Re: Verizon Spam Detector
Hoosiers411
Newbie

Put me on the list of very unhappy customers.  This email spam filter is ridiculous.  I'm trying to send an email to three people, listing the places we will be staying on a two-week trip.  It includes dates, the names of the hotels, and their phone numbers.

Nothing special in my book, but the Verizon email filter rejects the message and I have been unable to send it.  I tried sending the list to just one person at a time; it rejects that too.  What good will it do for me to send the email without dates, places and phone numbers?

I finally posted the list on a web page and sent an email to my three relatives referring them to the web page. This Verizon feature stinks.

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Re: Verizon Spam Detector
searay61
Newbie

I don't know what they changed in the past week but Verizon needs to "unfix" what worked last week.  I was told (after an hour on tech support) that I needed to delete and redo my mail account.  Funny, I did that in Septemeber and didn't work...for a few days and then by a stroke of majic, my emails went out. 

Here we are in Decemeber again, and the same deal.  It starts working like majic.  Now, tonight, I am sending ONE email to ONE person with attachments and it is being tagged as spam.  My work around it to send via GMAIL.  I am looking at SMTP servers because I do not have time to diagnose a moving target.  I don't send spam, never have and never will and do not want to "pimply faced youth" deciding via a program that I can't send an email with attachements.

TICK TICK TICK...FIOS is getting to big like the rest of the ones that were good, then grew, then blew.

Get my email to work or I will find someone else who can.  Or hire me at $100/hr so I can help your tech diagnose your self imposed gun shot wound to the foot.  **bleep**.

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Re: Verizon Spam Detector
AlphaCentauri
Enthusiast - Level 2

I applaud Verizon for trying to do something to control spam being sent from its network. The reason they are filtering outgoing email instead of booting spamming customers off their network is that so much spam is sent from the Trojan-infected computers of innocent people. Verizon doesn't want to passively cooperate with criminals by allowing them to use Verizon's network for spam, and they don't want all the customers with clean computers to be blocklisted because they share the same dynamic IP range.

OTOH, some of us are trying to do more about spam than just guard our own inboxes.  Every computer sending spam is also a computer whose owner's personal data is available to the bot herder controlling it. In addition, spammers are using hijacked computers to actually host the websites advertised in the spam, including sites that steal identity, sell narcotics, or distribute child porn. Those same hijacked computers are rented out for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to shut down the websites of organizations they don' t like -- at times, including strikes against government/military targets. Because botnets are so large, each individual computer may only send a few messages, making it unlikely the victim will be alerted to the problem unless a large percentage of people report their spam.

But it's becoming increasingly difficult to report spam if you're a Verizon customer. For instance, the MailwasherPro program mentioned above will forward spam with headers intact to spamcop.net, allowing them to contact the ISP of the owner of the victimized spam-sending computer. But Verizon blocks those messages to spamcop. How hard is it to add the reporting addresses of major antispam organizations? And why are we supposed to forward the false positives if no action is taken to fix such an illogical situation?

It's also very difficult to send reports to the hosts and registrars of the spamvertised websites -- mention the domain that needs to be shut down, and you may be blocked. I changed my outgoing SMTP server to use my own domain's mailserver , and that worked for a while, but now I'm running into port 25 problems. Ironically, a lot of these outgoing messages  that are being blocked contain copies of spam that was sent to my Verizon email address and which was not blocked on the way in.

May I suggest that there should be modifications to outgoing filters:

-- any email addressed  to an antispam/antiphishing/antimalware or other security-related email address should be allowed out, spam and all

-- email to the abuse reporting addresses of ISPs and registrars should also be allowed

-- some provision should be made for experienced spam reporters to apply to have their outgoing emails unfiltered, as we are communicating with each other via email and having difficulty with blocked emails, even when using our own email accounts hosted elsewhere.

-- If logging into outgoing.verizon.net with a username and password isn't sufficient verification, then some automatic verification process needs to be created for the average user to confirm they are really sending a particular message. The idea of the outgoing spam filters is to stop computers from sending spam without the owners being aware. (If the customer is spamming on purpose, he needs to become an ex-customer.)  If there were an outgoing challenge-response system, people could both get their own emails out in a timely fashion and also find out they've got a problem if they're being asked to verify messages they didn't send. It would be a pain, but better than not being able to send email at all.

Re: Verizon Spam Detector
somegirl
Champion - Level 3

@AlphaCentauri wrote:

But it's becoming increasingly difficult to report spam if you're a Verizon customer. For instance, the MailwasherPro program mentioned above will forward spam with headers intact to spamcop.net, allowing them to contact the ISP of the owner of the victimized spam-sending computer. But Verizon blocks those messages to spamcop. How hard is it to add the reporting addresses of major antispam organizations? And why are we supposed to forward the false positives if no action is taken to fix such an illogical situation?

It's also very difficult to send reports to the hosts and registrars of the spamvertised websites -- mention the domain that needs to be shut down, and you may be blocked. I changed my outgoing SMTP server to use my own domain's mailserver , and that worked for a while, but now I'm running into port 25 problems. Ironically, a lot of these outgoing messages  that are being blocked contain copies of spam that was sent to my Verizon email address and which was not blocked on the way in.

May I suggest that there should be modifications to outgoing filters:

-- any email addressed  to an antispam/antiphishing/antimalware or other security-related email address should be allowed out, spam and all

-- email to the abuse reporting addresses of ISPs and registrars should also be allowed

-- some provision should be made for experienced spam reporters to apply to have their outgoing emails unfiltered, as we are communicating with each other via email and having difficulty with blocked emails, even when using our own email accounts hosted elsewhere.

-- If logging into outgoing.verizon.net with a username and password isn't sufficient verification, then some automatic verification process needs to be created for the average user to confirm they are really sending a particular message. The idea of the outgoing spam filters is to stop computers from sending spam without the owners being aware. (If the customer is spamming on purpose, he needs to become an ex-customer.)  If there were an outgoing challenge-response system, people could both get their own emails out in a timely fashion and also find out they've got a problem if they're being asked to verify messages they didn't send. It would be a pain, but better than not being able to send email at all.


Try sending the spam message as an attachment. This is how you are able to report false positives to spamdetector.update@verizon.net and should (in theory) work for getting this content to any other spam reporting site.

The outbound spam filter scans the content of messages, not who they are being sent to. Your suggested change(s) would require a complete overhaul of the way the system works, probably even going to far as to having to switch providers for the filtering and/or email GUI. That kind of change takes money, which is pretty short all around these days.

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Re: Verizon Spam Detector
AlphaCentauri
Enthusiast - Level 2

I think you'd have to see how MailwasherPro works. It displays the emails on the mail server as plain text files and lets you create filters to sort them in addition to having Bayesian filtering based on emails you marked good or spam in the past. There are check-off columns to report to spamcop.net and FirstAlert!. You can select the first spam on the list, shift-click the last to select all the spams in between, and click the spamcop column, then click process. In four clicks you can report all your spams, or all the spams that aren't already on the spamcop blocklist, or all the spams that come from hijacked computers at the department of defense -- whatever criteria you set up. Usually, you choose to delete them at the same time, so if Verizon blocks them, you no longer have them to report. They are never downloaded into your email client, so forwarding them as attachments would entail copying and pasting them into txt files, saving them as .eml, then creating a new email to spamcop and attaching them all. If I wanted to do all that, I'd just paste them in the spamcop webform. It might be feasible for one or two spams, but even if I only report the highest priority ones, like phish and sites distributing malware, I get dozens a day among my various email accounts.

A couple of my ISPs deal with the filtered vs. unfiltered issue by having separate mailservers that aren't spam filtered -- so instead of using "outgoing.verizon.net" for spam reporting, there might be one called "spamcop.verizon.net" whose only filter is that everything it gets must go to spamcop. Setting up the subdomain isn't expensive, and surely there is an easy way to set up a simple filter for "spamcop: yes/no" without it involving the vendor who's doing the regular spam filtering.

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Re: Verizon Spam Detector
bullfrog01
Newbie

Yes.  For the last two days I have been inundated with piles of SPAM.  I've set in motion 'blocks' but they don't even seem to work effectively.  I forward e-mails to <spamdetector.notcaught@verizon.net> but I might just as well do nothing.  I have had MANY experiences with Verizon and few have been good.  This is just another example of Verizon providing mediocre at best customer service or the basics of a reliable ISP.  IMO, Verizon provides such a marginal service and provides such poor customer service that it should be disbanded into it's major subgroups.  I had the nerve a couple of weeks ago to use their antivirus scanner and let's just say that that experience did not end well.  In a word Verizon generally sux.

On the 'bright side' I'm 'glade' that I'm not alone in getting this spam deluge.

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Re: Verizon Spam Detector
AlphaCentauri
Enthusiast - Level 2
@bullfrog01: While it's annoying to get spam that looks like it should have been easy to spot, you don't realize what the denominator is. Verizon is blocking a huge percentage of spam before the optional spam filter even gets to it. (And you should make sure yours is still set to "on.") The volume of spam has just gone up for everyone lately. My other non-verizon email accounts, which are not filtered by anyone but me, are getting over 900 spams a week each right now. My concern is that my good email coming in or going out gets blocked in the process of trying to block every trick the spammers come up with, and that I don't have any choice about it. I would never use my verizon email address for any communication where it was important for me to get a reply. There's too much chance of incoming mail getting blocked, and when it is, neither I nor the sender is notified. The sender thinks I got his/her email and chose to ignore it.
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Re: Verizon Spam Detector
jmw1950
Specialist - Level 2

While Verizon doesn't seem to want to admit it, for the past several days there have been problems with at least some SMTP and POP servers going up and down like a yo-yo. These failures seems to have 'disrupted' the inbound spam filter, because I am seeing a lot more come through than I am used, and surprise surprise, the spam detector folder for me on www.verizon.net is empty! The arrival of the SPAM and timeouts and 'service temporarily unavailable' problems with the email servers both started at about the same time, so I suspect they are closely related.

So until Verizon gets their email servers fixed, I suspect this is going to be an on-going issue.

There are a couple threads on the subject on the FIOS boards that you might want to look at.

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Re: Verizon Spam Detector
SickofSpam
Newbie

Verizon does seem to be able to block spam -- in only all but one of my accounts. I have several email addresses. In all but one of them, no spam -- NONE -- gets through. However, in my primary email addresses, maddening volumes of spam pass through -- and all in duplicate. All settings on my account are active and accurate (tech support even remoted in and checked), I have used up all available lines of spam filters, I have "marked" hundreds if not thousands of spam, and have sent hundreds to "spam detector not caught". NOTHING has worked. I have called Verizon three times. Each time they are quite condecending. Two times, they have promised to assist. The third time the tech even gave me a "ticket number" and told me it would take several days to "reset" my account. However, when I checked the status of my support inquiry online, the tech request was closed out upon ending the phone call. Just lip service. Yes, I have spam software via Outlook, but the volume of spam is so massive that I am stuck going directly to the verizon mail site to check my email. I have read posts about intermittent failure of spam filtering. That would be acceptable. Nothing is perfect. However, the problem I am encountering has persisted for years. I have had enough. I spend hours each week deleting spam, not to mention the time spent trying to get through to tech support. I even tried to type in a request to the virtual online support and got a "try back later" message. Given that I have FIOS TV, internet, land line and wireless via Verizon, you would think that they would be more responsive.

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Re: Verizon Spam Detector
SickofSpam
Newbie

After six calls to tech support, with each rep (including managers) telling me there was nothing wrong with my account...I indentified the source of my problem. Not them. ME. Either way, problem identified. Great news, right? Nope. After two days of mulling the problem, Verizon called to tell me they can't fix it.Or won't fix it. I'm not sure, really

So long-term loyal  customers of Verizon, here is the deal...My email account was established many years ago, via Bellatlantic.net. When the switch was made to Verizon.net, the @bellatlantic.net accounts were retained. You may still have one, too. So what? In effect, any old bellatlantic.net account is an alias that you cannot manage, nor can Verizon (or so they say). The  Spam Detector cannot be activated to work on the old bellatlantic.net account. OK, I pleaded, then just delete the bellatlantic.net account. Their response: The two accounts cannot be separated. Only if I drop my primary email account (and lose the other six) can they be separated. Of course, they wouldn't offer to let me have the account again. the bottom line: If you want to keep your email address you are stuck with spam. Hundreds of spam a week. The reason that I didn't isolate the source of my problem more quickly is that I had written a filter years ago to delete anything to/from "bellatlantic.net". Unfortunately, this filter doesn't work on BCC, and the delivery header is "undisclosed". What is even worse than spending more than a dozen hours on hold for or speaking with tech support is that Verizon is absolutely indifferent to the problem. Their tech support was not apologetic, they offered no alternatives, nor did they get the irony that I have this problem simply because I am a long-term, loyal customer -- Fios internet, Fios TV, wirless and landline. Guess that doesn't matter. Given the size of my monthy bill and rampant competition, you'd think that would. Bad business model, Verizon.

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