Site Totals

61162 Questions Answered 267 Categories

Verizon's outgoing e-mail server foolishly blocking spam-complaints

I tried to complain today to a spammer's Internet-providers and, obviously, included the spam itself in my e-mail (as an attachment). To my surprise, outgoing.verizon.net blocked my message telling me, it is "spam"...

Please, debug the problem. Thank you!

Comments

Hubrisnxs

forward update requests to spamdetector.update@verizon.net

SPAM FAQ

Will Verizon notify me if an email I’ve sent is identified as spam?
Yes. If you send an email that matches the digital signature of a known spam message, Verizon will block the message from being delivered and send you the following notice:
"The message you attempted to send was determined to be spam. Please visit http://www.verizon.net/spamfaq for more information."
What should I do if I receive such a notice from Verizon?
If you believe we erred in identifying one of your outgoing emails as spam, you can send the original message to us at spamdetector.update@verizon.net. (Please be sure that the above email address is the sole recipient. Do not add other recipients in the "To", "CC" or "BCC" fields, or we will not receive your message. Do not alter the original message by adding or removing comments, text, or attachments.) Within an hour of receiving your report, we will reevaluate the digital signature and, if the message is believed to be legitimate, adjust our spam filters as appropriate. Please note that Verizon won’t notify you about the outcome of our review. Rather, you should try resending the message 30 – 60 minutes after submitting your report to Verizon.

UnitedMarsupials

I don't think, this recommendation makes sense in the case I'm describing. The filter "correctly" identified my message as containing spam. What it failed to realize is that I'm quoting the spam.

And even if I was sending a spam-message verbatim -- as long as my activity was not sending in bulk, it ought to be Ok. Spam is not child pornography, where forwarding even one copy is unethical and illegal. Spam only becomes such, when sent in massive numbers -- a letter sent to only a handful of addresses should be allowed out no matter what.

Normx

Greetings,

I have had problems with the random blocking of emails ( I have enhanced dsl).

Spent several hours reading the posts and trying all of the solutions.

None worked.

I did get the message to send to spam filter, but days later, it still is flagged as spam

I really get the feeling Verizon just wants out of the email business.

normx

See my reply post here for another member

http://forums.verizon.com/t5/Verizon-net-Email/Verizon-marking-my-outgoing-email-as-spam-thanks-thanks-a-lot/td-p/432525

tns

You should forward such email as an attachment to spamdector.notcaught@verizon.net. It is suppose to be setup to allow spams be forward to this address. Must be the only address the mail is sent to. Do not attempt to return it to the original service provider, verizon will contact them if they feel it is necessary.

sandywings7

Why are they doing this? We should be free to send whatever e-mails we want. I thought Spam protectors were to guard e-mail being SENT to us; not the other way around!

They need to stop this!

tns

There are spam detectors all over the network, and some will start blocking all traffic from Verizon customers once they decide Verizon is a spammer.

Spamming is not nice. And if you are forwarding an email with SPAM they cannot realize that you are not the spammer.

Now if they are incorrectly identifying some of your outgoing email as spam they have an address to report this to and procedures to ask for a correction. Similarly you can report some incoming mail that is incorrectly identified as SPAM.

sandywings7

The thing is - what I was sending out was NOT Spam, and I have been sending this type of e-mail for the past TWO YEARS.

Verizon should not monitor our e-mails...it's an invasion of our privacy.

Techman28

Verizon has the right to secure its outgoing servers and they do so by implementing spam filters. if your emails are all of a sudden caught by the filter send an email with what you were sending to spamdetector.update@verizon.net .

mandersen7

I have the same problem; started Sunday. Outgoing emails to addresses that I regularly send to are being blocked as spam. I am self employed and it is affecting my business. I have spent over five hours on this issue. I called Verizon yesterday and was told it was my domain server. I called my them and was told it wasn't; it was all Verizon. I checked Microsoft (I use outlook) and someone else has the same problem and was told that it was all Verizon. I called Verizon again and was told to change the outgoing mail server. I told them that Verizon told me I had to use outgoing.verizon.net (I have Verizon fios internet). I called again (third call) and finally found someone who walked me through what the solution is and it is not acceptable to a small business.

I am self employed; when I send an email I include a signature which provides my mailing address and website as well as a privacy disclaimer.

I was informed that the spam detecting is done by a third party and sometimes they mark outgoing emails with signatures as spam. The only way I can send an email from my business email is to send it without any contact information.

I have sent numerous emails (about 20-30) to the spamdetector update as instructed in the the verizon FAQ to no avail.

There is a something that blocks legitimate businesses from sending emails; I am proof.

It must be fixed. To be require to send a professional email without a signature is not acceptable. I will never get new business as I will not be taken seriously.

So, something has to be fixed whether or not Verizon wants to believe it.

somegirl

As stated in the Spam FAQ page, you will not get any response when sending the message to spamdetector.update@verizon.net for review. You attach the message that you are unable to send, and they review it. Depending on the outcome of the investigation, the filter will either be updated to allow the content that was previously blocked, or it will be determined to be a legitimate block and no changes will be made.

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.

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.

Remove any links/URLs from the email one at a time to isolate if one of them is causing the block.

Some people have suggested sending the message to check@isnotspam.com for investigation. This may work for you as well.

newtown_rob

I've been going through a living nightmare for the past few days trying to get Verizon to admit and fix this problem. They are blocking ALL my outgoing email. (I use Outlook to use a corporate email account to support customers in other countries at night). I have spent more than 10 hours on hold waiting for customer service, then getting dropped from the line, etc.. When have gotten to speak to someone, they've given me **bleep** suggestions like:

Use a gmail account instead of my corporate email account to reply to my customer's help request issues
All of the issues must be my fault, because they couldn't be Verizon's fault (this is ALWAYS the assumption) - my computer is always kept up to the minutes with patches, etc and has all necessary virus and other protection software. I never load anything except the basic software on it to keep it clean.
I shouldn't have a signature block on my emails because that causes problems
I should watch my choice of words so that the spam filters don't think that I am trying to sell something
Don't include hyperlinks in emails
Send each failed email to Verizon so their team can read my personal email and within 24 hours or more, I might be able to try again and maybe then the email will go through - or maybe it won't. But - they won't tell me when it has been reviewed. Say nothing about privacy issues.

What I am concluding is that Verizon wants us to invent a new sort of language - perhaps we could call it "Spam-Correctness". It is made up of a bunch of code words that mean other things but pass through spam filters. We would need to teach this language to our customers, but at least we could send emails using Verizon this way. I would be like "Political Correctness" where polite words replace meaningful words so that nobody is offended - the problem is that 60% of the people who are listening don't understand what is being said, resulting in a useless form of communication.

So, emailing using Verizon is now going back to being comparable to writing a letter, walking down to the post office and mailing it - except that you have a better chance that it will get there is you mail it at the Post Office.

This might be funny if it weren't true. Yes, Verizon customer support IS this bad - I am not making this stuff up.

Oh, and by the way - nobody could care less about getting it fixed - they are all masters of "it's not my fault" and transferring you to another extention that rings for 30 minutes then disconnects.

They know that they have a contract and if you break it, they will charge your account anyway and do all kind of nasty things to you. I know - when we switched at work even after our contract ended they kept charging us for a year after we cancelled, sent us to a collections agency and a number of other VERY nasty things even though we had cancelled, paid all that we owed. They are the nastiest company in America.

newtown_rob

BTW: the thing they b-l-e-e-p-e-d out was not at all an offensive word...

ElizabethS

Hi newtown_rob

Sorry you are having difficulty, an agent with access to your account will reach out to you directly by email, private message in the Forums and/or the billing telephone number on your Verizon account for more information to help you resolve your issue.

newtown_rob

I've already spent over 10 hours on the phone with people at three levels of technical support at Verizon. Everyone knows the details. What I really need is someone to DO something instead of just talk about it.

Everyone says how important I am as a customer - you should really hold that stuff to yourselves until you do more than ask me the same questions over and over and over and ... If you REALLY thought I was important, you wuld DO something more than:

keep trying find new ways to blame me for the problem
stop talking and fix the problem

You would rather spend $10,000 talking about fixing the problem than $300 fixing the problem. Very strange economics. Stop protecting the smart people from the customers with your many levels of tiered support and let them fix the problems.

doug3960mad

Glad I'm not the only one who just got snaired. Don't bother wasting time by sending your private confidential email to spamdetector.net. Been doing it all day. No help at all. I even sent blank test emails. Got bounced and stay bounced.

There are lots of ISP's out there, and plenty of companies who will give me a free email account. I'm guessing my 193.00 a month Verizon bill doesn't ring the "Customer is Important" bell. When a company stops caring, they've gotten too big for their britches.

doug3960mad

Can't say this will fix everyone's issue but I downloaded the In Home agent app and let it do a auto fix of my outlook verizon email account and it worked. I'm not a silver contributor or employee. The top of this forum doug_vz makes mention of it. Time will tell if it actually solved the problem permanently. If not I'm calling Brighthouse.

pdqcarrera

It's a very irritating problem that I share with you, as do many other Verizon email customers. The Spam detection software Verizon uses is awful. False catches is a very annoying situation when you are attempting to send critical or timely emails.

Apparently sharing links within email is an increasing problem for Verizon as I've noticed the problem getting worse.

I have not found using spamdetector.update@verizon.net to be of any help. To add to some of the other suggestions that have already been posted, try sending your email in plain text rather than HTML. I have done this on a couple of occasions with success.

pdqcarrera

doug - what did the "Verizon In Home agent app" change in your settings?

By any chance did it change your signature, or your default setting (html vs. plain text)?

Hubrisnxs

Have you tried going to www.isnotspam.com

They have an email that you send a copy of the offending email to, and it returns an email to you with all the red flags that are potential problems.

Simply compose your email and send it to the following email address, using your usual mail server. You will be able to view an online report detailing potential problems (if any) with your email. Our software automatically checks the main elements which cause emails to be rejected by recipient mail servers. The following tests will be performed:
SPF Check
Sender-ID Check
DomainKeys Check
DKIM Check
SpamAssassin Check
You'll be able to view the results of these tests online within a few seconds, by searching for your sender email address in the box above.
check@isnotspam.com

MisterBill2

I've run into this stupid problem when trying to report phish mail to the address that the phished site wants it reported to, like spoof@ebay.com. It needs to be fixed.

tommarshall

Cannot send E-Mail. Windows says it is spam.

rottencs

I wish that would be all of or the ONLY problem I ever encountered with Verizon.net. They are SO inept and unpractical, I must be an IMBECILE to still be using it, but fortunately, I have a backup which I NEVER have any problems with, and they cost me $10 a month.

Just a few of the 100's of MY Verizon problems:

. the same spam issues you noted plus tonitetried to forwarsd something to my wife, who is the ONLY reason I still have verizon. It was noted to "possibly be spam"???!!! (maybe Bloomberg (NY mayor) had something to do with it0

. all of the "square Bob sponge pants and the like, he's dead Jim etc on their screwed up site????

. Shockwave Flash issues, crashes, etc which continually (until it finally crashes) disrupt and slow my computing and will NOT let me eliminate it.

. the little counter clockwise arrows that may sometimes go on for many minutes before either FINALLY completing the task or giving you an error msg.

. all of the MANY error msgs continually ONLY happening on verizon, and NOT on my cheap backup site.

. I'm going to stop before my fingers get tired, but believe me I could get to 100 EASY!!

One of these days, I'll get the time (by NOT using verizon) to {word filter avoidance}-can them!!!

POWERFUL SOLUTIONS---GET RID OF verizon!!

rottencs

ARE you serious?? How about verizon fix their OWN screwed up mess, and don't ask us to do MORE {word filter avoidance} that THEY should eliminate.

THANKS, verizon Bloomberg

rottencs

Take that {word filter avoidance} off!! WE are capable of determining what WE determine is SPAM, Nanny. Try instead doing SOMETHING about the 50 or 60 SPAM msgs I send YOU that keep coming!!!!!@!

Blackbeltmom

I am having the exact same issue. It has been almost one week now that I have been barred from sending emails via verizon. It worked beautifully for 2 years, not one issue then Saturday I go to send a single email to one single person in my contact list and it is rejected as spam. Please DO NOT tell me to send it to the spam dept@ verizon - I have done so about 8x now. I have contacted the online agent who was useless as after an hour Verizon informs me that the issue is my signature as it appears I am using my residential account for business and they will not allow that. Odd, after two years now it is an issue? And after carefully reading there is nothing that says I cannot allow my clients to email me with my residential email. And my boss uses the same email. Try again Verizon. But let's assume they are right -- I did erase my signature and attempt to send emails that way and NO - returned SPAM - and yes I sent those to the spam dept as well and yes still not fixed. So I call an agent who was very kind but informed me that although the VERIZON'S WEBSITE says it takes them 30-60 minutes to review the messages sent to the spam dept - it is actually 24 hours so there was nothing to do except do it a 10th time and wait 24 hours. So now, the Verizon online agent failed at sending messages - sent it to the spam dept and FAILED - the agent I called FAILED and yet here I sit having to pay Verizon for a service they ARE NOT PROVIDING nor fixing. I was then told the issue must have been outlook - I DON'T USE OUTLOOK! ONLY VERIZON. So here I am with Verizon not fixing their issue and I am loosing work bc I cannot respond to anyone's emails. Thank you Verizon for doing a horrible JOB again....

So today I create an outlook account and guess what? STILL CAN'T SEND EMAIL VIA VERIZON... Now all my clients world wide have this one email and it is useless. And I am computer illiterate to start all over...

[Deleted User]

Hi Blackbeltmom,

Your issue has been escalated to a Verizon agent. Before the agent can begin assisting you, they will need to collect further information from you. Please go to your profile page for the forum and look at the top of the middle column where you will find an area titled "My Support Cases". You can reach your profile page by clicking on your name beside your post, or at the top left of this page underneath the title of the board.

Under "My Support Cases" you will find a link to the private board where you and the agent may exchange information. This should be checked on a frequent basis, as the agent may be waiting for information from you before they can proceed with any actions. To ensure you know when they have responded to you, at the top of your support case there is a drop down menu for support case options. Open that and choose "subscribe". Please keep all correspondence regarding your issue in the private support portal.

Verizon_Support

Blackbeltmom,

We have closed your private support thread due to no response from you. Feel free to make a new post anytime you need some help.

- Jose_VZ

atomicgillie

@corbulon wrote:
I tried to complain today to a spammer's Internet-providers and, obviously, included the spam itself in my e-mail (as an attachment). To my surprise, outgoing.verizon.net blocked my message telling me, it is "spam"...
Please, debug the problem. Thank you!

spoof@american express.com

hmsrs6

Why does Verizon allow me to RECEIVE phishing emails and spam, but prohibit me from reporting it? I received a phishing email purporting to be from Paypal. Paypal's website has the following direction for these scams:

If you believe you've received a phishing email, follow these steps right away:

Do not enter any financial or personal information. Do not click on any links or download any attachments within the suspicious email.
Forward the entire email to spoof@paypal.com. Do not forward the message as an attachment.
Do not alter the subject line. Delete the suspicious email from your email account.

We'll send you an email response to let you know if the email is indeed fraudulent.

Why does Verizon's outgoing e-mail server prevent me from reporting this scam?

tns2

They cannot tell that you are not the spammer. They allow you to send copies to their spam detector not caught address and the government's. Perhaps a few others, but not many.

Address to send Verizon suspected spam spamdetector.notcaught@verizon.net

Address to send Us government suspected spam spam@uce.gov

D4Lee

Corbulon,

In my opinion, you are quite right! I had Verizon flag a message as spam that I was trying to send. It was TEXT ONLY, but in a variety of font sizes, regular and bold print, and font styles. Like you, I had only ONE intended recipient.

Donald

misterbill99

@tns_2 wrote:
They cannot tell that you are not the spammer. They allow you to send copies to their spam detector not caught address and the government's. Perhaps a few others, but not many.
Address to send Verizon suspected spam spamdetector.notcaught@verizon.net
Address to send Us government suspected spam spam@uce.gov

That's not going to help.

The issue is that I am trying to report phishing spam (which was caught by Verizon's spam filtering) to the company that is being spoofed. I got email today claiming to be from American Express but it was a phishing scheme. Verizon is not allowing me to forward the email to their designated address -- spoof@americanexpress.com so they can investigate. It seems like they should have a whitelist of reporting addresses that spam is allowed to be sent to so it can be reported. I hope that other ISP's are more enlightened so at least other reports can get thru.

tns2

You can probably zip the email up and send it to American Express if you want. Verizon and the goverment notify major sites when you send them copies of such phish, so its not really necessary for you to send a copy directly. Remember its not easy for them to tell that you are not the spammer or Phisherman.

misterbill99

So this is still an issue. I thought it had been fixed and that I could forward to some abuse/spoof addresses but I am unable to forwrard Paypal spoof mail to spoof@paypal.com. How do we get this fixed? it is stupid beyond belief that I am unable to forward phish mail to help the provider identify the criminal.

Child Item