Rosie
@pacbell.net
| reply to nwrickert
Re: Where did my spam go?
I haven't read every single posting in this thread, but nwrickert, you are definitely correct about there being a major change that occurred mid March, and that it is something internal with AT&T. (Please read the article at »www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/24···filters/ ). Everything you've written makes 100% total sense.
About 10 days ago or so I went to the Yahoo web mail site to check my bulk mail folder as usual. A different screen altogether came up that required me to enter my password and then requested that I wait 5 minutes for it to process some sort of change. I can't recall the exact wording as to the reason for this process but I believe it said something about upgrading security. I had never seen this particular screen before. It was after this event that I suddenly stopped getting emails in my Yahoo bulk folder (except for 1 or 2 rarely). I used to get 10-15 emails in my bulk mail folder per day. Oftentimes when I sent emails to online companies (questions about products, e.g.), their responses would end up in my bulk mail folder. I haven't been getting any responses to these type of inquiries since the event. Oftentimes online companies have a secure form for emailing that doesn't reveal their email address, so I can't put the company's email address into either of my address books to bypass the spam filter.
I have similar settings as you do in my Yahoo web mail account (I have an sbcglobal.net email address): it was set with the SpamGuard ON, to divert suspected spam into my bulk folder, and to keep it for one month. I also had it set not to block addresses on emails that I tagged as spam so that I wouldn't accidentally block friends, relatives or myself. I had checked off that "I don't want to receive any messages that SpamGuard thinks are spam" in the "More Bulk Folder Options for POP users" section. That kept the suspected spam from downloading into my Outlook Express inbox, but it was still going into my Yahoo bulk mail folder. I did not change any settings. I feel sure that I'm not receiving legitimate emails now because of this event, but I don't know if they're bouncing back or just being deleted. I've read a lot of reports of emails to the affected domains simply disappearing and not bouncing back. By the way, I did reset my Yahoo spam filter out of desperation thinking that might help, but actually with the settings I had, I shouldn't have had any blocked addresses anyway, at least not to my bulk folder.
I spent hours and hours today, with 4-5 different AT&T and Yahoo techs (live online chat and telephone) to no avail. They were all totally clueless and didn't speak (or write) English very well and didn't even seem to understand what I was telling them. I am furious at this point and feel helpless to fix this. |
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Rosie
@pacbell.net
| reply to nwrickert
Need help to understand
I'm not a techie by a longshot and I'm not really understanding the various factors involved here. Some posts mentioned AT&T servers versus Yahoo servers. When I go to check my sbcglobal.net bulk mail folder it says at the top "AT&T Yahoo Mail Classic". Sounds like one and the same company(?) Also, if I were to disable the Yahoo SpamGuard Plus, might that make any difference? I doubt it, because I've got it set to put spam in bulk mail anyway, so whatever little trickle of suspected spam is still coming in would probably just go into my Yahoo inbox or my Outlook Express inbox, right? I'm getting a headache... |
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Rosie
@pacbell.net
| reply to TheDuck
to TheDuck
Nobody welcomes spam, but they're throwing the baby out with the bath water here. An alarmingly high percentage of legitimate non-spam emails are simply disappearing. I'd rather quickly scan a slew of junk mail for 30 seconds daily than never receive desired emails myself. I would just check off everything in my Yahoo bulk folder, and then just uncheck the legit emails, delete, and boom, boom it was done. A little annoying, but no biggie. Of course I was getting 10-15 suspected spam emails a day, not hundreds of them a day. The Yahoo SpamGuard was grabbing an awful lot of legit emails. I missed a birthday party invitation (and the party) due to that. The sender was even in my Outlook Express address book too. I don't understand why that happens. It doesn't seem to "learn" well either when I mark emails as "not spam". Not the smartest program around. |
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nwrickert
sand groper
Premium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·AT&T Midwest
| reply to Rosie
Re: Where did my spam go?
About 10 days ago or so I went to the Yahoo web mail site to check my bulk mail folder as usual. A different screen altogether came up that required me to enter my password and then requested that I wait 5 minutes for it to process some sort of change. I can't recall the exact wording as to the reason for this process but I believe it said something about upgrading security. I had never seen this particular screen before. It was after this event that I suddenly stopped getting emails in my Yahoo bulk folder (except for 1 or 2 rarely). I think those are two separate and unrelated things.
Yahoo has changed the interface of its web portal pages, and the processing delay was probably related to that. At about the same time AT&T has started a spam control program which has greatly cut the amount of spam coming in (and perhaps also interferes with some wanted mail).
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AT&T dsl; Westell 327w modem/router; SuSE 10.1; firefox 2.0.0.12 |
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nwrickert
sand groper
Premium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL
·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T Midwest
| reply to Rosie
Re: Need help to understand
Some posts mentioned AT&T servers versus Yahoo servers. Let me try to explain.
AT&T (which includes SBCGLOBAL, SWBELL, BELLSOUTH, AMERITECH, PACBELL, SNET) is not part of Yahoo. Rather, AT&T and Yahoo are two separate independent corporations.
AT&T has contracted with Yahoo, for Yahoo to provide some services to their customers. In particular, Yahoo is providing a portal (basically a home page with links), and mail services.
Since your mail is addressed to "someuser@sbcglobal.net" the sending system will send it to an AT&T/SBCGLOBAL server. However, the AT&T server then connects to a Yahoo server, to transfer the message to Yahoo (because Yahoo is providing the mail services).
When sending mail, the official advice is to use a Yahoo outgoing mail server, though there are also some AT&T servers that work.
I hope that clarifies why there are two distinct sets of servers, those managed by AT&T and those managed by Yahoo.
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AT&T dsl; Westell 327w modem/router; SuSE 10.1; firefox 2.0.0.12 |
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tonyreo
join:2004-02-04
Mentor, OH
|  reply to nwrickert
Re: Where did my spam go?
I'm getting legitimate email "blocked" without any indication.
About 2 to 3 weeks ago email from my son, at college, started getting bounced back to him with no indication to me that it was bounced. It's a major university, (.edu address) so I can't see why it's happening..
I wonder how many legitimate emails I've been missing.
It's great that the spam has all but stopped but it looks like "the operation was a success but the patient died". |
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Rosie
@pacbell.net
| reply to nwrickert
thank you
Note: I somehow deleted (or prematurely posted?) a partial message just now. I thought I just hit the Enter key but then it threw me back to the "Do you still want to post?" screen(?) Another odd thing is that my posts don't appear in the time sequence that I wrote them. The second post I wrote last night didn't show up until way after the 3rd one did. Anyway, starting over:
NWRickert, thank you very much for the detailed explanations. I appreciate it. I didn't receive any warning of the filter changes and no option was given to keep things as they were (which was working just fine for me). I had a couple of online chats with AT&T Yahoo tech support yesterday. Do you know if those are AT&T or Yahoo employees? I also talked on the phone to several techs at AT&T customer service. I'm wondering if they each have access to the others' case records. All of the techs were foreign and didn't seem to understand what I was saying at all. They seemingly just read from scripts and were no help at all. It's so very frustrating, I just want to tear my hair out. I spent the better part of the day on this issue to no avail. Tonyreo, I love that comment "the operation was a success but the patient died". Pretty much sums it up. A "Nerds On Site" acquaintance said he would check this issue out with his fellow nerds and report back to me. A friend said she sent me an email, which I never received and I haven't received any responses back from inquiries made to online companies recently. I highly suspect that the responses were gobbled up by the undiscriminating new spam filter. I think that a refund for the whole month of March to all affected customers would be fair, considering.
I seem to be spending a good portion of my life now talking with people in some foreign country who barely understand English trying to straighten out technical phone or computer issues. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was a victim of McAfee's auto renewal scam, where they charge your debit card one month before the expiration date of their internet security program, without any warning nor prior authorization (well, hidden in fine print in sneak wrap in an umpteen zillion page EULA maybe). Common thievery, as far as I'm concerned. I had actually uninstalled the program on the advice of a computer tech, because it was slowing my computer down so badly. Good thing I caught the debit in time and didn't go into overdraft, as many people did. I hope someone starts a class action lawsuit against them for this. |
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nwrickert
sand groper
Premium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL
·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T Midwest
| Another odd thing is that my posts don't appear in the time sequence that I wrote them. I'm not sure, but it is possible that anonymous posts are put on hold until a moderator looks at them.
I had a couple of online chats with AT&T Yahoo tech support yesterday. Do you know if those are AT&T or Yahoo employees? I can't tell, since I don't know who you chatted with, but my best guess is that they were AT&T employees or employees of a service company to which AT&T has outsourced some of these tasks.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was a victim of McAfee's auto renewal scam, where they charge your debit card one month before the expiration date of their internet security program, without any warning nor prior authorization (well, hidden in fine print in sneak wrap in an umpteen zillion page EULA maybe). I know somebody had the same problem with Norton recently, but the charge was refunded after a phone call.
By the way, we have drifted a bit off-topic for this thread.
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AT&T dsl; Westell 327w modem/router; SuSE 10.1; firefox 2.0.0.12 |
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Rosie
@pacbell.net
| reply to Rosie
List of domain names
The concensus from the various articles I've read seems to be that it's the AT&T spam filters that changed. If I understand correctly, then all AT&T domains would be affected by this change. Here is a list of AT&T domain names(not sure how current this is though):
bellsouth.net
worldnet.att.net
ameritech.net
att.net
flash.net
nvbell.net
pacbell.net
prodigy.net
sbcglobal.net
snet.net
wans.net
swbell.net
I am correct on this? (Again, not a techie -- just a struggling civilian here.) |
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Rosie
@pacbell.net | reply to nwrickert
off-topic
Sorry about going off-topic...started ranting. |
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Rosie
@pacbell.net
| reply to IAmNotHe
Re: Where did my spam go?
said by IAmNotHe :I think AT&T and Yahoo BOTH sent an email out about the new Spam filters but reports claim that the new filters actually blocked and deleted the email before it ever reached any customer's email accounts.  Hysterical.  |
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nwrickert
sand groper
Premium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL
·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T Midwest
| reply to Rosie
Re: List of domain names
The concensus from the various articles I've read seems to be that it's the AT&T spam filters that changed. If I understand correctly, then all AT&T domains would be affected by this change. I think bellsouth.net, att.net, worldnet.att.net are being handled by different servers, so I am not sure whether it applies to them.
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AT&T dsl; Westell 327w modem/router; SuSE 10.1; firefox 2.0.0.12 |
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tonyreo
join:2004-02-04
Mentor, OH
| reply to tonyreo
Re: Where did my spam go?
said by tonyreo  :I'm getting legitimate email "blocked" without any indication. About 2 to 3 weeks ago email from my son, at college, started getting bounced back to him with no indication to me that it was bounced. It's a major university, (.edu address) so I can't see why it's happening.. I wonder how many legitimate emails I've been missing. It's great that the spam has all but stopped but it looks like "the operation was a success but the patient died". I emailed tech support and they replied ...."I understand that you are not able to receive emails because the email address was rejected by our server. I sincerely apologize that you are not able to locate a help topic about in our support website. I will be glad to assist you and provide the information that you need.
I have checked on this matter and found that this is an occurring issue with email. In some instances, when an email is sent to an AT&T customer they get a message stating that there DNS IP has been blocked.
To remove the email address from being blocked, you will need to forward the email to [removeme@sbc.sbcglobal.net]. The removal from blocked list may take up to 24 hours."
I replied asking... "How can I do this if I cannot receive the email to begin with?"
Waiting for a response.... |
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Larus Hale
@sbcglobal.net
| reply to nwrickert
Tonyreo, in my experience you will not receive a response to your last (and the real question) from AT&T. I put this question to AT&T tech support in their chat forum a week ago and the tech just continually ignored that question and would provide an answer to a question not asked instead. Also, when asked if the current problem of emails simply being deleted with no notice to the sender or recipient being caused by new AT&T spam filtering-the question was ignored, even after being repeatedly asked. |
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gdm
Premium,MVM
join:2001-06-15
Mchenry, IL
clubs:
·AT&T U-Verse
 ·AT&T CallVantage
·Comcast Digital Vo..
 ·Comcast
| said by Larus Hale :
Tonyreo, in my experience you will not receive a response to your last (and the real question) from AT&T. I put this question to AT&T tech support in their chat forum a week ago and the tech just continually ignored that question and would provide an answer to a question not asked instead. Also, when asked if the current problem of emails simply being deleted with no notice to the sender or recipient being caused by new AT&T spam filtering-the question was ignored, even after being repeatedly asked.
This isn't a ATT problem it's yahoo's. Yahoo controls the mail not ATT. So the ATT techs really have no clue what is going on. |
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Lizz
Premium
join:2002-10-22
Fullerton, CA | Yes, it's definitely Yahoo. You need to get to an AT&T tech (Tier 2) who will write up the problem and send it to Yahoo. Then maybe, just maybe, it can get fixed. |
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nemoslats
join:2005-05-03
Cary, IL
| reply to nwrickert
Well - new spam filters are working. BUT now a few spams are getting through to the bulk folder. Just figure that new domain names and email addresses for spam to get through and get into either the inbox or bulk folder.
Maybe --???? AT&T is taking our blocked or spam addresses and making a giant database and paring down the domains and addresses to make the new spam blocked email filter? What do you think?? |
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David
No,there is another.
Premium,VIP
join:2002-05-30
Granite City, IL
clubs:
 ·DIRECTV
·magicjack.com
·AT&T Midwest
| reply to tonyreo
said by tonyreo :said by tonyreo :I'm getting legitimate email "blocked" without any indication. About 2 to 3 weeks ago email from my son, at college, started getting bounced back to him with no indication to me that it was bounced. It's a major university, (.edu address) so I can't see why it's happening.. I wonder how many legitimate emails I've been missing. It's great that the spam has all but stopped but it looks like "the operation was a success but the patient died". I emailed tech support and they replied ...."I understand that you are not able to receive emails because the email address was rejected by our server. I sincerely apologize that you are not able to locate a help topic about in our support website. I will be glad to assist you and provide the information that you need. I have checked on this matter and found that this is an occurring issue with email. In some instances, when an email is sent to an AT&T customer they get a message stating that there DNS IP has been blocked. To remove the email address from being blocked, you will need to forward the email to [removeme@sbc.sbcglobal.net]. The removal from blocked list may take up to 24 hours." I replied asking... "How can I do this if I cannot receive the email to begin with?" Waiting for a response.... Actually the originator of the e-mail (your son's e-mail address) needs to forward the bounce back with headers included to removeme@sbc.sbcglobal.net.
Basically, in a nutshell that gives them the IP address to unblock and allow the e-mail through.
This message should go for anyone that is getting a rejection message in e-mailing someone on the at&t domains from gmail, dslr.net, yahoo.com, lycos.com and any others. if you get a rejection message be sure to forward that message to the removeme@sbc.sbcglobal.net. It needs to originate from the address that failed.
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If you have a topic in the direct forum please reply to it or a post of mine, I get a notification when you do this.
Koetting Ford, Granite City, illinois... YOU'RE FIRED!!
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dxiv
join:2005-04-12
Wheaton, IL
1 edit | reply to gdm
said by gdm :This isn't a ATT problem it's yahoo's. Yahoo controls the mail not ATT. So the ATT techs really have no clue what is going on. Maybe there is more than one problem, and maybe not all have the same source. This one below does look like ATT's.
quote:
Final-Recipient: RFC822; /******@ameritech.net/
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.3
Remote-MTA: dns; aitmx5.prodigy.net (207.115.37.20)
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 553 5.3.0 nlpi009,DNSBL:521/ 213.46.255.22 /_is_blocked.__See_»www.att.net/bls_rbl/_for_information.
It was part of a bounced email sent to my @ameritech.net address. The IP marked as blocked is that of the ISP's email server in Austria, not the originating end-user machine.
P.S. Edited the IP back in, the angle brackets had eaten it. |
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David
No,there is another.
Premium,VIP
join:2002-05-30
Granite City, IL
clubs: | send that to the removeme@sbc.sbcglobal.net address. They will need that info. |
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