How to effectively filter spam to Bluewin mailbox?

[devnull]

Hello all,

In my case, the Bluewin spamfilter has a false negative rate of ~90%. (False positives are about 0%.) Surprisingly, even blatant spam that has always the same subject or content doesn't get filtered appropriately.

I have contacted the Swisscom support and they said cannot do anything -- basically their spamfilter says spam is legitimate mail. This is hardly believable as even my simple local Thunderbird junk filter correctly identifies that spam once it has been trained with a dozen spam messages.

Do you have the same experience of the Bluewin spamfilter doing a poor job, or it is just me? And in this case, is there a way to filter the spam upstream? I'd really like a way to filter spam by part of the domain (like "@*advids*") or part of the subject (like "Webinar on *"), but the Bluewin spamfilter doesn't allow that.

Thanks in advance.

[bitracer]

I can't confirm that but I'm not heavy Bluewin Mail user.

The easiest solution is to use an Email client that has decent spam filtering capabilities built in. Which client do you use?

[Black Mamba]

@devnull 

Swisscom Webmail (Bluewin) has limited blocking functions, the only way to block a domain is as follows

Messages from blocked senders and domains (e.g. @domain.com) will be stored in the trash.

Wildcards like * are not accepted 

to verify : My Swisscom > Your products > E-Mail > Settings > Spam & Phishing Filter

The activated filters protect you from spam e-mails, damaging virus programs and attempts at

data theft using phishing e-mails.

[devnull]

@bitracer > The easiest solution is to use an Email client that has decent spam filtering capabilities built in. Which client do you use?

Yes, that's what I said I am already doing (I use the Thunderbird mailclient) but this solution doesn't filter spam at the source, so when I read my Bluewin mail on my smartphone any spam won't be filtered.

[r00t · Accepted solution]

Hi @devnull, (nice username btw)

Unfortunately, there is no "official" way to filter the e-mails upstream. However, what some people (including me) do is forward all emails to an inbox at a provider with a more potent spam-filter solution.

I am using my own mail server (mailcow), which uses rspamd that gets trained by the messages I move to the spam folder.

Another, less-technical solution, is to use a Gmail account - as Google is well-known for their spam-filtering policies.

You can still use the bluewin.ch address as a sender-address, if you set up the bluewin smtp-server as outgoing server in your mail-client and define the bluewin address as sender-address.

I am aware that I'm basically saying "don't use bluewin" - but in my opinion, it's the way to go as feels like Swisscom is not really investing in the development of their e-mail services any more.

Best,

r00t

[Black Mamba]

@r00t 

> ... I am aware that I'm basically saying "don't use bluewin" - but in my opinion, it's the way to go as looks like Swisscom is not really investing in the development of their e-mail services any more. ...

Swisscom never communicates about upcoming developments or products before making them available or planning rollouts, it would be interesting to know from what sources this alleged information arises?

[bitracer]

---

@r00t wrote:

…

Another, less-technical solution, is to use a Gmail account - as Google is well-known for their spam-filtering policies.

You can still use the bluewin.ch address as a sender-address, if you set up the bluewin smtp-server as outgoing server in your mail-client and define the bluewin address as sender-address.

I am aware that I'm basically saying "don't use bluewin" - but in my opinion, it's the way to go as feels like Swisscom is not really investing in the development of their e-mail services any more.

---

That’s not such a bad thing. You get automatically a backup of your Bluewin mailbox.

Nothing is new here. Bluewin has never been a solution for the hardcore Email users. It’s more geared towards the average consumer. In that it excels, as it has always been the iconic Swiss service that’s fairly simple and thus understandable for the „normal“ user.

[devnull]

@r00t > (nice username btw)

Thanks 🙂  Funny, just the day before you posted I subscribed to a technical (Linux-based) forum and chose the nickname "r00t"! 

> Unfortunately, there is no "official" way to filter the e-mails upstream. However, what some people (including me) do is forward all emails to an inbox at a provider with a more potent spam-filter solution.

I am using my own mail server (mailcow), which uses rspamd that gets trained by the messages I move to the spam folder.

That's what I thought doing.  Unfortunately it seems the only viable solution.

> Another, less-technical solution, is to use a Gmail account - as Google is well-known for their spam-filtering policies.

I'd stay away from Google.  They are based in the USA, where privacy laws are almost non-existent (no GDPR there) so they happily harvest all content of your e-mails for targeted marketing and any other purpose they see fit.

> I am aware that I'm basically saying "don't use bluewin" - but in my opinion, it's the way to go as feels like Swisscom is not really investing in the development of their e-mail services any more.

I fully share your opinion on this.

[r00t]

Hi @Black Mamba,

I've updated my post to make it clearer that this is my opinion and not based on any inside info 🙂.

[r00t]

Hi @devnull,

> Another, less-technical solution, is to use a Gmail account - as Google is well-known for their spam-filtering policies.

I'd stay away from Google.  They are based in the USA, where privacy laws are almost non-existent (no GDPR there) so they happily harvest all content of your e-mails for targeted marketing and any other purpose they see fit.

Absolutely, I only mentioned them because their spam-filter is famous and some people on the german swisscom-community are using their bluewin account this way 😉.

[devnull]

Since I am already renting a VPS, I have been looking around for implementations of the solution suggested by @r00t.

I forgot mentioning that I've been trying to train the Bluewin spamfilter for more than a year now.  For instance, I've fed it over 200 different messages from the same spammer.  For a few days it worked - the messages ended up in the Spam folder - but then spams got treated again as legitimate mail.  My conclusion, sadly, is that flagging a message as spam and reporting it to Swisscom doesn't have any effect, hence from now on I'll just avoid the trouble.  I'm eager to hear from you if you have a different experience or have some advice to spare.  

[Ascii1935]

I have recently experienced a tremendous uptick in the spam that the Bluewin service does not capture. The spam filter is pathetic, as it fails to catch a very hign fraction of the spam. It is furthermore highly inconsistent: identical spam messages from the same source are randomly classified as valid or spam. If your local Thunderbird filter does better, Swisscom/Bluewin have no excuse.  

I strongly feel that Swisscom is not interested in its email application, which could be vastly improved with just a little effort.  Their answer to you does not surprise me. 

[bitracer]

In combination with an email client, it works quite well. I don't get much spam that goes through.

[Ascii1935]

What works well ?

[bitracer]

I use it with Apple‘s Mail client. Hardly getting any spam at all.

[Ascii1935]

Sorry, I still do not understand.
I get some 100-200 spams a day,  randomly assigned to my inbox, spam box or deleted mail...
What do you use with Apple's email client to remove this ?

[bitracer]

I hardly get a spam email or two per  week. There’s nothing special. I just let the client filter email.

You can try to train the spam filter a bit by marking emails as spam. See after a while if that helps.

[Ascii1935]

I would like to report on my recent findings.

1. I receive 150 to 200 spam emails a day, mainly from the same set of financial services targeting me. About half of them are filtered out to the spam box. This started a few weeks ago, I had been OK for years.

2. I called Swisscom help. I was invited to move all spam to the spam box, and not to empty it, to train the spam filter.

3. As a result, I have today 1'384 spam mails in my spam box. The filter has not improved, and I counted the spams in my inbox; 84 this morming. 

4. I set up my bluewin account to forward all my mail to a gmail address. Of course, all the spam was forwarded as well. The gmail account filtered out all the spam, with I am sorry to report, a couple of false positives.

5. I called Swisscom again today. The attendant was very nice and helpful.

- she informed me it was useless to keep my spam box full.

- she offered me an advanced bluewin mail package, free of charge for one year.  I accepted, but I am incensed to have to pay for basic email security, and need to find another solution.

6. Going to the Swisscom site, I find the following:
https://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet-subscription/protection-security.html
In short, for a minimal security service, the charge would be 9.90 chf a month.

This clarifies Swisscom's policy.

Hope this helps.