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AT&T's Spam Filter Gets A Bit Too Aggressive

techdirt.com — You can certainly understand why ISPs offer spam filters. It's a service for users who don't want to be totally bombarded with spam. But what I've never understood is that these ISPs rarely give the user a chance to circumvent the spam filter themselves. If most people want to ignore it and assume all spam is spam, then so be it.

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  • justananomaly, on 03/26/2008, -17/+6Buried for ever complaining that a spam filter is "too aggressive." Tomorrow my AT&T mailbox will be full of viagra, thanks alot techdirt.
    • justananomaly, on 03/26/2008, -1/+7In my defence of the buried future of this comment, I do use gmail too! *ducks*
    • jemka, on 03/26/2008, -1/+3Is there a reason we don't use a 3-way handshake for email? If senders were responsible for the exchange, they would have to provide a real return address and wouldn't have the means to send as many emails as they do now. It would become too expensive to send spam because of the sheer bandwidth required to support all of the responses from a bulk email. Not to mention it would be easy for authorities to find spammers if they were obligated to provide legitimate return addresses to complete the handshake.
      • HonoredMule, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1That can't really be implemented on top of the current email system. If only academics had predicted the success of email and its inevitable exploitation, we wouldn't be so vulnerable to it, but we're limited in what we can do now, with email technology so firmly entrenched throughout society.
    • veriix, on 03/26/2008, -1/+3Wow, that's amazing! My AT&T mailbox only gets email.
  • Shadowgamers, on 03/26/2008, -2/+7Why don't they just get rid of the entire email service while they're at it? v:
  • tness, on 03/26/2008, -9/+2I ignore spam.
    • samssf, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Let me guess - you just "ignore" President Bush, too?
  • boonecafe, on 03/26/2008, -6/+3Cirsumvent - GOB
  • john2kx, on 03/26/2008, -5/+7Slow news day? ;)
    • r00tus3r, on 03/26/2008, -0/+9No, ACTUAL IT NEWS news day! This is actually what digg was originally about. It's stuff like this that matters to guys who work in the industry, and have to deal with spam, and know how much of a thin line there is between preventing spam from becoming a nuisance to the CEO, and preventing him from receiving that critical email about a million dollar business deal.
    • rokinroj, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2This action actually took down my company email today. We are 4 people who send maybe 5 to 6 emails per day mostly within the domain and we were blacklisted. Maybe thats boring to you, but to us, whos incomes depend on email, it matters.
  • borez, on 03/26/2008, -2/+26Never use your ISPs email...that's just asking for it. Especially if ( as happened to me a few years ago ) you change ISPs and they delete your account.
    • tewas, on 03/26/2008, -0/+3Or in my case they delete your e-mail account when you extend your contract with AT&T. I also want to thank them for forcing me out to find gmail.
      • borez, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1Yep, I switched to gmail after my little deletion ( or should I say massive deletion ) and haven't looked back since, the spam filter is second to non. I basically get no spam forwarded to my mail client at all, saves me a load of time.
    • arobar, on 03/26/2008, -0/+3I agree that you should use a third party e-mail service, but you can't blame the ISP for deleting your account if you cancelled your service. Why would the ISP possibly retain your account and your data if you're not longer paying them to do so?
      • borez, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2I asked them to help me transfer my emails at the time, but nobody at the help desk seemed to know anything above and beyond the standard spiel that they read directly from their computer screens ( via some Indian call centre )
    • SanTe, on 03/26/2008, -0/+3"Never use your ISPs email...that's just asking for it. Especially if ( as happened to me a few years ago ) you change ISPs and they delete your account."

      I disagree. There is nothing wrong with your ISP's email service. You shouldn't be using it for anything more than a temporary holding tank for incoming messages anyway, and for sending outbound mail. I would state almost the opposite and say, "Never store your email on a server you don't own." Every time someone I know extolls the virtues of gmail or Juno or some other webmail service I wonder to myself how long it will be before they get burned. Third party email services can and do delete entire mailboxes by accident or on purpose. Yes, it has happened to gmail users, who were met with a shrug from Google. It's happened in the past and it will happen again. If you use POP mail and download your email to your own computer everyday, they will a) never be able to hold all of your current and archived mail hostage, and b) won't ever be able to charge you to continue accessing something you were getting for free before. They want to start charging for access to your email? Fine, see ya. 5 minutes later I have a mailbox elsewhere after signing up and changing my SMTP setting in my mail client. I also trust myself to store my own personal email and do backups more than I trust third parties to do this for me.

      And you should have moved your mail first before pulling the plug on your old service anyway.

      I'm sure lots of people love Google's mail service, but I like my email to be mine, thank you.
      • borez, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1I agree, that's why nowadays my gmail comes straight to my desktop mail client to be stored on my own hard drive.
  • jmreid, on 03/26/2008, -0/+7I thought that was going to explain how AT&T's spam filter is the one who killed the russian spammer. Now THAT's an article!!
  • chrissku, on 03/26/2008, -1/+27Gmail does a great job of filtering spam. Yahoo sucks at filtering spam.
    • rubberjabber, on 03/26/2008, -3/+1Never get any email through my spam; get them all the time through Hotmail. =S
      • DiggerUpper, on 03/26/2008, -1/+5I don't comment your understand.
      • diggerachi, on 03/26/2008, -1/+0Hotmail is great. Learn to use the filtering system. I never get spam and If I do its sent to my bulk email folder which only gets a few spam hits. I've had the account for over 10 years and have not had a problem. Gmail is decent. I get about 50 spam messages a day but its all routed to my spam folder. Very generic and plain.
  • surKaz, on 03/26/2008, -8/+5Link to the 'article' in the above 'article'.. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/24/aggressive ...
    What's the deal with the lady, '"I get my work via email" an AT&T customer named Liz who declined to give her last name '...
    What kinda work?? ...
    Yes Yes, The rest of me should be in the gutter too..
    • lnxfi, on 03/26/2008, -1/+5Millions of people get work via email. Customer orders, client requests, documents, reports, etc... Stop watching so much porn.
      • surKaz, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1It was joke.. at times I like to make old (done to death and over) jokes, silly jokes etc..
        I won't always say stuff that's worth a nobel prize... I'm a humanoid..
    • r00tus3r, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1404 Page Not Found. Damn it, you're lucky I dugg you up before I actually went to the link!
  • christhechris, on 03/26/2008, -1/+4Yeah, ISP email is generally rather 'sucky'...(thats the technical term in my bad English dictionary), no mater where in the world you are. Better to sort the junk mail on your computer, or in webmail.
    As long as you can review said junk to make sure it really is junk, thats the important thing.
  • Lexrst, on 03/26/2008, -0/+20I have been fighting with AT&T for the last couple weeks trying to get a mail server I administrate off their 'improved' RBL. Every time I talk to them they want to know my AT&T account info. I AM NOT AN AT&T CUSTOMER... I just want to send mail *to* AT&T's customers. This is apparently a foreign concept to them.

    I finally told one of the tech support reps that *he* was the AT&T customer I was trying to send mail to. Even that tactic failed.

    Part of the problem is that even though mail was failing to *all* AT&T domains (swbell.net, sbcglobal.net, att.net,etc), they kept insisting that all those domains had their own individual mail server systems. If that's the case, how come all the bounce messages refer to att.net?

    Morons.

    Their employees have absolutely no sense of customer service.
    • PeterODactyl, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2I just finished doing the same thing. Three days worth of emails and phone calls just to get one email through to one AT&T customer. Next time she gets snail mail.
      • sheldoncohen, on 03/29/2008, -0/+0Funny enough, we just went through this as well. We've been getting the infamous 550 blocked for abuse email which will direct you to their postmaster site asking you to fill out a form that basically doesn't fix the issue. After a very long call with at least 3 different people we were able to get another email address and a phone number for corporate that we are supposed to email each blocked domain/IP/contact information and then follow up after 24 hours. For us it's bellsouth.net users, we are unable to email anyone using one (including ourselves). They have absolutely no idea what you are talking about when you call nor offer any way to resolve your issue, so far I've found their support not very helpful.
  • invisiblehat, on 03/26/2008, -0/+12I have never in my life used my ISP's email account. To do so would be pure folly.
    • mellenger, on 03/26/2008, -1/+2you weren't on the internet before free email?
  • DErallde, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2Most spam filters are not that good, to tough or to week, its all about getting to the right point in the middle that Google has rule over.
  • rmxz, on 03/26/2008, -0/+4IMHO Spam filters need 3 categories rather than 2.
    The 2 for "spam" and "not spam" they currently have; and a third bucket for "possibly spam" that's worth you scanning yourself.
    • Nougat, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2The ones you pay for usually do. The ones that your free webmail uses generally don't.
    • Matteos, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1Speak and ye shall have.

      SpamBayes FTW
      I have been using it on all of my computers for years, and it hasn't failed me yet. Its free too.

      http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
  • ChronoMojo, on 03/26/2008, -1/+2Don't bother reading the article. The snippet is the entire article.
  • gambyt13, on 03/26/2008, -9/+2bURIED AS sPAM
  • undershirt, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2From AT&T's website: http://businessesales.att.com/products_services/se ...
    "Multi-layer spam technology ensures that unsolicited e-mail is automatically filtered before it enters the corporate messaging system, disrupting employee productivity, and burdening the messaging infrastructure. All messages are run through three layers of advanced spam filtering technologies: Blacklisting, Fingerprinting and Rules-based Scoring"

    Blacklisting and Fingerprinting are really accurate filtering methods, since they throw out anything coming from proven spam sources. Rules-based filters are reasonably accurate, though they're just heuristics. I guess messages failing the rules-based filters should go to a bulk mail folder.
  • UtahApocalyse, on 03/26/2008, -1/+1link to a link to a page with more links....... Buried i never liked choose your own adventures.

    Anyone read ANYWHERE what items were removed??
  • Wxndel, on 03/26/2008, -0/+0I like it. I was getting so much junk in my 4 SBC email accounts, it was overloading Mailwasher and any chance of rummaging through all the junk for the gold, so when SBC and ATT joined up it was a relief. I used to check out the stuff put aside as spam in another web account, but I never found anything that wasn't spam, so now I just delete the junk folder without looking at it.

    I must admit I don't really get much important email. What I worry about is the US mail, which is nasty here in Chicago. I have anxiety attacks worrying about if I'll get crucial legal papers that have deadlines associated with them.
  • willsani, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2At&t has a habit of blocking subnets until the system administrator requests that they remove the IP address from their blacklist. This is how most of the larger service providers are attempting to fight spam; by blocking everyone until the whitelist request has been sent. I only wish that At&t would setup a feedback loop much like AOL and RoadRunner, so that system administrators would receive feedback from them when there is a spam issue.

    I for one use SpamAssassin / ClamAV / DCC / Vipuls Razor on my mail server to combat spam. It woks well enough to eliminate most of the unwanted.
  • jp12380, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2"But what if some users want to make sure no legit emails are getting through?"

    Fail
  • RichMig, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1I had been using ATT worldnet for years for my business. I've kept it mainly for its dial up service that I would use while on the road. This problem has plagued me in the past year and the biggest problem is that AT&T puts the burden on the people who send the emails to go through the trouble of removing themselves off the blacklist (dumb move). To add insult to injury, their support through India was horrible.

    Last month I had enough and set up a Gmail account. Now I have an automated reply from my att account asking the user change my email address to the new one.

    So long AT&T.
  • Albion01, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1My company has been having problems with AT&T for over a year now. Many of our customers with sbcglobal.net email addresses cannot receive e-mail from us. We've gone through all the processes to have our IP removed but AT&T keeps telling us that our IP isn't in their RBL. My response is always "Then how come the reply error always claims it is?" Now I direct all my customers away from AT&T as a service provider and tell current AT&T customers to consider switching.
  • neil1492, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1The spam filters are so bad nowadays that I feel its almost better to write a letter. My moms Comcast account can't recieve any emails from my ISP...which is a University. I just assumed that Comcast doesn't want its users to be talking with anyone that might be educated.
  • microchp, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1All spam will be gone by the end of the year. Stay tuned for updates. ;-)
  • emutiny, on 03/26/2008, -0/+0I dont know what this guys talking about, spam still gets through at&t's filter and I can vouch for that. Ive never missed an email due to the spam filter. I'm also not impressed with the lawsuit settlement.
  • trwww, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1Calling the spam filters of big webmail companies "a bit aggressive" is like calling the Iraq war "a bit expensive."

    I maintain a smallish mail server (20 domains, 100 or so users), and getting email in the inboxes of users of big webmail companies is a constant source of frustration.

    They claim that they've defeated spam, but really they just block everything and force legitimate senders to put forth nontrivial amounts of time and cash in to ensuring reliable delivery.

    One of my tactics was to buy on to goodmail and brightmail and similar whitelists. The really ironic thing about the whole process is that in order to offset the costs, I've had to sell "reliable email based marketing campaigns".... IOW, email that most of the people reading this would call spam.
  • johnmearns, on 03/26/2008, -0/+0My experience as the guy operating a mailserver for a smaller indie ISP is that customers wanted me to be extra aggressive with their email filtering. The people that used our email service weren't geeks like you and I but your mom, dad, and grandparents. They don't use thunderbird, bayesian filtering is gibberish to them...they've just let their email address get out there and now their email is unusable because of the the amount of spam they get. They want the bulk of that gone even if that means a little friendly fire. I did allow users to tweak their own spam filtering settings or even opt out of filtering entirely but the number of users that wanted that was statistically insignificant. I suspect ATT's email service users are similarly minded.

    I believe the real special place in hell is reserved for the dumb admins that setup barracuda filtering hardware and turn on mail notification to the spam sender which is of course usually forged.
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