False positives from PN's SPAM filters?

Re the latest communication from PN "...As of next Thursday, email identified as [-SPAM-] will no longer be delivered to your Inbox. Instead it will be delivered to a dedicated spam folder that will be available for you to check online."

Should I trust their filters or have people here seen false positives in recent history?

OIMO

I have never used PN's spam filters precisely because I will not tolerate false positives.

I was lucky in that, until a week or so ago, I didn't have spam problem. Of the occasional spam emails I received in 4 years at PN, all but one were from companies I had done business with, trying to promote new products, and were easily stopped (though in the case of BT I had to leave an invalid email address at my account!). The one malicious spam email was thankfully never repeated.

Now I am receiving daily malicious spam emails which I can't stop. But I still won't use PN's spam filters. I would rather change to a new account (if given the opportunity) or a new ISP (otherwise) than use PN's spam filters, because I don't believe they can ever be 100% reliable.

IMHO spam filters are becoming a bigger problem than spam itself, as demonstrated by those ISPs (did someone say Comcast?) who use unreasonably aggressive spam detection and thereby block valid emails. ISPs are making email ever less reliable, and may kill it altogether unless they take *collective* action to address the spam problem. Alas they have demonstrated no willingness to do so.

I don't tolerate spam and I won't tolerate spam filters.

Edited by linux (Sat 19-May-07 12:49:06)

I'd have to agree.

I know of a number of people who have received false positives from PlusNet's spam filters, this would mean that trusting the 'new improved' system would result in you not receiving e-mail, although you could check online and filter through the mail marked as spam.

I can see why they're doing this, but it seems to be another badly thought solution being rolled out prematurely as a knee-jerk reaction. The talk of deleting email entirely before it is ever seen by anyone is even more worrying. But with the recent problems I can se a lot of people blindly signing up to the new system. PlusNet haven't warned users of the potential pitfalls, just of the wonderful work they're doing to protect their users from the 'bad people'.

Hi,

I can't remember seeing a false positive on my own mail for a long time. The advantage of the way that we are settingt this up though is that you can still check the mail marked as spam so if there are any false positives you can spot them rather than losing them.

Others have seen false positives.

Some other disadvantages of the system are:
That you have to logon to an online portal to check your spam.
An IMAP solution is being forced upon users.
PlusNet will be auto-deleting mail, at the moment just after 30 days, but in the future there is talk of completely hiding mail from users.
PlusNet are not listening to other concerns raised by the PUG and users on the official forums.

There are definitely some good things coming out of PlusNet's increased priorities with Spam, but I don't think the pitfalls have been adequately described before allowing users to 'opt in' and frankly rush this out.

Up until the last week I didn't have a spam problem and I had no need (or desire) for spam filtering.

Now PN is suggesting that I have to login to the portal to check the mail marked as spam to see if there are any false positives. In what sense is that an improvement?

I agree with the previous poster that PN's new focus on spam is a good thing. But PN should understand that spam filtering it is not a remedy for the security breach which has taken place.

Edited by linux (Sat 19-May-07 15:11:23)

There's nothing to stop you from leaving the settings as they are so you can either not have the mail scanned for spam by us or you can leave the scanning on but still download the mail and check at as now.

You're right in that this isn't a remedy for security and I'd love to remove all the addresses from the spammers' hands but I can't so we have to deal the security one side and deal with the effects of the spam on the other.

There is a remedy that PN is being careful to avoid. Namely giving new accounts to all those who have been affected. This remedy does indeed "remove all the addresses from the spammers' hands".

Sadly even that doesn't even remove them from the spammers hands. Giving new accounts would help people get away from the spam but not if they want to not also be kept away from valid e-mail. Providing new accounts in the short term, with a clear and documented method of staged and gradual transfer for the medium term, with closing of of the old accounts in the long term could help. But it's no complete solution. PlusNet and it's customers need to really realise that what they've done has no way out and no route back.

Maybe they'll take security more seriously in the future and possibly even listen to suggestions and concerns from customers and the PUG more. Although we've heard both before.

Anyone can create themselves a new username and therefore email address by signing up a free PAYG account. But as h0tblack points out changing the username could mean legit mail is lost if someone stops using the old address.

Personally I think working on the spam filtering is the best way to go, which is what we are doing. Tackling the spam will help almost everyone, I was getting over 200 spams a day about 2 weeks ago and it's now about 300 a day. Almost all are tagged as spam and I've not seen a false positive in a long time.