How do I get Comcast to remove domain lists from the spam list?

I am on several lists, an email comes in and is marked spam, I unblock the
sender, the next one comes in and is marked spam, I unblock it, same old, same
old.

Why and how does it get on the spam list? Why don't we have control over it?
Obviously the unblock "feature" doesn't work.

Some of this nonsense has been from very important contacts, like doctors and
business'.

Calling tech support does nothing, because I can't understand the foreign
accent and they have no clue as to what the problem is.

Anybody else with this problem?

--
Tekkie

Tekkie <Tekkie@comcast.net> wrote:

> How do I get Comcast to remove domain lists from the spam list?
>
> I am on several lists, an email comes in and is marked spam, I
> unblock the sender, the next one comes in and is marked spam, I
> unblock it, same old, same old.
>
> Why and how does it get on the spam list? Why don't we have control
> over it? Obviously the unblock "feature" doesn't work.
>
> Some of this nonsense has been from very important contacts, like
> doctors and business'.

Unfortunately users do not get to specify the order in which anti-spam
blacklists and user-defined rules will execute. The anti-spam blacklist
is exercised first. Then user-defined rules (either server-side in your
account, or within a local e-mail client) get exercised. If their
blacklist thinks an e-mail is spam, it gets moved to the Junk folder.
Then your rules get exercised, but the suspect e-mail has already been
moved out of the Inbox folder (rules only exercise on new e-mails
received into the Inbox folder, not on new e-mails showing up in the
Junk folder).

This is a problem with all e-mail providers since they exercise their
anti-spam filters before your rules are exercised. If it were in the
opposite order, you could perhaps flag those e-mails their blacklists
are to ignore.

You could disable their anti-spam filtering, but then it is up to you to
handle all the spam. Not all e-mail providers let you disable their
server-side anti-spam filters. Some do, like Comcast: in your online
account, go to Settings -> Mail -> Advanced -> Spam Filtering, where
"Override" means off.

Some e-mail providers let you define a whitelist (aka Safe Senders list)
that gets exercised before their anti-spam filters. You did not specify
if your whitelist is in your local e-mail client, or defined in the
settings for your online account. Settings -> Mail -> Advanced -> Email
Safe List. Alas, that setting makes your account exclusive-use only:
only senders in that list will get their e-mails accepted while *all*
other senders are rejected. You convert your account to opt-in for
select senders rather than as opt-out to get rid of unwanted senders.
Comcast does not have a server-side Safe Senders whitelist. Since they
exercise their anti-spam blacklist first, your safe sender filters get
run too late: the blacklist already moved a suspect e-mail out of the
Inbox, and your Inbox-only filters will not fire on e-mails that were
already moved into other folders.

There is no "Block" or "Unblock" function in Comcast's webmail client,
just "Spam" or "Not Spam". It has been conjectured that you must use
Comcast's webmail client to select a message in the Junk folder and use
the "Not Spam" toolbar button to move it back to the Inbox folder, and
that the action will add a vote to not consider those e-mails as spam in
future filterings. It is just a vote, and not by adding the sender to a
Safe Sender whitelist. One vote on one e-mail by one user won't effect
their anti-spam blacklists. Many votes by the same user for the same
sender won't have much impact. Takes thousands of votes by lots of
users to weight that sender as okay despite being included in one of the
many blacklists used by Comcast (their own, Spamhaus, SpamCop, or
whomever they incorporate into their antispam blacklists). Also
conjectured is that moving e-mail from Junk folder to Inbox folder using
a local e-mail client will not trigger their webmail client to upvote
the e-mail (vote it is not spam). I have not found articles from
Comcast proving or disproving the conjectures, but then I may have
missed them. If Block and Unblock are functions in your local e-mail
client, that's just local changes regarding organization of the local
message store. The server-side anti-spam filter already moved a message
into the Junk folder, so it isn't in the Inbox when your client gets new
messages, and it's on new Inbox messages that safe senders are
exercised.

There is no option on right-click on an e-mail in their webmail client
to add a sender to a Safe Senders whitelist, because Comcast doesn't
have a Safe Senders whitelist. Adding a sender into your local e-mail
client's Safe Senders whitelist won't undo their blacklist: your
whitelist gets exercised long after their anti-spam filters got
exercised, and after your server-side rules were exercised.

Even if Comcast's webmail client had a Safe Senders whitelist, it would
have to get exercised before they exercise their anti-spam filters.
Some e-mail providers exercise Safe Senders before anti-spam filters,
some don't. You don't even have a chance to test since Comcast has no
Safe Senders whitelist.

You either have to keep monitoring the new-message count for your Junk
folder (using their webmail client or your local client if using IMAP),
or you have to completely disable their anti-spam filtering, and then do
all the filtering yourself using numerous rules (within the constraints
of conditions on which you can test using their server-side rules or
rules you define in your local e-mail client).

Anti-spam filtering disabled: you get ALL e-mails, and you do the
filtering using server- or client-side rules that you define.

Anti-spam filtering enabled:
- No Safe Senders whitelist, so no override to their blacklists.
- Their anti-spam filters are exercised against new messages.
- Your server-side filters get exercised on new messages in the Inbox.
- Your client-side filters get exercised on new messages in the Inbox.

Without a Safe Senders whitelist, and one which overrides their
blacklists, you have no way to force an override on a sender to ensure
their e-mail stays in your Inbox folder. That lack of a server-side
Safe Senders whitelist that overrides their anti-spam filters is why I
only use my Comcast e-mail address for non-primary communication.

I don't know of a local e-mail client that will trigger on new messages
in the Inbox that will also then trigger to check if new messages have
shown up in the Junk folder to run rules that will decide if some Junk
messages should get moved back into the Inbox folder.

The best you can do is, as the sender, report to your e-mail provider
that Comcast is spam-tagging e-mails from their domain. Reporting spam
flagging to other than your own e-mail provider will be ignored. They
are only responsible for supporting their own customers, not
non-customers that are the candidate recipients of your e-mails. You
will need to contact the sender(s) to tell them that Comcast is spam
flagging their e-mails, and request those senders to contact their own
e-mail provider about the problem. Then the sender's e-mail provider
can contact Comcast to resolve the issue. You may instigate your own
e-mail provider to open a dialog with Comcast. The sender has to
initiate the report with their own provider. Customers might be heard.
Non-customers are not unless it's another major e-mail provider
contacting another major e-mail provider.

For example, Microsoft and Gmail, at different times, were blocking
e-mails sent from Spamgourmet or SpamEx (e-mail aliasing services) based
on the IP addresses of the SMTP servers at Spamgourment and SpamEX.
Recipients were powerless to get Microsoft and Gmail to correct the
problem. Instead they had to report the problem to their own provider
(Spamgourmet or SpamEx) to get those e-mail providers to contact
Microsoft and Gmail to get themselves off the blacklists.

Alas, many doctors don't operate standard e-mail services. They get a
setup that is oriented to health companies, and the doctors are
distanced from the operators of the messaging service. Telling your
doctor their e-mails are getting spam-flagged by Comcast probably won't
help since your doctor hasn't a clue who to contact regarding e-mailing
problems. They might have an admin of their comm service that they can
contact to report the problem, and the admin would have to contact
whomever is the e-mail provider, and that e-mail provider would have to
contact Comcast. The longer the red tape, the less likely an issue gets
resolved.

On Fri, 21 May 2021 20:16:15 -0500, VanguardLH posted for all of us to
digest...

>
> Tekkie <Tekkie@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > How do I get Comcast to remove domain lists from the spam list?
> >
> > I am on several lists, an email comes in and is marked spam, I
> > unblock the sender, the next one comes in and is marked spam, I
> > unblock it, same old, same old.
> >
> > Why and how does it get on the spam list? Why don't we have control
> > over it? Obviously the unblock "feature" doesn't work.
> >
> > Some of this nonsense has been from very important contacts, like
> > doctors and business'.
>
> Unfortunately users do not get to specify the order in which anti-spam
> blacklists and user-defined rules will execute. The anti-spam blacklist
> is exercised first. Then user-defined rules (either server-side in your
> account, or within a local e-mail client) get exercised. If their
> blacklist thinks an e-mail is spam, it gets moved to the Junk folder.
> Then your rules get exercised, but the suspect e-mail has already been
> moved out of the Inbox folder (rules only exercise on new e-mails
> received into the Inbox folder, not on new e-mails showing up in the
> Junk folder).
>
> This is a problem with all e-mail providers since they exercise their
> anti-spam filters before your rules are exercised. If it were in the
> opposite order, you could perhaps flag those e-mails their blacklists
> are to ignore.
>
> You could disable their anti-spam filtering, but then it is up to you to
> handle all the spam. Not all e-mail providers let you disable their
> server-side anti-spam filters. Some do, like Comcast: in your online
> account, go to Settings -> Mail -> Advanced -> Spam Filtering, where
> "Override" means off.
>
> Some e-mail providers let you define a whitelist (aka Safe Senders list)
> that gets exercised before their anti-spam filters. You did not specify
> if your whitelist is in your local e-mail client, or defined in the
> settings for your online account. Settings -> Mail -> Advanced -> Email
> Safe List. Alas, that setting makes your account exclusive-use only:
> only senders in that list will get their e-mails accepted while *all*
> other senders are rejected. You convert your account to opt-in for
> select senders rather than as opt-out to get rid of unwanted senders.
> Comcast does not have a server-side Safe Senders whitelist. Since they
> exercise their anti-spam blacklist first, your safe sender filters get
> run too late: the blacklist already moved a suspect e-mail out of the
> Inbox, and your Inbox-only filters will not fire on e-mails that were
> already moved into other folders.
>
> There is no "Block" or "Unblock" function in Comcast's webmail client,
> just "Spam" or "Not Spam". It has been conjectured that you must use
> Comcast's webmail client to select a message in the Junk folder and use
> the "Not Spam" toolbar button to move it back to the Inbox folder, and
> that the action will add a vote to not consider those e-mails as spam in
> future filterings. It is just a vote, and not by adding the sender to a
> Safe Sender whitelist. One vote on one e-mail by one user won't effect
> their anti-spam blacklists. Many votes by the same user for the same
> sender won't have much impact. Takes thousands of votes by lots of
> users to weight that sender as okay despite being included in one of the
> many blacklists used by Comcast (their own, Spamhaus, SpamCop, or
> whomever they incorporate into their antispam blacklists). Also
> conjectured is that moving e-mail from Junk folder to Inbox folder using
> a local e-mail client will not trigger their webmail client to upvote
> the e-mail (vote it is not spam). I have not found articles from
> Comcast proving or disproving the conjectures, but then I may have
> missed them. If Block and Unblock are functions in your local e-mail
> client, that's just local changes regarding organization of the local
> message store. The server-side anti-spam filter already moved a message
> into the Junk folder, so it isn't in the Inbox when your client gets new
> messages, and it's on new Inbox messages that safe senders are
> exercised.
>
> There is no option on right-click on an e-mail in their webmail client
> to add a sender to a Safe Senders whitelist, because Comcast doesn't
> have a Safe Senders whitelist. Adding a sender into your local e-mail
> client's Safe Senders whitelist won't undo their blacklist: your
> whitelist gets exercised long after their anti-spam filters got
> exercised, and after your server-side rules were exercised.
>
> Even if Comcast's webmail client had a Safe Senders whitelist, it would
> have to get exercised before they exercise their anti-spam filters.
> Some e-mail providers exercise Safe Senders before anti-spam filters,
> some don't. You don't even have a chance to test since Comcast has no
> Safe Senders whitelist.
>
> You either have to keep monitoring the new-message count for your Junk
> folder (using their webmail client or your local client if using IMAP),
> or you have to completely disable their anti-spam filtering, and then do
> all the filtering yourself using numerous rules (within the constraints
> of conditions on which you can test using their server-side rules or
> rules you define in your local e-mail client).
>
> Anti-spam filtering disabled: you get ALL e-mails, and you do the
> filtering using server- or client-side rules that you define.
>
> Anti-spam filtering enabled:
> - No Safe Senders whitelist, so no override to their blacklists.
> - Their anti-spam filters are exercised against new messages.
> - Your server-side filters get exercised on new messages in the Inbox.
> - Your client-side filters get exercised on new messages in the Inbox.
>
> Without a Safe Senders whitelist, and one which overrides their
> blacklists, you have no way to force an override on a sender to ensure
> their e-mail stays in your Inbox folder. That lack of a server-side
> Safe Senders whitelist that overrides their anti-spam filters is why I
> only use my Comcast e-mail address for non-primary communication.
>
> I don't know of a local e-mail client that will trigger on new messages
> in the Inbox that will also then trigger to check if new messages have
> shown up in the Junk folder to run rules that will decide if some Junk
> messages should get moved back into the Inbox folder.
>
> The best you can do is, as the sender, report to your e-mail provider
> that Comcast is spam-tagging e-mails from their domain. Reporting spam
> flagging to other than your own e-mail provider will be ignored. They
> are only responsible for supporting their own customers, not
> non-customers that are the candidate recipients of your e-mails. You
> will need to contact the sender(s) to tell them that Comcast is spam
> flagging their e-mails, and request those senders to contact their own
> e-mail provider about the problem. Then the sender's e-mail provider
> can contact Comcast to resolve the issue. You may instigate your own
> e-mail provider to open a dialog with Comcast. The sender has to
> initiate the report with their own provider. Customers might be heard.
> Non-customers are not unless it's another major e-mail provider
> contacting another major e-mail provider.
>
> For example, Microsoft and Gmail, at different times, were blocking
> e-mails sent from Spamgourmet or SpamEx (e-mail aliasing services) based
> on the IP addresses of the SMTP servers at Spamgourment and SpamEX.
> Recipients were powerless to get Microsoft and Gmail to correct the
> problem. Instead they had to report the problem to their own provider
> (Spamgourmet or SpamEx) to get those e-mail providers to contact
> Microsoft and Gmail to get themselves off the blacklists.
>
> Alas, many doctors don't operate standard e-mail services. They get a
> setup that is oriented to health companies, and the doctors are
> distanced from the operators of the messaging service. Telling your
> doctor their e-mails are getting spam-flagged by Comcast probably won't
> help since your doctor hasn't a clue who to contact regarding e-mailing
> problems. They might have an admin of their comm service that they can
> contact to report the problem, and the admin would have to contact
> whomever is the e-mail provider, and that e-mail provider would have to
> contact Comcast. The longer the red tape, the less likely an issue gets
> resolved.

Thank you for taking the time to write this. I mainly use their web client &
have had times when I unblocked spam it reappeared seconds later - in the spam
folder... Sometimes it takes three tries to unblock them. I use TBird as an
alternate which sometimes catches the ones I don't.

Tekkie <Tekkie@comcast.net> wrote:

> Thank you for taking the time to write this. I mainly use their web client &
> have had times when I unblocked spam it reappeared seconds later - in the spam
> folder... Sometimes it takes three tries to unblock them. I use TBird as an
> alternate which sometimes catches the ones I don't.
>
> I will continue on to fight the monolith, again, thanks for the info.

You will lose the fight. Comcast won't make changes to their blacklists
based solely on false positives in your lone account. If they supported
a Safe Sender whitelist (which was effected BEFORE they apply their spam
filters), you could add a sender to that to keep them in the Inbox.
Alas, Comcast doesn't support a Safe Sender pre-spam filter whitelist.
The only way you can ensure good senders will always go to your Inbox is
to configure your account so ALL e-mail goes to your Inbox. That means
disabling their anti-spam filtering option in your account. Then it'll
be your job to create filters to get rid of the spam, and hope they
aren't too general to false trigger on good messages (i.e., you should
define Keep filters before the Kill filters, and the Keep filters should
NOT have the "Process other filters" option -- once decided to keep,
don't apply other filters on the same message).

In article <1k8d6pvncu6ra$.dlg@v.nguard.lh>, VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH>
wrote:

> Tekkie <Tekkie@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > Thank you for taking the time to write this. I mainly use their web client
> > &
> > have had times when I unblocked spam it reappeared seconds later - in the
> > spam
> > folder... Sometimes it takes three tries to unblock them. I use TBird as an
> > alternate which sometimes catches the ones I don't.
> >
> > I will continue on to fight the monolith, again, thanks for the info.
>
> You will lose the fight. Comcast won't make changes to their blacklists
> based solely on false positives in your lone account. If they supported
> a Safe Sender whitelist (which was effected BEFORE they apply their spam
> filters), you could add a sender to that to keep them in the Inbox.
> Alas, Comcast doesn't support a Safe Sender pre-spam filter whitelist.
> The only way you can ensure good senders will always go to your Inbox is
> to configure your account so ALL e-mail goes to your Inbox. That means
> disabling their anti-spam filtering option in your account. Then it'll
> be your job to create filters to get rid of the spam, and hope they
> aren't too general to false trigger on good messages (i.e., you should
> define Keep filters before the Kill filters, and the Keep filters should
> NOT have the "Process other filters" option -- once decided to keep,
> don't apply other filters on the same message).

I do all my own filtering. If the email is from someone in my
contacts, it gets through. Otherwise, it's diverted to junk. Once in
a while I skim through there to see if there's anyone in the Froms that
I shouldn't have junked. Hardly ever happens, though.