Cox → Problem with Cox spam filters

So, when will Cox work on a filter to keep out those hundreds of spams with a blank body and often no subject? They haven't done the best job so far.

For one, put some blame on yor self, hundreds means you have part of the blame. register your email to accounts..

I not just saying it is you, I have one cox email acct I get 100's of junk emails daily... I also have 2 others that probably get 1 or 2 a month that I use just for business use, such as Job Applications and what not. Garbage will always get through, it also becomes our responsibilty not to fill out every email form known to man...

You don't have the slightest idea who I am, how most spam is sent or what I have done and so, don't have the slightest basis for that little claim you made up there. It is not my fault in the slightest. I don't provide my email address to anyone or any company. I have gmail and hotmail accounts for registering the zero to 1 game I buy each year and nobody else other than close friends get my Cox email address.

I'll backup JD on this one.

Background: I have had a cox e-mail account for over two years which I've NEVER used. (I use a combo of Yahoo, Gmail, and my business address for 100% of my e-mail)

I've never given it out to anyone, never bought anything using it, and NEVER EVER opened any potentially "buggy" spam e-mail using it. The ONLY way I've EVER accessed it (to delete e-mail) is w/ the Cox webmail interface ... and the box STILL got MASSIVELY spammed.

Now at least ... Cox's spam filter does a decent job -- reducing my "deleting" chores to about a dozen a week -- but I think you understand my point.

My problem is the spam load that gets past Cox's filters has doubled each day this week over the previous day, many of them the same spam with the same characteristics, and then there is the majority of the spam - blank body, no subject.

I have to agree these "blank" spams are totally getting rediculous. I only get them at my Cox address.

I also back up JD because I've never used my Cox e-mail address. It's completely naive to think that anyone gets spam because they register at sites. The problem is so much more systematic than that.

I agree with you guys, when I first enabled their spam filter it worked excellent but recently it seems more and more spam is getting through. I believe they use McAfee's spam filter, they need to increase the filtering heuristics. I also wish they had an option to flag emails they missed so you can add it to their database.

Try this:

I think they are doing a good job compared to other ISP's. I have five different e-mail accounts, all have been passed around like yesterdays news. My Cox e-mail gets considerably less Spam than my other accounts. But if you can't stand it:

»spambayes.sourceforge.net/

Yes i do understand how spam is sent, I am not saying you are the blame, but take some responsibility. One it can be from site you have registered from, from other friends contact list who have been infected, or as you blam eyour hundreds of spam mails through Cox.

Here is also another thought, your email account that you have had say 2 yrs now may have belonged to someone else before you, now that it is active you are getting their garbage.

I dont need to know who you are or dont care. Everyone points a finger and never takes blame for any such slight fault.

Derch has said it straight from the hip, accts that have been passed around, one way or another. From previous or yourself.

My original email
back from 1995 gets tons of crap as for my other 3 I get about 3-4 a month.. like I said before you will get some sort of garabe out there. Every spammer has their ways..

I've been doing that since they first started accepting examples of spam. A lot of the time, it doesn't help one bit, while sometimes it takes a while for the person handling this task to evaluate and implement.

In this case these same blank spams, which look to be
coming from the same spammer, have never been filtered out.

That (the spambayes.sourceforge.net link) still wastes
our resources, since any user-end filter with POP3
requires you do download either headers or the entire
message, depending on what you want to filter on (header
text or body text).

Again, you have no clue who I am or what I have or haven't done and while you claim you're not saying I'm to blame, still blame me. To repeat this a second time, the ONLY people who have my email address are a handful of friends and two family members. None of them have been infected and none of them have given my email address out to anyone. And no, my account was never used by anyone before me. I signed up for Cox@Home on the first day it was offered and then was transitioned over to Cox HSI, so my user ID hasn't been used before (@cox.net).

However, you're still distracting people from the actual issue in this thread - Cox being too slow in implementing new filters and the fact that these blank spams really haven't ever been filtered out by Cox.

Sometimes it could be that your email address is in the cc field. You might not see it in the headers. Since no one sends me emails with the CC field filled out I just made a rule not to download any message with my email address in the CC field. Bingo! No more blank emails.

They're not in the cc: field. These blank spams are sent via bcc: which you won't see since, well, it's a _b_lind cc:

I'll back JD on this one. I have been getting about 3-10 blanks emails per week. And while I do use my Cox email, I do make sure I don't give it out to just anyone, basically only to friends and reputable financial institutions.

That's what I ment. I just have to learn to type. LOL:D

I would agree that it seems like there are too many that get through that simply should not. I still routinely get a few cialis/viagra type mails each week. It is a mystery how they don't get caught with brand names right in the subject line. To check the volume that Cox is dealing with, I switched my most heavily affected account to the setting that lets me see the mail marked as SPAM. Holy crap! That account is getting thumped with over 100 SPAMs each day! I do mark the ones that get through and forward them as attachments to the spamreport address for cox, and I get the standard reply, but it seems like a losing battle.

As for the blank subject line messages, I do wish they would grab those. I ended up making a flter to catch anything that has a blank subject field and it trashes quite a few unwanted messages each week now. I don't understand why Cox does not handle those, it seems like a no-brainer.

Regards,

Ender

Thanks, JD. I have directed this issue to our postmaster group.

Thank you thank you thank you!