Email spam filter is garbage

[Jules68]

Once again, for me, the SPAM filter has gone mad, excluding the same senders (who have been sending happily for years) again and again - marking them not spam and safe sender (repeatedly) having no apparent effect.  I don't mind it being ultra cautious - better than the other - but not obeying clear instructions seems perverse. This has been so for about a month and a half, and, if anything, is getting worse. 

Other than marking mail safe there is little that we as punters can do - and when that marking is ignored it does seem that there is a fault that needs addressing.

I'm on record as this being an issue a few years ago - then it all got better, but now suddenly it's madness time again.

Maybe someone could flag this to those who manage the mail software?

[RichWB]

The BT spam filter is worse than useless - it is a strong disincentive to use BT for email at all. It is much more likely to put valid and regular emails into spam than it is to identify real spam. Is BT aware of how bad it is? If so, are they doing anything about it?

So far today it has a 100% record for misidentifying spam. It has put four perfectly valid and important emails into spam, and has missed two spam emails and let them come int my inbox. I just don't need this.

[Melluish]

I use Outlook to access my mail. I can live with having to recognise spam myself. What I can't live with is BT sticking valid emails into the spam folder, and never giving them to me. One of these was from BT, telling me my latest bill was ready to view.

I told them to reintroduce the facility to switch off spam filters. They said this was not possible. I told them they were lying. It is BT software, it can do what it likes with it.

They eventually sent me a  letter telling me to **bleep** off, it was all my fault and their software was perfect.

They gave me an organisation www.ombudsman-services.org to complain to, if I was not happy.

I tried to, but I had to set up an account, and BT blocked emails from this organisation to me, so I got nowhere.

I lost interest and gave up. I must get round to trying again.

[Jules68]

I told them they were lying. It is BT software, it can do what it likes with it.

I don't know whether it is the case in this instance (I suspect it might be, although BT did make claims about developing its own mail package once it dumped Yahoo Mail) but BT can and does licence software components which it then uses in its 'own' systems. As do many other big companies.  So it is possible that it is a 3rd party SPAM filter it is using, in which case it will not be able just to 'do what it likes'. A 3rd party SPAM filter would make sense, since that may be exposed to far more traffic in which to make 'judgements' and improve its learning. In which case BT needs to negotiate with its supplier to improve or correct faults within the SPAM filter sub-system. Which it should still do, of course. But it may not be that easy. Additionally, software engineering is a valuable skill - does BT get the pay-back by diverting it onto this problem? Possibly only a lot more complaints would be needed to release the necessary resource.