This topic

BT refuses to block phishing emails

FEDUP2016 — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:54:06 GMT

How many of you have received these sort of emails on your BT email Inbox?

Apparently BT/EE is happy to see a customer receive phishing emails purporting to come from BT/EE in our BT email in boxes for the last six months or so.

Executive complaints can't be bothered, despite the two Technical Complaints Managers at EE Teesside/Darlington acknowledging the problem.

BT CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO SHOVE THEM INTO THE SPAM FOLDER as they do with those purporting to have come from McAfee.

The emails have been forwarded to abuse and phishing and report - but of course no action, no solution.

The problem seems to be that BT can't differentiate between their staff/contractors and bad actors. As if a friend is likely to send an email :-

'Oh you must sign up for a BT EE account for at a PREMIUM PRICE'

STRANGE that BT's own internal email system blocks these forwarded emails, so why the HELL is BT allowing and sending the rubbish into my BT email in box ???????????

Examples include:

Your Name Is on the BT Safety Rewards List

Fwd: Improve Your BT WiFi for Less Today

Fwd: Guaranteed 60% off for BT survey completers

Many can't be copied since the attachments within the emails are possibly dangerous.

Perhaps someone would like to deal with BT Commercial and the Main Board to remind them of their obligations under the Company's Code of business practice and code of ethics.

https://www.bt.com/about/bt/our-company/our-business-practice-and-code-of-ethics

OK?

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

Kimberlin — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:07:17 GMT

@FEDUP2016 I'm sure you must realise, that what you've posted is, with respect. pointless. This is a customer to customer help forum and your posts don't go to BT nor do their Executive Complaints department etc, read them.

As I'm always fairly blunt, it's a choice to have BT email, you don't have to have it. You can always change email provider as inconvenient as that may be and you'd probably save yourself a whole lot of your own time and unecessary drama.

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

gg30340 — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:30:20 GMT

Perhaps you should read up on how spam works and how spammers go to great lengths to get past the spam filters and why spam does not necessarily affect everyone that uses email.

There are over 170 to 188 billion spam emails are sent worldwide every day. If it was that easy for Email Service Providers to stop them do you not think it would have been done by now.

There are things that you can do to help deal with the spam, such as do not open them. If you do you are alerting the spammers that your email account is live and they will continue to send you more spam.

Hover your mouse over the sending email address and it will show you the true email address of the sender. If it is spam it will most certainly not be that of the genuine company that it is purporting to be from.

Do not post your email address online unless it is 100% necessary and only give it to known trusted sites.

If you do have to give an email address to a site that you have not used or know anything about, open a gmail account and use that. If it starts to get spam you can just dispose of it and get another gmail address.

If you have opened an email and the offer seems too good to be true it most likely is.

If you are receiving massive amounts of spam consider disposing of your BTMail email address and start a new email account. It might take a bit of effort to let all your contact know the new address but once it has been done you can close down the "old" email address.

Try setting up "Rules" in your email account using certain words that are common on the spammers emails that are not common on genuine emails and have them either directed to the spam folder or deleted.

You should check your antivirus malware program, many of them have "sub programs" that can scan your email accounts and either mark or delete or quarantine suspected spam emails.

You should also check to see if your email address has been the subject of a data breach.

You can use this link to check.

Have I Been Pwned: Check if your email address has been exposed in a data breach

If it has been stolen you at the very least need to secure your account or better still stop using the email account because once it is in the spammers domain it can not be un-stolen and the email address can be cloned and used to send spam emails purporting to be from your email account.

See link

Using BT Mail's anti-spam features | BT Help

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

AlexMac — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:05:25 GMT

How unsympathetic of you Kimberlin? I too experience the odd phenomenon that while the vast majority of phishing emails are still diverted into spam by BT's historically excellent filters, in the past year, the ones which reach my in-box are those purporting to be from BT themselves? As if the inclusion of a BT logo spoofs their own Spam filter? I came to this forum
a) to see if others were experiencing this. and
b) in case anyone had constructive or helpful advice?
You, @Kimberlin clearly don't.

However, thanks to the Distinguished Sage above, for their more helpful reply

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

Kimberlin — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:15:10 GMT

@AlexMac Thank you for your kind words, it’s always appreciated 👍

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

LOSTit1 — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 22:04:02 GMT

Sadly my account is full of phishing emails. I've done pretty much all you've suggested but will try the rules. I'm not sure what terms I'd pick to block...

I'm a little cross that BT can't fix this issue for me. I spoke to a techie advisor and he agreed it's frustrating and it appears it's certain accounts getting overwhelmed.

I've had this address for 30 years but the phishing has only gotten out of hand in the last 12 months. I'm religious in forwarding the emails to both BT phishing and gov phishing. My gmail doesn't experience any issues. I'm slowly migrating away so will terminate paying BT soon.

Can I get advice on this forum how to store my old emails which I do need to keep for a while?

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

LOSTit1 — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 22:06:53 GMT

I feel your pain! best start looking for another solution, I'm gradually moving away but it's the historic mails I want to keep so it's on my long list to do!

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

licquorice — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 06:01:32 GMT

Simply use a mail client such as Thunderbird to download and store your historic mails.

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

FEDUP2016 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:50:38 GMT

MOST DEFINITELY NOT RESOLVED

FINAL WARNING BT - DEAL WITH THIS RUBBISH IN MY BT EMAIL INBOX

------ Original Message ------
From: gudrun@sympatico.ca
To: btukboardband@bt.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 14th 2026, 17:27
Subject: We Are Rolling Over to a New Service Policy📥

Dear Email User,

We emailed you last month to inform you of changes to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. These changes are important steps toward giving you greater transparency and control over how and when your data is used.

To continue accessing your Mailbox after July 15th, 2026, you must confirm your acceptance of the Terms of Service.

Connect Now

E E + B T BROADBAND

Re: Phishing emails

FEDUP2016 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:53:55 GMT

FINAL WARNING BT - DEAL WITH THIS RUBBISH IN MY BT EMAIL INBOX

------ Original Message ------
From: gudrun@sympatico.ca
To: btukboardband@bt.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 14th 2026, 17:27
Subject: We Are Rolling Over to a New Service Policy📥

Dear Email User,

We emailed you last month to inform you of changes to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. These changes are important steps toward giving you greater transparency and control over how and when your data is used.

To continue accessing your Mailbox after July 15th, 2026, you must confirm your acceptance of the Terms of Service.

Connect Now

E E + B T BROADBAND

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

licquorice — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:39:43 GMT

Not entirely convinced a customer can give BT a final warning to do anything. What sanctions to you intend applying if they ignore the warning?

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

FEDUP2016 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:21:31 GMT

If you are an BT employee - Just do your job and block the phishing emails purporting to come from EE BT.

Clearly BT has done so very effectively for other phishing emails purporting to have come from other organisations.

Demonstrating that the screening of phishing emails can be achieved to a very high standard.

SO WHAT IS THE PROBLEM BT ??? Can't be bothered ??? Or something to do with official BT emails coming from a myriad sources, rather than from a central secure corporate source, allegedly ??????

BT's Advertisement of

'Thank you for choosing the UK’s largest network, trusted for fast, reliable and secure broadband.' IS QUESTIONABLE

How will it be achieved.

In very much the same successful manner as the problems of BT's non performance & non delivery of internet speed against contract specification around 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/may/01/empty-promises-bt-broadband-speeds

So as I say if you are an BT employee - Just do your job and block the phishing emails purporting to come from EE BT If this requires all your customer facing employees / contractors eg rewards, to communicate through a central system, so that ALL other BT EE emails are blocked so be it.

Just do your job and block the phishing email it is not a big ask from a premium priced service with an inflation plus price escalator

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

gg30340 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:23:24 GMT

@FEDUP2016

Yes, I would be interested to hear what your final warning consists of.

As has been pointed when you started this thread there are things YOU can do to help your self. Perhaps if you had tried them you may have found that there was no need to make idle threats.

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

gg30340 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:24:47 GMT

This is a BT residential customer to customer forum. Your post does not go to BT. The only BT staff are the forum moderators who do not necessarily read all the posts.

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

licquorice — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 19:23:48 GMT

No, I'm not a BT employee, I'm just a satisfied customer.

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

FEDUP2016 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:53:25 GMT

Well I am a highly dissatisfied customer who is not prepared to accept a less than satisfactory, poor quality service for a premium priced product coupled with an arrogant employee.

Actually to give BT their full due, they stepped in extremely quickly on a previous occasion to resolve a significant series of failures, so they do indeed read these interactions.

However this time BT needs to address their internal company concerns that they might block their own communications to customers from a myriad of BT sources including third party, outsourced workers/contractors. Or might block any email referring to BT / EE.

How do I know this ? I ask deep searching questions to get to the crux of the issue, just like the attenuation issue and drop off in line speed ten years ago.

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

FEDUP2016 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:22:49 GMT

Of course I have, and it works, but can't be used widely in day to day activity, since it will be exploited as soon as the new email address is becomes known by nefarious actors. So your solution can only be limited by extent of use and time, so pointless otherwise multiple addresses have to be monitored.

However as you well know BT has successfully blocked virtually all the other phishing emails or at least sends them to the Spam file, which is excellent.

BT's PROBLEM IS THAT IT CAN'T DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN a phishing 'BT' email and one arising from a myriad of BT employees and contractors - it is right dog's breakfast. YET their own internal IT system blocks and protects them from phishing emails carrying harmful attachments forwarded to them, which their system has shoved into my computer, as has been fully acknowledged by an BT/EE manager.

So BT do your job and work harder.

Re: BT refuses to block phishing emails

gg30340 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:50:36 GMT

Isn't it odd how only some people seem to be inundated by phishing and spam emails while others get none or very little.

Could it be that they have brought this on themselves by either responding to the emails, unsubscribing from the emails or how often their personal information has been compromised in data breaches or exposed online and take no action such as deleting the compromised email account.

Generally people who actively protect their contact information by not posting/giving out their email address unless 100% necessary to genuine sites, use protective tools such as antivirus/malware programs with email guards/scanners get significantly less spam of indeed any.