Block those unwanted senders

April 30th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Nice feature, but what happens to the blocked email – will the sender receive any kind of blocked/returned notification, or does it just disappear into the ether?

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Hi Studley,
The sender does not receive any notification. In fact, that’s one way spammers harvest active accounts is by return receipts and/or unsubscribe requests. Then they just change the email address that they send from, and… you guessed it you get more spam in your inbox.
Thanks,
Andrew

May 1st, 2008 at 4:48 pm

It would be better if you could just right-click on the email and add sender to Blocked Addresses directly. That would avoid having to either open the unwanted email or view the Reading Pane to get the address of the sender. Would also like to read the reply to Studley from 30/04.

May 5th, 2008 at 7:37 pm

Studley has a great point – does he get an answer?

Also, I’d like to add that whilst blocking email addresses is effective, what would be appreciated is that the Yahoo! Mail team took a little time to work on improving their spam filtering.

Over the past few months I’ve noticed that the number of spam emails that are by-passing the spam filter and making it into my inbox are increasing. Whilst I don’t mind marking each one as spam, I’m not entirely convinced that this is helping rid my inbox of spam as well as it should be. Is your algorithm still up-to-scratch?

What’s more, I’d like to question why Yahoo! Mail haven’t been the first webmail platform to jump aboard the email phishing scam campaign by checking URLs against a database of known phishing sources – such as phishtank.com?

I understand that *most* browsers already have phishing technology built in, or are set to, but it would surely be wise to neutralise the problem where it primarily begins / could be best implemented – via email.

I mention this because I’m seeing a lot of bank account / building society phishing attempts passing through my spam folder – but occasionally one slips through the net into my inbox. Whilst I’m smart enough to spot a phishing email, I think its safe to suggest that most of your users aren’t ready for that responsibility just yet.

:)

May 6th, 2008 at 11:07 am

Can you put a link direct from the spam box so that by clicking it the unwanted email goes direct into the blocked addresses?

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Hi David,
In the new mail, you can highlight a message and then click the “Spam” button at the top of your mailbox. In fact this is the best way to move a message into your spam folder, as it sends a message to our Spam center so that we can learn what is and what isn’t spam.
Thanks,
Andrew

June 2nd, 2008 at 7:42 pm

i am also getting more and more phishing emails last few months and some getting through to mail it is becoming a problem!!

June 6th, 2008 at 2:30 am

Ofcourse it is a great feature. But I want to know a thing that what happened when I block 500 addresses as spam. What can I do.
Yahoo mail classic has a great feature that is when I select a message as spam it is automatically blocked. We want the feature in Yahoo mail beta. Yahoo mail beta should remove Graphical Ads and should replaced it by small ads like google and in the openning of yahoo mail beta there are three or four ads that cause a problem by making slow the engine. These should be remove. We also want Spam Guard Plus in Free Yahoo mail and want unlimited black list like Hotmail.
Thanks

June 9th, 2008 at 9:33 am

I’ve also noticed a lot more spam in my in box. They’re mostly pleas from Asian or African sounding names but worryingly, an increasing number purporting to come from banks. I also failed to receive two regular emails from magazines although they were perfectly O.K. up till last Dec. The spam filter seems a bit askew!

June 9th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

In the previous version of Classic, you could mark an UNOPENED message as spam and the sender would go straight into the blocked addresses. You could then check your blocked list just to make sure you hadn’t made a terrible mistake.
Now you actually have to open a mail to see the sender to block it. OPENING SPAM IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. What are you playing at Yahoo? Congratulations on increasing security risks AND increasing the likelihood of spam in one masterly swoop!

June 10th, 2008 at 8:51 pm

Msg 6
I think you will find that Yahoo mail classic no longer has the automatic blocking feature in messages you select as spam. Now you have to open the message to find the sender and then manually block it. Yahoo, what are you playing at?

June 11th, 2008 at 3:08 am

I support 2. Jim and I want to add that it will be very great too if there(Y! mail) inbox or other accounts have a extra button nammed Block address or Block domain. I also have a question to Yahoo that what is difference between selecting a mail(in inbox) as spam or dragging and dropping it in spam folder in Free Yahoo Mail and another question is: Am I make my free yahoo spam guard more powerful by practising my spam guard by clicking mail spam which is spam
Thanks,
Jev Foster

June 13th, 2008 at 8:57 am

A filter would be more use to me. My daughter used my computer, and after 3 months, I am still getting be-bo messages, which all come from different addresses. At present, I would need to block each separate address.

With a filter, I could block, for eg addresses CONTAINING the words ‘be-bo’ then I wouldn’t get all these messages

June 15th, 2008 at 11:41 am

I find the spam filter is usually effective aslthough sometimes it allows spam into my inbox.

However I receive genuine emails from certain addresses several times a week which are placed in Spam. I always click on these as “Not Spam” but they continue to be treated as such. I like to delete Spam regularly but must be very careful to check each Spambox before doing so otherwise I can lose important messages

June 15th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

When I reached 500 blocked addresses I started to get loads more spam. I cleared the block thinking I could start again, but none of the spammed messages have gone on to the block list, as it used to do. I hope this isnt a cynical ploy to get us to upgrade and pay!!!

July 4th, 2008 at 3:41 am

Reading these comments re SPAM in your inbox, I cant say I am surprised that Yahoo! have declined to comment. I have reported the issue a number of times since March without so much as an an acknowledgement. I have moved my primary email account to Google mail, after 10 years with Yahoo! It makes a pleasant change not have banking phishing emails in my inbox! Still use Yahoo! but just for leaving email details in places I’d rather not, to be frank it’s about all Yahoo! mail is useful for now.
I just hate it when you *know* you have a problem but refuse to acknowledge it.

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Hi Ian,
Sorry to hear that you’re moving Google for your mail. I can assure you that our team takes Spam seriously and we are working hard to try and limit the amount that makes it into your Inbox. It’s a struggle to stay ahead of the people that are sending the spam, but we’re committed to making your Inbox a safe place with no spam.

There are a lot of issues affecting the amount of spam someone receives into their inbox: from registering with dodgy websites, new spamming technology, having an easy to guess email address, even a problem with one of our spam filters (things do break sometimes). But the best thing to do when spam does get into your inbox is to mark it as spam. This sends a message to our filtering servers and the more messages that are sent, the better they can learn.

Hope that helps,
Andrew – Yahoo Mail Team

July 18th, 2008 at 4:35 pm

How come marking unopened messages as spam no longer adds them to the blocked address list? that was a really convenient feature, will Yahoo bring it back? It is too difficult to go back and forth opening each spam message, copy the address and add it to the blocked address list, up to 500 times. I would appreciate a response.

Thank you.

August 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm

My dad uses a program called MailWasher for his email account – this allows emails to be viewed on the ISP’s server and then to be ‘bounced’ – in other words, returned to the sender as undeliverable as the address supposedly does not exist. Also, one can just right-click on the little bar summary thing and add either the email address or the entire domain to the blacklist, then process the emails (bouncing and reporting as spam) before launching the main mail program (Mozilla Thunderbird, in this case) to download the approved emails. Could we have such bouncing and easy blacklisting features added to Y! Mail, please? It’s a hell of a fiddle trying to add addresses to the Y! Blacklist, as it’s buried so deep in the Options page…

August 15th, 2008 at 7:45 am

Why do I have to sign in every time I want to look at my e-mails alathough I have ticked the two week sign in box

Hi Bernard,
Have a look at this post and see if you have all your settings correct: http://ymailuk.com/blog1/2008/08/05/keep-me-signed-into-yahoo-mail/
Thanks,
Andrew

August 17th, 2008 at 11:52 am

I’m also getting far more spam getting through to my inbox. I don’t think Yahoo are taking this problem at all seriously. I recently had a spate of emails from CNN News Alerts which I sent to my spam box but they kept on coming. Now it is MSNBC news alerts. I went to the MSNBC website and found a link that tells me they are being attacked by spammers. I know that these nuisance spammers are finding more elaborate methods to continue their attacks but I would have thought that Yahoo could and should be able to stop them after the very first one gets reported has spam. I know that all the addresses are different but the initial part of the address is always the same. I am sick of the amount of spam I get on my Yahoo account and, as I don’t get it on my other email accounts, can only assume that Yahoo doesn’t care about their customers, or are they trying to force us to pay for their Mail Plus Account? I am seriously thinking of transferring my main email to one of my other accounts just to get away from all this spam.

August 24th, 2008 at 10:19 am

I am getting loads of e-mails in my inbox (not my spam) from ‘Panama’ which look as if they are from other sources. Can these be blocked?

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Hi Wendy,
The best thing to do with those types of emails mark them as spam by clicking on the “Spam” button. That will send the message directly to the spam folder and send us a message that it should be treated as spam.
Thanks,
Andrew

October 4th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

What happens when you reach the 500 blocked spam limit??
Also, why can you not show a way to block the source (Computer ID) rather than just one email after another done manually, on a dial up too, this is stressful?

October 17th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

how do you block spammers using the same @ address.
I’m now being inundated with email from people using “@aim”
I can’t keep blocking singular entities as I would run out of space

October 21st, 2008 at 6:58 pm

Enough is enough… the once excellent Yahoo free is now a Spam magnet. The Spam filter is non exsistent. I have had enough. Time to bite the bullet and have all the problems of changing email accounts…and just go to a better provider. One with a Sapm filter that WORKS. Dosent matter how many times you tell the free one not to allow.. it does. Time and again now. YES I have it set up properly

I refuse to open a SPAM mail so I can then block it. Rediculous. I have alway used Yahoo.. not any longer