Curious Behaviour of my Spam Filter

[magpens]

My email provider/host is Yahoo ! and my browser is Mozilla Firefox.
My operating system is Windows 10 and it has recently ( a month ago ? ) been updated automatically.
Today is Sunday !

I get weekly notifications ( on Sundays ) of sale items from a particular vendor from whom I have bought a large amount of merchandise over the past 8+ years. . All purchases were online purchases through the vendor's website.

I always read/view these weekly notifications. . I have not, to my knowledge, altered any conditions for receiving these notifications.

Today's weekly notification, FOR THE FIRST TIME, went to my Spam folder. . . I don't understand why that would happen .

Can anyone offer possible reason(s) why today's notification went to Spam ?

Thank you !

 

[Curly]

In the distant past when I used Firefox it had a companion email program called Thunderbird. Firefox should not have a part to play in your email spam. If you use Thunderbird it would be where you look for a reason the mail went to spam or in the provider you would use for email. Telus, Gmail, Yahoo, etc. The one you use might be doing the filtering. That's the extent of my vast computer knowledge.

 

[sorcerertd]

The filter will be dependent on your mail provider and not the computer or browser. Hard to say why it was flagged, but usually you can "whitelist" a sender by adding them to your address book. Obviously, you can select it and click "not spam" or the equivalent, but that's not always effective in my experience for the next time.

Your post did make me check my email inbox and spam folder, but my Sunday email from EB was not in either folder just yet.

 

[MRDucks2]

I have had similar happen to me, though I use Gmail. An item I normally receive suddenly goes to spam or even more unusual, some but not all of them go to spam. I can only guess there may be an algorithm involved that either gets updated or is trying to learn my behavior, or something subtle changes in the vendor/advertiser email. Telling your email this is not spam or whitelisting it as they say should help.

 

[Don Rabchenuk]

Mal, my e-mails from that same vender have been going to spam for over a year now. I have tried about everything and can not stop it from happening. Recently e-mail from me via phone (my sending pictures to myself) have been going as well. I believe our common denominator is YAHOO.

 

[monophoto]

Long way from being a real expert, but in my case there can be many spam filters running in parallel, and its very easy for one of them to direct an incoming e-mail into the wrong folder.

I run Windoze 10 and use Outlook to retrieve e-mail flowing in via my ISP (Charter) and from Google (gmail). I can also use a browser (Firefox is my default choice) to access both the Charter and Google web-mail sites to retrieve mail directly and to set spam filters. Both Charter and Google provide spam filtration, but Outlook can also filter out messages. It's not common for messages to be sent to either a spam or trash folder incorrectly, but it can happen. I not sure what that is, but I suspect it has something to do with Windoze - if there is no other obvious cause, blame Microsoft!

E-mail systems typically have some native spam filtration capability, but also allow the user to create custom filters to block mail from either specific addresses (eg, XXXX@yyy.com), domains (yyy.com) or addresses that contain specific text or characters. There is a certain amount of skill involved in constructing filters that will be effective given the creativity that many spammers seem to have these days. Charter's spam filter is OK although over time the number of filtration options increases (exponentially), and it appears to me that the Charter spam filter starts to get bogged down as I add branches to the filter. Unlike the Charter system, the Google filter only allows the user to direct suspected spam to a spam folder - the Charter system allows me to actually block e-mail from designated senders. Google is trying to walk a fine line between good filtration, and possible erroneous blocking, but since I'm retired and not using e-mail for business, its not a problem for me if an oncoming message is incorrectly blocked.

As Todd pointed out, you should be able to 'whitelist' your regular correspondents - that should minimize the risk of messages from them being diverted. A whitelist is basically an inverted filter - you identify the addresses of the senders from whom you want to receive e-mail and specify that it should be directed to your inbox.

The other suggestion is to know where your spam and trash folders are, and just periodically check them to make sure that something important hasn't been misfiled. This is where using an e-mail client like Outlook is helpful since it allows me to easily access each of folders where spam may be hiding. My wife uses Thunderbird (a free e-mail client derived from the Firefox browser) and it works in a similar way.

 

[magpens]

@monophoto

"The other suggestion is to know where your spam and trash folders are, and just periodically check them"

..... That's what I do ..... WHEN I REMEMBER ..... but the "lifespan" of the Spam folder content is limited to a few days !!!!

 

[sorcerertd]

I believe our common denominator is YAHOO.

Funny you should mention that. I have a yahoo account as well and find emails from the same senders (not anything pen related) randomly go to spam sometimes while other messages come through just fine. I do like my gmail much better for this and several other reasons.

 

[Mortalis]

You also may want to review the ISP info from the sender. If the sender is updating their information or the DNS is refreshing on their end it could send email from an "unknown sender" into spam until you tell your email program it's OK.

Outlook has options for this and I believe almost all email programs have similar options.

 

[CHARLES STOPCZYNSKI]

I too have experienced similar. I have ATT Fiber as provider. Using a new computer (Jan 2021), Microsoft Edge browser. I have several e-mails a week wind up as spam. The senders are in my address book which should prevent this. One sender being Exotic Blanks, I have to go to Spam to retrieve it every time. Some others are of a political nature and I'm sure their spy software eliminates them due to corporate politics.
You've probably learned not to waste your life trying to contact, provider, or browser support. That can waste half a day with no results.
Set a reminder for Monday mornings on smart phone to check spam for Exotic Blanks weekly update.