Forum Discussion

JasonInPhx's avatar
JasonInPhx
New Contributor II
5 years ago

Spammers using tricks to prevent filtering words in subject line.

I don't think Cox even has spam detection any longer because it no longer detects any spam that even my old Windows Live Mail can detect and place in the junk folder.  So I have been trying to use the filters to prevent downloading of spam to my email client.  Spammers use a different email address each time so blocking or filtering the "from" won't work. The body is either in HTML or a photo with the ad so nothing to filter there.  So I was hoping I could filter out by detecting certain words that frequently appear in the subject line.

Well, seems that is useless as well.  For instance, I see the word military in the subject line often so I set a rule to filter any incoming emails containing military in the subject line.  Well that doesn't work because it seems spammers can use some tricks to prevent this.  Although the word appears to be "military" spelled correctly, when I forward to Cox spam report, the spell checker in my email client flags that word and every other word in the subject line as spelled wrong.  It looks something like this in the forwarded email:  m_ili_t_ar_y.  Every other word is broken up with either a _ or ? as well, although in the incoming email it looks perfectly normal.

Can someone explain what is going on and is there any way to defeat this trick?

4 Replies

  • KevinM2's avatar
    KevinM2
    Former Moderator
    Hi JasonInPhx, Cox has a variety of measures in place to help protect our customers and our network from spam, and we continue to look for ways to improve our services through the control and elimination of spam. Here is some additional information:

    www.cox.com/.../protecting-yourself-from-spam.html

    We appreciate you forwarding these to our team, and you may also send these as an attachment as well.

    www.cox.com/.../forwarding-spam-phishing-or-virus-email-as-an-attachment.html

    -Kevin M. Cox Support Forum Moderator
  • Bruce's avatar
    Bruce
    Honored Contributor III

    Perhaps you could filter on the underscore.  Does your client allow wildcards?  If so, filter on the Subject Line as follows:  *_*

    You could also configure your client to download email as Plain Text.  Perhaps a Plain Text format would expose further schemes to bypass your filtering...as well as removing the HTML and photos.

  • The amount of spam and junk emails has been TOTALLY RIDICULOUS lately.  For the last month, I have received at least 6 a day for places like Wild Alaskan Seafood, Vivint Home Security, and Certified Santa Letters, and the from line always groups the words together without spaces.  The email address always changes, so they find away around blocking a specific one.  Cox used to filter this **, but now it’s worse than ever.  Makes me just want to close my account and open a new one, but I have too many things tied to that address.  

    • bearone2's avatar
      bearone2
      Contributor III

      i've been getting the alaskan seafood myself....& just send it to junkmail.