Forum Discussion

dlarkin-dc's avatar
dlarkin-dc
New Contributor III
9 months ago

Email rules, clarifications needed

I know we're going to Yahoo soon enough, but the spam filtering is so awful is (filtering non-spam and not detecting obvious spam) so I'm having to setup rules for the short term. Not the worst, but ...
  • CurtB's avatar
    CurtB
    9 months ago

    For an explanation of Filter Rules, see: How to: Prevent Webmail Spam | Cox Community

    That post was created for the previous version of Webmail.  All information about Filter Rules still applies but ignore references to spam filtering.  Current Webmail does not include spam filtering.  

    In theory, "reject with reason" refuses to accept email during the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) transaction.  It would occur during the initial connection between the sender's and recipient's servers, before any email content is transmitted.  However, I recall reading a post about "reject with reason" that indicated it didn't work.  That may have been with the previous version of Webmail.  If you give it a try, let us know how it works.  

    The only spam filtering is the email flagged as spam by email security companies.  That email will go directly to the Spam folder.  Filter Rules don't apply to email going to Spam.   In order of execution, email flagged as spam is processed first.  Avoid using "Blocked Senders".  It's better accomplished using Filter Rules as described in the post at the above link.

    The difference between "Discard" and "File into Trash" is described in the post at that above link.

    Edit: Tested Filter Rule with Action: "Reject with reason".   It didn't reject the email.

CurtB's avatar
CurtB
Valued Contributor III

For an explanation of Filter Rules, see: How to: Prevent Webmail Spam | Cox Community

That post was created for the previous version of Webmail.  All information about Filter Rules still applies but ignore references to spam filtering.  Current Webmail does not include spam filtering.  

In theory, "reject with reason" refuses to accept email during the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) transaction.  It would occur during the initial connection between the sender's and recipient's servers, before any email content is transmitted.  However, I recall reading a post about "reject with reason" that indicated it didn't work.  That may have been with the previous version of Webmail.  If you give it a try, let us know how it works.  

The only spam filtering is the email flagged as spam by email security companies.  That email will go directly to the Spam folder.  Filter Rules don't apply to email going to Spam.   In order of execution, email flagged as spam is processed first.  Avoid using "Blocked Senders".  It's better accomplished using Filter Rules as described in the post at the above link.

The difference between "Discard" and "File into Trash" is described in the post at that above link.

Edit: Tested Filter Rule with Action: "Reject with reason".   It didn't reject the email.

dlarkin-dc's avatar
dlarkin-dc
New Contributor III
9 months ago

Thanks for the response! 

My testing of rules to resolve issues have seen rule processing as unreliable, but the inconsistencies would be explained of the external spam tagging and Cox filtering.

Yeah, I'm aware of the X-Spam/Auth/etc. and DKIM header values etc, and that's arguably non-Cox (technically) even though it is inherently a Cox service pre-filter as there's no way to disable Cox service's filtering, pre-rules, based on those header values. Given the current situation with Cox email service I can't even get those incorrectly identified as spam email auto forwarded to rely on a client based spam filter. Hopefully things will work better at Yahoo servers and off whatever Cox is running. (Cloudmark, RackSpace, SpamAssasin.)