Site Totals

61164 Questions Answered 265 Categories

Verizon Spam Detector

Verizon's 3rd party spam detector is terrible. On quite a few occasions I have had e-mails bounce back to me because they are identified as "spam." These e-mails are often replies or forwards to clients, often of a time sensitive nature; there is nothing in them that could possibly be interpreted as spam. They are single e-mails sent to single recipients. I've found that forwarding them to the spamdetector.update@verizon.net is absolutely useless. I've never received a reply or confirmation, and have never had the problem resolved. Once my current service contract runs out, I am switching to a different service provider.

Comments

prisaz

@mroman789 wrote:
Verizon's 3rd party spam detector is terrible. On quite a few occasions I have had e-mails bounce back to me because they are identified as "spam." These e-mails are often replies or forwards to clients, often of a time sensitive nature; there is nothing in them that could possibly be interpreted as spam. They are single e-mails sent to single recipients. I've found that forwarding them to the spamdetector.update@verizon.net is absolutely useless. I've never received a reply or confirmation, and have never had the problem resolved. Once my current service contract runs out, I am switching to a different service provider.

If it is bouncing back, it is not Verizon's spam detector but the other provider. In my experience the outgoing mail is not filtered for spam once your mail client logs in to send it. If you send spam from your Verizon account they would let you know in a hurry and then probably lock you account. There is no reason to for Verizon to block any outgoing mail as spam.The spam detector filters incoming mail which work pretty well. I have mine set to keep the filtered mail in the spam box and then I go in through webmail and clean it up from time to time. A friend of mine has had his ISP reject mail from me and identify it as spam based on a bad entry on their black list. Verizon should contact them and solve the problem. Also Verizon has rejected mail from this person's ISP before and on both occasions they have made sure the issue was fixed. I will see what I can do to raise attention to this issue.

mroman789

No - It is Verizon's spam filter. This is the message I receive from Verizon:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: RE: Help
Sent: 3/6/2009 8:15 AM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

'[redacted]' on 3/6/2009 8:15 AM
550 5.7.1 The message you attempted to send was determined to be spam. Please visit http://www.verizon.net/spamfaq for more information.

If you go to the Verizon webpage listed in the automated response, this is the first thing it says:

"Verizon adds additional security and protection to subscriber accounts by taking measures both to prevent spam from being sent to our customers and to safeguard our network from being used by spammers. These measures include scanning all incoming and outgoing e-mail so that spam can be captured and contained before it reaches our customers or before it can be sent from our network."

The bounceback is instant from when I send the message. The recipient is not on the Verizon network. My message is not even reaching the other provider. This isn't the only instance of this happening either; I've e-mailed other colleagues and had the same result, but it is inconsistent. This particular recipient I usually e-mail a couple of times per week, but this is the first time it has bounced back from this e-mail address. I end up wasting too much time trying to work around this and get my e-mail to the recipient.

prisaz

Wow! That must be their new system. I can say it never happened to me like that. I know recently they have started a new policy that blocks users from useing other SMTP servers that do not belong to them, and are not on their network. I guess I would be upset also if this were to happen to me. They should fix it. Sorry to hear of your difficulties. I have passed a link to this post on to some people that should take care of it. I am sure it will be resolved. If it does not get fixed please PM me and let me know. I have had the same verizon.net email account for 10+ years and what you have shown is news to me.

sosmart

So glad to have found this thread! I cannot send messages this evening to my fiance, but was able to send out to only one other person. Exactly what was written above is what happens to me, it is so frustrating, and the Verizon help site is well, no help at all!!! The advice says to forward the rejected message but forwarded it is not an option, so how else am I to get any help and clear my fiance's name?

Please help!

duffy1

the same thing happens to me. i have messages returned (off and on) indicating that MY EMAIL was not send because VERIZON classified it as spam. This is absurd. I have talked 3 times with tech support and now they want me to pay for premium tech support to "resolve the issue" . The issue is not my problem, it is Verizons'. What can we do?

PS I was trying to respond to a client (first time); send a quilting page as an attachment (second time); and trying to send the same page to myself (3rd time). Since when quilting is SPAM?

erna

Verizon's spam detector or security block is overactive again just as it was in 2005 when it blocked replies from the small number of people I was corresponding with in Germany and Japan. Now replies to mail sent to two parties in Germany and one in Switzerland have been blocked without my knowledge until these people phoned me asking why I don't repond to their emails. I unblocked one through the Verizon white list; the other I just learned about. This is terrible when you don't even know your mail is being withheld. By the way, all this mail gets through to my husband's account at a university, so how risky is it? Why should it be necessary to send people alternate email addresses, Yahoo for example, just to be sure of receiving legitimate mail?

dcasciato

I'm having the exact same issues. I cannot send a client of mine an email. I've been trying to send this particular email, with 4 MS Word attachments. These are articles I wrote for his newsletter that he needs to review immediately.

I've been trying to send this email since 7:30 p.m. yesterday. It's now 10:30 a.m. So it's been 15 hours. I contacted Verizon FIOS tech support and they keep sending me to the verizon.net/whitelist page. I also have forwarded my message onto the third party vendor at spamblocker.update@verizon.net.

I did all of this yesterday. And no one has responded to my concerns yet.

This is the second time in 2 weeks this happened to me.

I just feel that no one at Verizon FIOS cares. I can't even begin to tell you how extremely frustrated I am at this moment.

I'm going to start looking for another provider. Any suggestions would be welcome. I've had it.

Trainman

This "Spam" filter is a serious problem for me too! I have had more than 20 Emails in a row blocked by Verizon because they are spam. The one thing they have in common is they all talk about "gardening" and " model Railroading" and a "Food Drive" for our local food bank - The stuff of which serious spam campaighns are made? Yesterday I spent almost four hours on the phone to verizon tech support talking to a tech and his supervisor. The result - since I could send and recieve test messages, it wasn't Verizon's problem. These folks actually told me that the Spam messages were not coming from verizon but either Gateway or Microsoft or McAfee and that these companies were putting Verizon's name on the System Administrator messages they were generating and sending me! I spent 4 hours on an international phone call to be told this!! I, too, have sent these "spams" to the address given and recieved nothing in return. Last week I couldn't send email out for a solid week. Then, Saturday morning everything was fine. Sunday Afternoon, emails started being blocked as "Spam". These were invitations to a charity event. What was not "spam" on Saturday and Sunday morning is "spam" on Sunday afternoon? Any ideas on where to find intelligent lifeforms at Verizon?

JerryPittsburgh

Add another unhappy voice. I agree there must be no intelligent life at Verizon ... from the buffoons who instituted this ridiculous outgoing spam filtering to the designers of their customer service system to the customer service agents themselves. (Do they honestly think spammers sit at their computers and send e-mails one-at-a-time?! And why won't they allow you to e-mail customer service about e-mail?!)

We've been on FIOS with Verizon (switching from cable) for less than a month, and while the speed is impressive, I am NOT impressed with the occasional lapses and especially with Verizon customer service.

The only constructive (?) comment I can add that those wanting to flee Verizon because of overzealous spam filtering should avoid using GoDaddy, which has also blocked too much legitimate incoming mail as spam. (Supposedly, if a domain has ever been used to send spam, all mail from that domain is considered suspicious. Incredible!)

buzzmag

I also thought SpamDetector was useless until a week ago when I began receiving a dozen spams daily. MailWasher was recommended and I tried the free trial download. To my surprise, MailWasher illustrated how many spams SpamDetector was actually blocking. MailWasher blocked hundreds of spams before the actual got into my email program. It then gives you the option to decide if an email is a "friend" or spam and allow or block it.

To verify that SpamDetector worked for me, I turned MailWasher off for a few hours and then went to my email account on the Verizon site to check the spam folder. With no exaggeration, SpamDetector had literally blocked 120 spams before theyt got to Outlook, my email program. SpamDectector isn't perfect because I still get a few spams daily but it certainly eliminates the vast majority.

I'm not pushing MailWasher because I don't plan to buy it but it did demonstrate to me that SpamDetector does have value.

retired1

I have had a different problem with SpamDetector recently. I apparently made the mistake of emptying my SpamDetector folder about a week ago. Before that time, everything was working as it should. Since then however, no messages have appeared in the spam folder even though I have the mail setting checked that specifies the spam messages should be saved to the SpamDetector folder. I use Microsoft Outlook for email and nothing has appeared in its Junk Mail file either. Apparently, all spam messages are being deleted. I want the option to periodically review the spam messages because I have had the spam filter classify incoming messages as spam that were valid messages that I wanted to receive. I have called tech support four times and chatted online one time and the problem still exists. Is there any way to get all my messages, including spam, downloaded to my computer so the spam will be saved in my Junk Mail folder in Outlook? The only options I can find on Verizon.net is to save spam to the SpamDetector folder of have it deleted.

MagicMan

@retired1 wrote:
Is there any way to get all my messages, including spam, downloaded to my computer so the spam will be saved in my Junk Mail folder in Outlook? The only options I can find on Verizon.net is to save spam to the SpamDetector folder of have it deleted.

Sign into your verizon.net account, click on My Account and then Email options. You will see "SPAM DETECTOR". Click on edit and turn it off. That should let all messages pass onto your outlook email client.

retired1

I am unable to turn off the option to save spam to the SpamDetector folder without turning on the option to delete the incoming spam. When I click one option to turn it off the other option automatically is selected. I can't turn both off at the same time.

MagicMan

Interesting. On my verizon.net account, I only have the option to turn it off (allow all messages to arrive at my inbox) or turn it on(junk mail goes to spam folder.) I don't have 2 options.

Are you using the verizon.net, msn or yahoo verizon experience? Maybe there is something unique to that. I didn't bother with the msn or yahoo experience.

DoctorDan

I am having the same experience and even though I keep sending filtered e-mails to the SPAM service, the problem seems to get worse. I am hoping the Verizon is monitoring this forum, because there seems to be no direct way to discuss this with Verizon. If this does not change for the better, I will change my internet service provider. I currently loose about 30-minutes a day dealing with this SPAM filter service. The value of one day of my lost time is more than the price of service.

bocceball

I thought that I had done something wrong. I'm relieved to find out so many people are having the same problem. I am the president of a social club, non profit. I don't spam, I don't break any rules, I don't exceed my email limits. This "bouncing" started on 5/5/2009.

Since then I have spent numerours hours attempting to correct it. Verizon tried to blame it on Outlook. Obviously this is not the case.

When I contacted Verizon, they had my IP address removed by Spamhous. I still have the problem. Simple forwarding and basic email contact has become a daily burden. I am very frustated and intend on changing my service.

bnc21

Add my name to the list of disgruntled Verizon email users. I have been using the same Verizon email addy and alert setup at corporations like Wachovia and Caremark for years. In the past few months, both of these companies have flagged my Verizon email addy as invalid on multiple occasions. Sometimes their email alerts get through ..sometimes they dont. I have reported this to verizon.net/whitelist. Lets see if anything changes . If not , I can always switch to Comcast

hfdzl

Put me on the list also. I have a news letter that I recieve. I share this with a few - 4 - like minded freinds. Spam blocker knocks it out. I can't even send the attachment to spamblocker for review. I will wait a while and try again, I like Verizon for the DSL service- but will drop them if I have to.

sheelagh

I'm a comcast customer, and my emails to verizon customers are all disappearing! I get no error messages! I only realised recently that friends aren't replying to me!

I guess I've been flagged as a spammer.

Anyone know how to get off the list??

Katz

bnc21 or anyone--

what's the full email address of verizon.net/whitelist ? I'm getting blockages of entires domains. The "blocked sender" and "allowed sender" tabs seem to have disappeared from our account profile with the new site interface.

bnc21

http://www2.verizon.net/micro/whitelist/

Katz

Thanks. I'm writing this several weks later, and that service didn't help.

corbeze

-----

How does Verizon determine whether my E-mail is SPAM?
Verizon uses a third party vendor to scan email messages for spam. Their systems use a combination of proprietary anti-spam techniques and spam complaints sent from users across the Internet to create spam filters. The false positive rate is very low.

Should you feel an email message was caught in error, please forward the suspected email message as an attachment to: spamdetector.update@verizon.net .

You can also fill out this form http://www2.verizon.net/micro/whitelist/request_form.asp?id=member

If this fails, call technical support and ask for a Tier II.

1-800-567-6789

----

somegirl

Ok, to clear up a few things from this thread:

The email address to send legitimate messages to that were blocked in error is spamdetector.update@verizon.net - They will be reviewed and you will NOT hear back from anyone.

The whitelist form is ONLY for mail that is being blocked coming into Verizon from a 3rd party, not outgoing. You will know when to use the whitelist form because it is specifically referenced in the bounceback message the sender gets back.

Some troubleshooting steps you can try:

If you have a signature, try removing one line at a time from it and attempting to send the message again. Some signatures look like "ads" to the filters, apparently.

If you are using a pop3 client (Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.) try sending your message from the verizon.net website. If this resolves the issue, then it is something that your client is adding to the message that is causing it to be blocked.

If the Subject line of your message has a whole bunch of "Fwd: Fwd: Re: Fwd:" try removing some of them.

Hope this helps!

Poertner

Add one more VERY unhappy user.

Whoo in the world designs these outgoing spam filters.

I have also spent 3 hours on the phone, being transferred from one department to the other with no result.

I suddenly cannot send out e-mials to a group of e-mail recipients that contain a word 2003 attchement file, same people I have been communicating with for years ona daily basis.

I can sent out Word 2007 and PDF files, what in the world is going on?

Serious hoem office business interuption. Someone needs to get this staright, anyone any solutions to this?

Thank you

Rainer

somegirl

@Poertner wrote:
Someone needs to get this staright, anyone any solutions to this?

Possible solutions are listed above. In your case, it sounds like your options are:

1. Send an email with the attachment to spamdetector.update@verizon.net - Do this regardless of whether you do any other steps. This helps get the filters updated.

2. If you are sending through a client, try sending it from Verizon's webmail.

3. Check the content of the attachment. Is this any word 2003 doc or only ones with certain content? Try sending a word 2003 doc that only has the word test in it and has a plain title like "testpage" or something similar. If that one goes through, it's something contained in your message.

4. Send it as a Word 2007 doc. If it works this way, no reason not to send it in that format.

Hoosiers411

Put me on the list of very unhappy customers. This email spam filter is ridiculous. I'm trying to send an email to three people, listing the places we will be staying on a two-week trip. It includes dates, the names of the hotels, and their phone numbers.

Nothing special in my book, but the Verizon email filter rejects the message and I have been unable to send it. I tried sending the list to just one person at a time; it rejects that too. What good will it do for me to send the email without dates, places and phone numbers?

I finally posted the list on a web page and sent an email to my three relatives referring them to the web page. This Verizon feature stinks.

searay61

I don't know what they changed in the past week but Verizon needs to "unfix" what worked last week. I was told (after an hour on tech support) that I needed to delete and redo my mail account. Funny, I did that in Septemeber and didn't work...for a few days and then by a stroke of majic, my emails went out.

Here we are in Decemeber again, and the same deal. It starts working like majic. Now, tonight, I am sending ONE email to ONE person with attachments and it is being tagged as spam. My work around it to send via GMAIL. I am looking at SMTP servers because I do not have time to diagnose a moving target. I don't send spam, never have and never will and do not want to "pimply faced youth" deciding via a program that I can't send an email with attachements.

TICK TICK TICK...FIOS is getting to big like the rest of the ones that were good, then grew, then blew.

Get my email to work or I will find someone else who can. Or hire me at $100/hr so I can help your tech diagnose your self imposed gun shot wound to the foot. **bleep**.

bullfrog01

Yes. For the last two days I have been inundated with piles of SPAM. I've set in motion 'blocks' but they don't even seem to work effectively. I forward e-mails to <spamdetector.notcaught@verizon.net> but I might just as well do nothing. I have had MANY experiences with Verizon and few have been good. This is just another example of Verizon providing mediocre at best customer service or the basics of a reliable ISP. IMO, Verizon provides such a marginal service and provides such poor customer service that it should be disbanded into it's major subgroups. I had the nerve a couple of weeks ago to use their antivirus scanner and let's just say that that experience did not end well. In a word Verizon generally sux.

On the 'bright side' I'm 'glade' that I'm not alone in getting this spam deluge.

AlphaCentauri

@bullfrog01: While it's annoying to get spam that looks like it should have been easy to spot, you don't realize what the denominator is. Verizon is blocking a huge percentage of spam before the optional spam filter even gets to it. (And you should make sure yours is still set to "on.") The volume of spam has just gone up for everyone lately. My other non-verizon email accounts, which are not filtered by anyone but me, are getting over 900 spams a week each right now. My concern is that my good email coming in or going out gets blocked in the process of trying to block every trick the spammers come up with, and that I don't have any choice about it. I would never use my verizon email address for any communication where it was important for me to get a reply. There's too much chance of incoming mail getting blocked, and when it is, neither I nor the sender is notified. The sender thinks I got his/her email and chose to ignore it.

jmw1950

While Verizon doesn't seem to want to admit it, for the past several days there have been problems with at least some SMTP and POP servers going up and down like a yo-yo. These failures seems to have 'disrupted' the inbound spam filter, because I am seeing a lot more come through than I am used, and surprise surprise, the spam detector folder for me on www.verizon.net is empty! The arrival of the SPAM and timeouts and 'service temporarily unavailable' problems with the email servers both started at about the same time, so I suspect they are closely related.

So until Verizon gets their email servers fixed, I suspect this is going to be an on-going issue.

There are a couple threads on the subject on the FIOS boards that you might want to look at.

SickofSpam

Verizon does seem to be able to block spam -- in only all but one of my accounts. I have several email addresses. In all but one of them, no spam -- NONE -- gets through. However, in my primary email addresses, maddening volumes of spam pass through -- and all in duplicate. All settings on my account are active and accurate (tech support even remoted in and checked), I have used up all available lines of spam filters, I have "marked" hundreds if not thousands of spam, and have sent hundreds to "spam detector not caught". NOTHING has worked. I have called Verizon three times. Each time they are quite condecending. Two times, they have promised to assist. The third time the tech even gave me a "ticket number" and told me it would take several days to "reset" my account. However, when I checked the status of my support inquiry online, the tech request was closed out upon ending the phone call. Just lip service. Yes, I have spam software via Outlook, but the volume of spam is so massive that I am stuck going directly to the verizon mail site to check my email. I have read posts about intermittent failure of spam filtering. That would be acceptable. Nothing is perfect. However, the problem I am encountering has persisted for years. I have had enough. I spend hours each week deleting spam, not to mention the time spent trying to get through to tech support. I even tried to type in a request to the virtual online support and got a "try back later" message. Given that I have FIOS TV, internet, land line and wireless via Verizon, you would think that they would be more responsive.

SickofSpam

After six calls to tech support, with each rep (including managers) telling me there was nothing wrong with my account...I indentified the source of my problem. Not them. ME. Either way, problem identified. Great news, right? Nope. After two days of mulling the problem, Verizon called to tell me they can't fix it.Or won't fix it. I'm not sure, really

So long-term loyal customers of Verizon, here is the deal...My email account was established many years ago, via Bellatlantic.net. When the switch was made to Verizon.net, the @bellatlantic.net accounts were retained. You may still have one, too. So what? In effect, any old bellatlantic.net account is an alias that you cannot manage, nor can Verizon (or so they say). The Spam Detector cannot be activated to work on the old bellatlantic.net account. OK, I pleaded, then just delete the bellatlantic.net account. Their response: The two accounts cannot be separated. Only if I drop my primary email account (and lose the other six) can they be separated. Of course, they wouldn't offer to let me have the account again. the bottom line: If you want to keep your email address you are stuck with spam. Hundreds of spam a week. The reason that I didn't isolate the source of my problem more quickly is that I had written a filter years ago to delete anything to/from "bellatlantic.net". Unfortunately, this filter doesn't work on BCC, and the delivery header is "undisclosed". What is even worse than spending more than a dozen hours on hold for or speaking with tech support is that Verizon is absolutely indifferent to the problem. Their tech support was not apologetic, they offered no alternatives, nor did they get the irony that I have this problem simply because I am a long-term, loyal customer -- Fios internet, Fios TV, wirless and landline. Guess that doesn't matter. Given the size of my monthy bill and rampant competition, you'd think that would. Bad business model, Verizon.

Child Item