The fight against spam continues

[#1]

Spam is a major issue for every user and every provider of email. Running an effective email platform is a major challenge for us, and despite a lot of investment the spam situation only seems to have got worse. We know that many customers have seen an increase in the amount of spam received, particularly in the last month. Christmas is always a busy time for spammers and they have refined their tactics to try and get around spam filters (even though to you and I the emails are obviously still spam). In November we announced a partnership with Postini, who are widely regarded as one of the world’s leaders in the fight against spam. We’ve already started to integrate the Postini solution into our own mail platform and so far have moved all Metronet, Free-Online and Force9 customers to the new system. We’ll soon be moving PlusNet customers and then we’ll begin the next stage of the integration. There are other things you can do to help reduce the amount of spam that you receive. Our Manage My Mail tool allows you to set up spam protection and choose how to deal with any spam that does make it past our spam filters. You can also set up extra mailboxes, aliases and re-directs should you wish. Read more about Manage My Mail There will be more news in the next few days about the Postini partnership, so keep an eye on the Community Site for updates.

[#2]

Oldgustav boasted here that he doesnt get spam because he uses Gmail. Its there alright, its in a folder in the Inbox, and he really should check that folder to see if his wanted emails have been wrongly graded.

[#3]

Things are ridiculous at present - have just got rid od some 200 plus spam messages that Plusnet + Force9 completetely missed. However - many of you refer to SpamCop and Cloudmark + others. Anyone with VISTA might simply try using the integral Junk Mail filtering included with Windows Mail (new version of Outlook Express) - I use this on one of my PC's and it correctly stopped all 90+ that the Plusnet filters failed to find other than 1. If Microsoft can be so precise then why cannot Plusnet and Co? - makes you wonder how good the original spam filtering is not? - it can only get better and this must be soon if customers are not expected to leave on mass. Incidentally the 'catch all' scenario might be fine for some, but has no obvious avantages for me and certainly would not 'cure' the problem!

[#4]

First PlusNet compromise our online security by allowing their systems to be hacked. Then they take an "age" to respond to the legions of Spam Mail we are all receiving. Did anyone make a complaint to the Information Commissioner? I shall be looking elsewhere for a responsible ISP. I am getting fed up of sanctimonious correspondence and no action

[#5]

Keen to see what this Postini solution offers; spam has dramatically increased for me over the past month or so. In common with several above I really don't mind some false negatives, even quite a few, just get rid of the blatant trash; but more than a couple of false positives and I'll be gone quicker than raven17 would turn off CatchAll functionality... One tip for those reluctant to turn off CatchAll; at the very least set up redirects to a spam mailbox for your most common spam recipients. That trashes at least 80% of our spam in a 100% safe way. Going to look into the forward to spam@despamcatcher.plus.net mentioned above now. "Training" dSpam has had virtually no effect despite tens of thousands of spam mails having been reported.

[#6]

I'm still getting genuine messages being intercepted and marked as spam and some very obvious spam is still getting through. For me it's worse now than before Postini was introduced. I have decided that if I have to look through all the spam messages on squirrel mail to pick out the genuine ones I might as well just have everything delivered to my inbox and filter it there.

[#7]

Hey guys, just letting you know that we are looking at all your comments and reviewing them. I just realised no one has acknowledged it!

[#8]

How do I get rid of the alias facility in the Manage Mail please?

[#9]

@watton, I'm quite surprised to hear that your experience is *worse* following your migration? That seems to be in contradiction to what most of our other customers have been saying? Regarding the checking of false positives in the spam folder, have you considered using IMAP instead of POP3? This would allow you to check the 'Spam' folder locally on your machine without the necessity to login to webmail.

[#10]

@thebeehive Hi, I'm assuming you're wanting to turn your catch all off? Go to Manage My Mail: http://www.plus.net/manage_my_mail/ Log in if you haven't done so already. Click on the right hand tab, called Catch All Select the status of 'off' and click the 'submit' button and that's that job done. If you want to remove individual aliases, click on the Aliases tab, then next to each of the aliases you have set up (except postmaster, which is a special case), there is a delete link. Just click it, confirm you want to delete the alias and you're done. Repeat as required for other aliases. If you're wanting to achieve something else, please provide more details and we'll be able to offer more advice. HTH.

[#11]

For years and I mean years I never recieved 1 single spam email. Why because I was careful with my email address, where I used it etc. Plusnet allow their forums to get hacked and ever since then bearing in mind I never published my email address on that either, I get my fair share of spam. Most of it gets filtered by Thunderbird... but its all bandwidth I shouldn't be using.

[#12]

I had an email from someone called Phil Webb on 9th Jan saying that PlusNet would be introducing Postini soon. I'm not award that this has happened yet. Do we have a date?

[#13]

Hi oldgustav, you've already been moved to Postini. In a month or so we hope to be bringing you added functionality that will let you blacklist and whitelist your own addresses amongst other things. Have you not noticed a reduction in spam?

[#14]

@oldgustav, @bobpullen For myself, also on a PlusNet account, I'm not noticing any significant change either, although I did have the first false positive I've ever seen on the server about a week ago; a refund confirmation from British Airways. I'm getting on average about 1 in 5 spam mails caught on my personal account... 4 getting through.

[#15]

My spam has all but disappeared. However I worry that valid e-mails are now being caught. Is there any way that I can look at caught e-mails that are believed to be spam or to turn on or off the new filter?

[#16]

@Tom If bobpullen is correct in his assertion that plusnet has been moved then from personal experience even after the move to Postini the web interface still allows me to check the spam folder, or if you use imap instead of pop then you can also access the Spam folder directly.

[#17]

Just had another British Airways email marked as spam incorrectly...

[#18]

I too am knocking on a little like bill prior above and do not expect to have to engage in what are for me complicated tricks to stop spam. I am frankly very negative about trying to use the Manage My Mail tool suggestions because I do not understand the jargon and worry that all my existing contacts will send stuff that never reaches me. My spam apparently like everybody elses has become progressively more voluminous and distracting and I believe that it is entirely plusnet's responsibility to sort it out without asking me to take a course in technical clap trap. How do I find out if I have been switched to this postini thing? Can I expect a noticable effect from it?

[#19]

Good post