Overly ambitious Spam filter

Question

An internet newsletter I subscribe to is repeatedly marked as spam and dumped into my spam folder. This started over the last couple of weeks. I discovered the problem and followed the process to have the item not be marked as spam. How long until corrective action is taken? I am concerned that many other important items are being dumped into spam without my knowledge and potentially deleted before I discover the problem.

How and why does the spam filter decide what to add to spam? How long does it take to correct?

How and why does the spam filter decide what to add to spam?&nbsp; How long does it take to correct?

chrisl · Answer

@Perplexed23324

The spam filters are applied to everybody the same.   With that in mind reporting items as spam or not spam will not have an immediate effect but count towards a popularity contest sort of system.  False positives can be common depending on the nature of the emails you receive and if you're concerned about that you can set webmail to deliver all suspected spam to your inbox tagged as such so that you won't miss anything.

perplexed23324 · Answer

Thanks Chris,&nbsp; Since the newsletter is sent out of MailChimp, which has an unsubscribe feature and button in every email newsletter, shouldn't those items skip the spam filter to eliminate the potential for items being flagged erroneously?&nbsp; What does the spam filter look at to determine to mark or not?&nbsp; The senders name? The subject line?&nbsp; Something else?

yak · Answer

You can go into your account and change the Settings so that all email comes into your inbox. &nbsp;You can then select which ones are spam. &nbsp;It does fill your inbox with junk at times, but there is zero chance that an important email will go directly to Spam. &nbsp;The Cox spam filters are generally good but apx. 5% of the spam folder had mail that i wanted. &nbsp;Click on "Classic Mail" &gt; select the blue Settings tab.&nbsp;

allenp · Answer

yak, I'm glad you have had such good results with Cox's spam filter, not so good for me.
- "zero chance that an important emai will go directly to Spam", not so, see the thread about Twitter, all email from Twitter is blocked and not delivered anywhere.&nbsp; Reports of other major sites being blocked also have been posted.
- Over the last month or so, 100% of what's been identified as spam and placed in my Spam folder is ham, good email.&nbsp; Cox even identified a newsletter from my U.S. Representative (from @mail.house.gov) as spam.&nbsp; Forget political differences, some people may say anything coming out of Washington is spam or worse, it shouldn't be trapped by a spam filter.
As far as I'm concerned, at this time, the SpamBlocker is useless and more of a nuisance that a help.&nbsp; Cox has ignored our SpamBlocker settings by placing hard blocks on sites and not delivering mail to even a Spam folder.&nbsp; I hope this is resolved soon.
In addition, the daily junk from mylife dot com comes thru unidentified as spam.&nbsp; At least Thunderbird identifies it and marks if for me.

chrisl · Answer

@Perplexed23324

This would not necessarily be the case.  A variety of factors are considered most of which we cannot discuss.  One feature you may have seen in webmail however is the option to report an item as spam.  If an item gets reports as spam more than it does not this could cause items to be marked accordingly.

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Overly ambitious Spam filter

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