Spam filter not working

[sandy88]

I'm getting loads of spam emails which appear to come from dubious dating sites. They are going into my inbox, not even into the spam folder, but they shouldn't be getting through at all. I've never been near any dating sites, clicked any links in unknown emails or signed up for anything so I've no idea how they've got my email address. I keep reporting them as spam to BT and to the phishing site but it makes no difference.  Why isn't the spam filter blocking them?

[NeilO]

Hi, @sandy88 welcome to the community and thanks for posting. The majority of spam is blocked but it's impossible to stop them all, billions of spam emails are sent daily so it's a constant battle to block everything but you're doing the right thing by marking them as spam to help our filters improve.

Email addresses often end up on spam lists due to data breaches from legitimate companies that you may have dealt with in the past. One way to check if your email has ever been leaked is to enter it into the have I been pwned website https://haveibeenpwned.com/ 

Thanks

Neil

[sandy88]

I'm just surprised that emails with sexual words and content in the body and header and sometimes even the from address are getting through any spam filters, let alone arriving in my inbox several times a day. 

[andydenyer]

I have been marking as spam for MONTHS now emails arriving from e-mail addresses in the format:

newsletter@*.{abc} where abc is one of the following:

cfd

click

club

cyou

digital

fun

live

monster

online

quest

sbs

shop

site

skin

space

store

xyz

But the spam filters are faling to learn.

Given the oh so obvious pattern of these, I would have thought it would be a very easy thing to do to write a small script to stop these getting through.

Are there ANY legitimate domains ending in any of the names I have quoted above?

Unfortunately, BT Mail doesn't provide an option to block domains in the format *.xyz etc. - you can only block them at the level following the @ symbol (for which I must have added hundreds by now).

[Andy_N]

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@andydenyerwrote:

I have been marking as spam for MONTHS now emails arriving from e-mail addresses in the format:

newsletter@*.{abc} where abc is one of the following:

..
But the spam filters are faling to learn.

Given the oh so obvious pattern of these, I would have thought it would be a very easy thing to do to write a small script to stop these getting through.

It might be easy to do it, and looks obvious to you and I - but to do it on a global scale/ISP isn't as straightforward. SImply blocking these items isn't the way the anti-spam systems work - and shouldn't.

Are there ANY legitimate domains ending in any of the names I have quoted above?

Yes

Unfortunately, BT Mail doesn't provide an option to block domains in the format *.xyz etc. - you can only block them at the level following the @ symbol (for which I must have added hundreds by now).

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Most dedicated mail clients can do this - and can move those emails to a seperate folder ready for easy deletion.

[andydenyer]

Yes, I have been setting rules to send them to a separate folder (the rules themselves are very easy to construct given the simple pattern of these, which is why I don't understand why BT is incapable of writing such a script). But I would rather have a way of blocking them altogether.

[Andy_N]

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@andydenyerwrote:
Yes, I have been setting rules to send them to a separate folder (the rules themselves are very easy to construct given the simple pattern of these, which is why I don't understand why BT is incapable of writing such a script).

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But that is the issue - it is easy to write a personal script to do what you personally require, but to utilise a similar script on an ISP scale isn't the correct way to do it as that could cause massive issues with many people not requiring such scripts.

[andydenyer]

So you're saying that there are people that WANT to receive all these scam emails from these particular domains? OK, fine.

[Andy_N]

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@andydenyerwrote:
So you're saying that there are people that WANT to receive all these scam emails from these particular domains? OK, fine.

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No, I am not saying that at all. I am saying that writing scripts for ISP level email is not as simple as it is for a single user - and is not the way anti-spam systems work.

[andydenyer]

Yes, I do actually understand how anti-spam systems work, including the limitations of them.