Blocked Sender & Domain

[jcbhydro]

I have been receiving some 20 or so scam emails per day over the last month or so. I have been marking these as spam and blocking sender or domain.

However the system seems to have done more than just block domains, it has also blocked 'providers'. For instance it has blocked yahoo.com, gmail.com and microsoft. com., and perhaps others. This has resulted in numerous email failures from friends and family members who use gmail or yahoo accounts. On checking my wife's bt account, I find that gmail.com and yahoo.com are included as 'blocked senders' there also.

Surprisingly, none of the blocked emails have appeared in the spam folders which are checked 2 or 3 times per day. 

These appear to be serious malfunctions and I wonder if any other community members have similarly experienced unwanted additions to their 'blocked senders' list.

Regards,

jcbhydro

[Ribblelancs]

Are you using  the new BT Protect?

Just try to report junk emails as spam. Don’t try applying any rules, such as blocking domains, blocking subjects contains words, just yet.....Things are changing in the BT ‘s Norton at the moment. 

I can’t find any way of applying rules from within the BT mail app but they can be applied from within MS 365 Outlook.  They  can be unpredictable.

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

The reason that the genuine domains have been blocked is because the scammers are "spoofing" their scam emails to appear as though they have come from a genuine domain, ie microsoft ect, than the domain that they were actually sent from.

This means that when you block the scammers email/domain, you are actually blocking the "spoofed" domain rather than the spammers genuine domain. This will then result in any genuine emails that come from the blocked genuine domain from getting through.

See links about spoofing."

Email spoofing - Wikipedia

Email spoofing: how attackers impersonate legitimate senders | Securelist

What Is Email Spoofing? - Meaning & More | Proofpoint UK

[jcbhydro]

Thank you Ribblelancs & gg30340 for your comments. I have read the suggested notes you listed.

I was not aware that nominating a received message as spam and blocking the sender's domain would also cause the apparent email provider, eg microsoft.com to be blocked. I have not previously considered that an email client, eg gmail.com to be classed as a domain rather than an email 'provider'.

I shall desist from blocking domains on future spam receipts.

jcbhydro

[Ribblelancs]

@gg30340 , @jcbhydro 

Don't know what you think....there's a nuisance tracking cookie <something, something. 2o7.net> which seems to be causing a lot of trouble. I wonder if it's contributing to junk mail? It's a tracking cookie. Not much clear information is out there on the web, but what information is there is not very complimentary. It appears frequently as a problem when doing a Norton scan.
Simple solution at the moment is to clear browsing data, manually on exit. I do it manually at the moment until things become clearer and more defined.

Using Edge on Windows 11.  

[gg30340]

Ribblelancs

I receive very little spam, perhaps one or two a week if that. I delete cookies on closing my browser and I always reject all cookies if that is an option or at the least only accept required cookies so I can not comment on the cookie you have mentioned.   

I also have none of the  BT junk that is offered as "free" downloaded or active on my account which no doubt in my mind helps.

[Ribblelancs]

BT have tidied up their settings. It's now easy to block nuisance senders from within the BT (web)Mail.
This should stop junk mails re: Sales discounts etc.

I've been on BT's help chatline.

[Ribblelancs]

Spam situation looking better now, since contacting BT help on chat line.

There are still some mail addresses which don’t add to the block list, however....But the error message is now changed to “please try later”. More investigation, perhaps, or wait and try later?

Only had one spam today,  which gave the above results, and simply reported as spam and deleted.