ernokaikkonen 0 #1 January 20, 2003 Does anyone have any idea on how Yahoo's web mail filters are supposed to work? The filter does a relatively good job, only a few spam-messages get through to my inbox per week, but the filter seems so stupid! One would think that phrases and words like "free viagra" and "enlargement" would be a dead give-away, but no, they keep coming through. Odd. And I'd filter out all html-formatted mail if I could(that would take care of almost all spam), but for some reason they don't have that option... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jfields 0 #2 January 20, 2003 Erno, When I saw your thread title, I thought you were talking about filtering out all e-mail from Yahoo.com senders, which we generally do. Hotmail users get the heave-ho also. As to your actual question about how Yahoo mail filtering (doesn't) work, I have no idea. Sorry. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jessefs 0 #3 January 20, 2003 All I know is that I get 200-300 e-mails a day with the filter turned ON! WTF??? Must be all that porn... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ernokaikkonen 0 #4 January 20, 2003 Quote I thought you were talking about filtering out all e- mail from Yahoo.com senders, which we generally do. Hotmail users get the heave-ho also. Whoa! That's harsh... Is that a widespread practice? I'm not aware of any of my emails not reaching the recipient, and I've used only the Yahoo account for a few years now. Do you bounce the mail back or does it just go into oblivion? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ernokaikkonen 0 #5 January 20, 2003 Quote All I know is that I get 200-300 e-mails a day with the filter turned ON! WTF??? Must be all that porn... Is your email on some web-page so that it can be harvested by email-address collecting bots? Do you regularly subscribe to "free services"? Did you piss of someone so that they're signing you up on every possible mailing list? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jfields 0 #6 January 20, 2003 Erno, Yahoo and Hotmail have gotten a little better, but they are still well known for (knowingly or unknowingly) harboring spammers. The free services are havens for spammers, because they don't have to pay for the address or mail server. When the account gets cancelled, they already have 10 more set up. Filtering out e-mail from those two providers isn't "widespread", but I wouldn't call it rare either. It depends on the business or individual, and their willingness to miss the occasional valid e-mail. At my office, we can't afford to block them completely. I can do that on my personal e-mail server. There is a slightly less harsh alternative, which is to send an auto-reply to every incoming e-mail that originates at one of those services. The reply has a specific text string that people can use to bypass the filter. But that requires a human being to read the reply and use it. Most spammers won't bother, so that cuts the spam, but allows valid yahoo and hotmail users to get their mail through. Of course, that system puts the brunt of the work on the sender, which is an inconvenience to them. But over 90% of our incoming yahoo and hotmail mail is spam, so I figure it is worth inconveniencing the others. The cost that spam inflicts on the small office where I work runs to about $5,000 / year. If I didn't have the spam filters I set up, it would be about an order of magnitude higher, or more, at about $60,000 / year. That is just too much wasted time and money, so getting strict on spam is the only answer. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mattb 0 #7 January 20, 2003 One of the thing that it appears Yahoo does is filter based on the number of times a message is sent to Yahoo accounts. For example - about half the weekly e-mail deals on airfare I get go to my spam folder, the rest to my inbox. As far as I can tell the only difference is some of them are personalized with my name and/or departure city and end up in my inbox and those that aren't personalized end up in the spam folder. Oh - and getting rid of all html-formatted mail would get rid of the majority of Outlook users who haven't turned that default option off. This is good or bad depending on your opinion. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ernokaikkonen 0 #8 January 20, 2003 Quote Oh - and getting rid of all html-formatted mail would get rid of the majority of Outlook users who haven't turned that default option off. I know. I could live with it. I do check my bulk-mail folder once a week or so, and have caught a couple of non-spam messages from there. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AndyMan 7 #9 January 20, 2003 Yahoo mail filters are completely useless to me. I get about 50 spam messages sent directly to my inbox on yahoo every day. I get only about 20 flagged as spam. I've essentially given up on yahoo, and changed all my subscriptions over to hotmail, which I'll use until it too becomes unusable. I suspect that Yahoo's filter revolves around the use of the 'This is Spam' button. If enough people flag the same message as spam, then that same message (or messages from that same sender(not sure) get flagged as spam. Yahoo does not seem to be doing any heuristic scanning, nor bascian filtering. _Am__ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jimbo 0 #10 January 20, 2003 QuoteThe cost that spam inflicts on the small office where I work runs to about $5,000 / year. How did you reach that number? - Jim"Like" - The modern day comma Good bye, my friends. You are missed. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jfields 0 #11 January 20, 2003 It is admittedly ballpark, but here is the calculation: Number of junk e-mails per day * 10 seconds per message to identify and hit delete * number of employees = Total time wasted deleting junk Total time spent * billable hourly rate = total cost I work at an office that is geared around billable hours to clients, so each employee has a very specific, tangible billable rate. If they are deleting spam, they aren't billing. The cost I threw out does not include higher server utilization or bandwidth, just directly lost revenue. Not an exact number, but it gives an idea of how much spam can cost a small business. The anti-spam software we bought and my time invested with it have had an excellent ROI. PS Here is another tool you could use: http://www.cmsconnect.com/Marketing/spamcalc.htm Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ernokaikkonen 0 #12 January 20, 2003 > I've essentially given up on yahoo, and changed all my >subscriptions over to hotmail, which I'll use until it too becomes unusable. Funny, a few years back I switched from hotmail to yahoo after one day I just couldn't log on to my hotmail-account anymore.... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
riddler 0 #13 January 20, 2003 Don't know for sure how it works, but I always assumed it was based on their reporting system. If you look closely at the yahoo headers, there is a link that says "This is spam" that you can click on. My guess is that they wait for X number of people to flag it as spam, then they filter all those messages. BTW - I am in the process of transitioning completely away from Yahoo - too ... many ... ads ... can't ... take ... it. I'm down to just using the mail (as a backup) and the bookmarks, and removed everything else. As soon as I get a free hour, I'm gonna make my own bookmarks server, then it's bye-bye Yahoo.Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
