Yahoo Mail Spam

[Rich Konopka]

Has any other yahoo mail users noticed a surge in spam coming into their inbox? I have been using Yahoo mail for 12 years and it has gotten to the point where I am shucking yahoo mail. Any recommendations on a good email service?

[Steven Wilson]

I keep a number of yahoo email accounts in order to minimize spam. Most of the accounts are used for news groups or other places where email mining operations occur. If things get out of hand on them I drop them. My real email accounts get very little spam that's because they are only given to humans I trust. I also have my own email consolidator, a C++ program I wrote a long time ago, that consumes my email and delivers it to one of my Outlook inboxes.

To answer your question, all of the other services are similar. You'll get spam if you expose your email address to forms, company response forms, news groups, or forums.

[Jim O'Dell]

If you need to be able to get email online, I've heard that G-mail from Google is pretty good. I have used Netscape in the past, and am using Thunderbird now that Netscape is leaving the scene. I've never had a problem with spam. Thunderbird has an easy learning scheme so it learns what you consider spam, and what is not. Almost all the advertisements I receive are what I've signed up for. I never use Outlook, except where I have to at work. I hate Outlook. Jim.

[Reed Wells]

Jim, I have 2 business accounts with yahoo and one free one. Between all three I receive about fifteen hundred emails a day. With my filters I get about thirty that stay in my inbox. The rest go in the spam box and I delete them without looking at them. Both of my business accounts are listed on my websites, but my personal email is shared with only a trusted few.

[Craig D Peltier]

I have used yahoo for at least 7 years. I get maybe one spam a week in my inbox. I get about 3-5 day in my spam box. I also have another yahoo email for when I order over the net. I dont see much new stuff in that one but alot of the same.

[Andrew Derhammer]

I never hand out my one email for yahoo, only for stuff like ordering or sigining up for a forum. Now i've been getting about 2 daily trying to "enlarge me"

[Dick Strauss]

Rich,
Try logging into your mail account area and finding the "options" tab. From there you should be able to turn on the spam guard filter. You'll have the option to save the suspect messages to a junk mail folder or delete them immediately. Sometimes messages I want to see from Klingspor.com or Woodcraft will end up in the junk mail box because they are a mass mailing. So, I quickly review the junk mail folder before deleting the messages manually.

[Mitchell Andrus]

From the other side of the Yahoo problem...

I run a shopping cart site and until about five months ago had enormous trouble getting emailed order confirmations and shipping notices back to Yahoo clients - legitimate communications.

When I get a call complaining that they didn't get a confirmation, I ask if they use Yahoo. Almost 100% of the time, they do.

Yahoo has been incredibly over-active while protecting their members and I know they've been getting heat about it from merchants and members lately. I've tried to comply with their protocols for getting onto the 'accepted' list. I gave up after almost 4 hours. Some bounce back, more and more are getting through... finally.

My 2 non-Yahoo email accounts are very well managed by 2 separarate hosts neither of which bounce legit emails. Yahoo isn't doing anything any better than any of the rest of them - in fact, they can be doing a whole lot worse. Used to be they were cutting edge. The fact that you are getting so many junk emails (I get fewer than 20 /day on 2 non-Yahoo accounts) means that you aren't being well served anymore.

Man-up and get a real account. Both of mine are tied to my websites, (mitch@URL.com) so I can't help you 'cept to ask around.

[Dick Strauss]

Mitchell,
You are right about yahoo (though I like and use their email system). I often have people send me emails that don't reach my inbox for more than 24 hours. I assume this is due to the mulitple filters some messages have to pass through to "protect" me.

FYI-I receive about 20 junk messages per day into my junkmail folder via yahoo.

[Rob Russell]

I've been using Yahoo for our email for a number of years. Their spam filter is pretty good. I do use the option of having the spam routed to a Bulk folder so I can review it before purging it. There are things that I want which get caught in their spam filters and there is a little bit of spam that gets throug. I select the spam in my Inbox and hit the Spam button, it's gone and reported to Yahoo so they can update their spam filters.

To repeat, if you use Yahoo - don't just purge spam. Have it sent to the Bulk folder and check it before you purge.

[Nancy Laird]

My latest gripe with Yahoo, and I'm not sure it was Yahoo that did it, is that I got 17 (!) copies of the same e-mail from the same person -they came in one right after the other - bam, bam, bam. Don't know what caused it, but.... I've had my Yahoo account for about 6 years and my spam filter obviously works, because I hardly ever get spam. I use the account for my personal e-mails with family and friends, as well as for 'net ordering, etc., and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of spam e-mails I've gotten in the last week.

Am I just lucky???

[Andrew Derhammer]

My latest gripe with Yahoo, and I'm not sure it was Yahoo that did it, is that I got 17 (!) copies of the same e-mail from the same person -they came in one right after the other - bam, bam, bam.

I just had that same problem. The yahoo email server was down and then when it was back online it had the duplicated emails.

[jeremy levine]

Yes... a bunch of Yahoo lottery stuff and a few new Nigerian xxx scams. I have used yahoo for a long time and recently I did notice a spike.