’t open till now.Please sir i am pleading for retrive of that box so that my office will not hot my family and i am supporting your security program.
Thanks Rita
January 28th, 2009 at 7:36 am
I am so sick of Yahoo’s Mail System. How the heck do you guys think that we are going to get mail to our clients, when you don’t tell us what to do. You only give us half of everything to know, and your customer support is absolutely horrible. I tried to get on your whitelisting program for the last 4 months and have had 0 success. I have a legitimate client base of about 40,000 people, and my Yahoo clients never receive their mail. You guys block it all. I hope that you can step up and take some pride in your system and not be so afraid of answering peoples questions and actually GIVING support. Try looking at some of the other major ISP clients and how they do it. It says a lot about the confidence you have in your program when you won’t even provide a phone number!
January 28th, 2009 at 9:20 am
I always get a lot of SPAM to my inbox which I didn’t remember registering myself to these websites.
It is as if someone registered me to them and enabled them to send my messages.
I take my mail as a very serious thing and I’m getting annoyed by all these SPAM messages.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Blah
January 28th, 2009 at 10:45 am
WHAT is up with making me fill out one of those $#%$ing captchas to send an email?!?!?!?!?
Yahoo’s free…. you get what you pay for.
Boo-hiss!!!!!
January 28th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
yes those around da world yahoo is fanastic website let chat together!!!!
yahoo bravo
erisam
dodoma
tanzania
mpendwaeric@yahoo.com
January 29th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
youre new mailing system idont like and youre spam stinks you got to deleat every one one at a time hell there is 150 to 200 pieces everyday in my box . i even get good mail in spam box.now it takes 2 hrs every night to see if i got any good mail in my box.by deleating it one at a time .ihate it and now its time for a change. been nice with you for years. now om moving on wallace
January 30th, 2009 at 4:30 am
YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE SPAM FILTERS
January 30th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
We have a school community email list and email account that a few people manage. The problem is when we want to send a message to a few hundred people yahoo blocks it from going out. I have broken the list into 11 sub groups to get under the minimum but after about three subgroups go out it won’t let me send out the other subgroups. Any suggestions?
January 31st, 2009 at 12:20 am
hey go to http://www.4kids.tv/user/profile/samima and check it out! SK
February 1st, 2009 at 6:46 am
Some canned spam is good for you.
It is low in ldrs and is good for your blood.
February 1st, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I wonder why it is that Yahoo can not stop spammers from sending mail dated in the future or the past? So much of the spam is dated years in the future, and occasionally I get something in my regular inbox dated a year or two in the past. I am sure most legitimate email is sent today- so why can’t this be fixed?
February 2nd, 2009 at 8:50 am
From my first use of Yahoo, there was never any spam. Only after the new and improved verson have I been regularly getting two spam a day. If it wasn’t broke, why did someone fiix it?
February 2nd, 2009 at 10:43 am
I get about 15-20 spam mails everyday. Even though I spam these e-mails, I continue to get the same e-mails everyday. Makes me wonder, is Yahoo spam working properly?
February 2nd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I’ve had yahoo mail since 1995 with No problems. For the last month or so I can’t seem to stop the 10-20 porno spams I get every day. I’m ready to give up my 5 letter address for a better mail provider (Yes my virus protection is up to date).
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:08 am
Q: Why can’t Yahoo! prevent messages such as:
“MS Security Support – Newest Internet Security Pack” (with attachment) and “MS Corporation Internet Security Center – Newest Internet Upgrade” (also with attachment) from showing up in my mailbox?
Yes, “SpamGuard” is on. No, Microsoft has NEVER sent out security updates this way. And Yes, I’ve clicked on the SPAM button probably about a few dozen times on these SAME email messages over the past decade.
The filters I created in Yahoo! Mail catch more spam than SpamGuard does…
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:18 am
im very new to all of this,the jargon all the “phrases” you use idont know if i have this or that ,SURE COULD USE SOME HELP THANX
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Last nite received 4294901760 unread messages in my Inbox. Something is definitely wrong & yahoo is going to shutdown my account for 2 days.
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 pm
While I’m very happy Yahoo! is working on the spam problem, I am encountering a different issue with your efforts. I am legally blind. I moderate multiple Yahoo! groups – all with members who are legally blind. When we encounter the little box with the numbers and letters, there doesn’t appear to be a way for a blind/visually impaired person to read it. We encounter these all over on the internet, and there are ways to make them accessable. I’ve contacted customer care three times now on this issue and essentialy recieved very polite non-answers. One told me that I was getting this box often because of the volume of e-mail in my account. Imagine that – I’ve always liked and used Yahoo! Shame on me. Of course I have a lot of mail – all of my groups are carefully moderated because they are medical in nature and I wanted to prevent misinformation etc. It goes through my e-mail.
It seems to me that this is not only annoying for me, but it’s an accessability issue, possibly under the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Ask Target about the lawsuit they just settled regarding accessability on their Web site.) I’m not into making waves if I don’t have to – I just want to solve this problem because it’s now eating up a lot of my time redoing e-mails as I try to get around this box thing.
I’m trying to figure out how to get past all the gatekeepers to make someone at Yahoo! aware of this problem who can actually help. Mark, would that be you???? HELP!
February 4th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I am trying to get clarification on whether or not I can use a wildcard (I have Yahoo Premium mail) in domain name blocking. I’ve seen both Yes and No responses online. The screen WILL allow me to enter a block for:
*.ar
*.com.ar
*.*.ar
But, do these blocks actually work? If so, I’m probably being redundant with my blocks, but after receiving 30 or more spam emails in my Inbox per day for the past 6 months, I’ve had it.
Thanks,
Sue
February 4th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
thats very nice.
February 5th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Yahoo riAbilita il Feedback loop!…
Yahoo riattiva il feedback loop in collaborazione con ReturnPath. Chiunque invii utilizzando la tecnologia DomainKey può far uso del feedback loop per mantenere una migliore reputazione ed un miglior controllo sulla segnalazione abusi.
Per il mercato…
February 5th, 2009 at 4:39 am
@bollettino gennaio 2009…
Primo articolo della serie @bollettino, con la quale vi terremo aggiornati sui principali eventi riguardanti il mondo della posta elettronica avvenuti nelle ultime settimane.
Gennaio 2009 è stato ricco di novità importanti:
Lycos Europa interromper…
February 7th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
You know, Yahoo is pushing all these new services and features, but the basic rudimentary service are going to pot. I can no longer permanebtly save a draft – once I pull it up and send it, it is no longer in drafts. That is different from before. And even worse, I’m finding that some saved drafts just vanish from the saved drafts box. I just typed a letter fiftteen minutes ago, saved it, went back two minutes later and it was no longer there. Miserable service. I tried the paid level of membership several months ago and dropped it after two months or so. If Yahoo wants new paid members start also doing the basics well again – it wasn’t like that in the past.
February 7th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I have never, in any email inbox, received the typical “you have won millions” or ” cash my check”, etc. email.
Guess I’m just lucky!
February 7th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Lots of complaints about a FREE service. Why not go elsewhere for your mail service?
February 8th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I’ve had my main Yahoo account for about 3 years, and I very rarely get any spam. In contrast, I get *ridiculous* amounts of spam in my Outlook account, and a smallish amount in my Gmail account. Hotmail, forget it, I just had to abandon my old Hotmail account to the spam.
I’ve always wondered how Yahoo does such a good job of spam filtering, actually. Especially for a free service, I’m very pleased with the low level of spam. Thanks, Yahoo!
February 8th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I’ve seen an order-of-magnitude increase in spam in the last week. I’ve had the yahoo
email account since 2000 and maybe 1-2 spams per week were getting past the filter.
Sometime about a week ago it increased to about 7 per day. The ads are mostly for
some online pharmacy (many with the word viagra) but are each from different
originating email addresses.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I’d like to know what happened. Until about 10 days ago I was getting 120 emails per day into my Spam folder, and only about 1 in my Inbox. Suddenly I am getting 20 – 40 spam per day in my Inbox. Is this the new technology at work?
February 10th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Yahoo’s spam filter seems to work mostly pretty good for me. Cashfiesta seems to be coming up a lot lately.
The one thing I wish Yahoo would do is let me create a rule to automatically delete emails that come in with dates in the future. I go through my spam folder once/week to make sure there isn’t anything I missed. It is annoying to have to seem 100+ emails with dates that are 1 week-40 years in the future. Let me automatically delete them!