UK Broadband Usergroup FAQs (frequently-asked questions)

It means your email is now fully moved to BTYahoo! and subject to the BTYahoo! spam filtering system which is switched on by default. Spam is diverted to a bulk mail folder and you will be notified when the first spam arrives. At first, the filter will miss some spam and may put some genuine mail in the bulk mail folder but it can be trained and also you can set up filters. SpamGuard Plus is now fully operational.

You login at <a href="http://uk.mail.yahoo.com" target=BLANK>http://uk.mail.yahoo.com using either your normal email address (including the domain) or your BTYahoo! profile if you have created one for that address. You can access the bulk mail folder by clicking on the bulk mail entry in the list on the left. If it is all spam, then you can click on the "empty" link. You can customise how long a list is displayed.

Although you will see the word "empty" next to the names of the various folders, that doesn't mean there is nothing in them, it is simply a link which you can click to empty the folder. If there is UNread mail in a folder then there will be a number in brackets to the right of the folder name. If there is READ mail in the folder there will be no number. Not very helpful, but that's the way they designed it!

Yes. In the webmail page, click on Mail Options and then go to POP Access and Forwarding and check the box for bulk mail forwarding, then remember to click the Save box at the bottom of the page. Next time you download from this mailbox into your email client it will download all the bulk mail folder contents to your mail client inbox

Yes. The bulk mail folder adds the string "X-YahooFilteredBulk" to the mail header. So you can use this string to create a filter in your email client to divert all the bulk mail to a separate bulk mail folder in your email client, or flag it in your client based spam software (eg: Mailwasher) - a suitable filter would be "the entire header contains X-YahooFilteredBulk". Even if SpamGuard is turned OFF, mail that would otherwise have gone to the bulk folder will still contain this header string and can be filtered.

There is also an option in Mail Options - Pop3 Access and forwarding, to get SpamGuard to add [Bulk] to the subject line, and this means that even if your mail client won't let you filter on headers you may be able to filter on the string "[Bulk]" in the subject line.

It seems that now this [Bulk] string is added prior to download and therefore is available for use in filters for programs like Mailwasher. (When SpamGuard was first started, it was only adding the [Bulk] string during a proper full pop3 session). You will probably need to experiment to see which is the most consistent and accurate string in terms of the final destination of the email in the webmail folders, particularly when mail starts off in the Bulk/Spam folder but is moved to the Inbox by a webmail filter before being downloaded.

You can report it and your report will go to the central database, and will also contribute to an individual mailbox training history. One thing you can do is add the From address of the mail to your online address book for that account, and SpamGuard Plus will be able to use your Address Book as a "Whitelist" to make sure legitimate mail goes into your Inbox. This is now operational as from 15th June 2004. You also consider making a personal filter to always "allow" mail from that address in future to go into your inbox. SpamGuard are also hoping to develop a "greenlist" of legitimate mailers in the near future. Senders of newsletters can go to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/spam/spam-17.html to ask to be "greenlisted".
You can also opt to NOT use SpamGuard for particular AddressGuard addresses on a "per-address" basis when you set up the AddressGuard address. (See below)

Yes. If you use the url <a href="http://uk.mail.yahoo.com" target=BLANK>http://uk.mail.yahoo.com to access your webmail, you can log in with a specially created BTYahoo profile. You can create a profile by logging into the btyahoo homepage, going to My Account, then Edit/Create profiles and creating a new profile, and making it your default profile. This will save you typing in the @btinternet.com every time you log in to webmail or the homepage, in future. You need a separate profile for each sub account too. The profiles don't work on all the various urls for webmail but they DO work at <a href="http://uk.mail.yahoo.com" target=BLANK>http://uk.mail.yahoo.com. Make sure you check the privacy settings for this new profile if you don't want it displayed publicly to other Yahoo! users.

How you do this depends really on whether your account gets mostly spam, or mostly legitimate mail. Ideally, you want to spend the least time possible either searching via webmail for legitimate mail, or wading through lots of pop3 downloaded spam. So - if your account is one that is mostly getting spam, check it via webmail. If it is one that is mostly getting legit mail, download everything and use your client-based filters. If you have several email accounts set up in Mailwasher, don't add the spam clogged account to your default check list, but check it separately to save having to sort lots of spam from legitimate mail.

Here's how it might work. For the accounts that don't get much/any spam, set them up to allow pop3 download of the bulk folder. Check them regularly with Mailwasher - and if it locates any mail with the bulk folder header - X-YahooFilteredBulk - it flags it up - you control what Mailwasher does with it. If it finds genuine email marked as spam, you can either just go on and download it with your email client, or if you want to train SpamGuard, then before you download it, go to webmail using <a href="http://uk.mail.yahoo.com" target=BLANK>http://uk.mail.yahoo.com logging in with your profile (quicker than the full ID) and report it as "Not Spam" (see above) BEFORE using your pop3 client. Similarly - if any spam makes it through to Mailwasher, you can likewise flag it via webmail as "Not Spam" and delete it before your pop3 download.

For an account that gets lots of spam and virtually no real email, then do NOT allow pop3 download of the bulk folder - and then Mailwasher will only have to deal with the inbox on that account, not the spam in the bulk folder. Check the inbox of that account as often as you need to by Mailwasher, and if you find spam, then go to the webmail interface, to report it using the Spam button. At the same time you can check the bulk folder for any genuine mail and report that using the Not Spam button - and you can guarantee that future mail from that sender goes to the Inbox, by adding their address to your online Adress Book using the link provided when you open their mail online. Set the page view to 200 mails at a time (on the webmail page, click Mail Options - General Preferences) to ease the checking. If there is no real email then delete it all at one go using the [empty] command next to the folder listing on the left hand side of the screen.
You also now have the option of deciding for each account how long mail is allowed to sit in the bulk folder before being automatically deleted.

NOTE : This facility to filter on the header content is unfortunately NOT available in Outlook Express. Further instructions are available for various email clients at <a href="http://help.yahoo.com/help/uk/mail/pop/pop-26.html" target=BLANK>http://help.yahoo.com/help/uk/mail/pop/pop-26.html although not all of the advice here applies to BTYahoo! mail- specifically - pop3 acces to bulk mail is not the default setting in BTYahoo! mail but needs to be turned on by the user.

NOTE ALSO: The new option to add [Bulk] to the subject line of spam from the bulk folder when it is downloaded (configurable in Mail Options - Pop3 Access and Forwarding) appears to now (as from September 2006) be available also for Mailwasher filtering, as it shows up when Mailwasher downloads the headers.

BTYahoo! are offering users up to 500 disposable email addresses for use with websubscriptions. For each email account you can create a basename, and then you add a suffix to that for each disposable address. So for example - using your email account username@btinternet.com, , you create a base name of dairyman88- and then you can create a series of addresses using that base name, at the yahoo.co.uk domain - such as dairyman88-dodgywebsite@yahoo.co.uk. Mail sent to that address will go to your inbox on username@btinternet.com. If that disposable address suddenly starts getting a lot of spam, you can delete it (and you know that the dodgy website was the one responsible). Go to Mail Options and click on AddressGuard via your webmail interface for more information and a flash demo.

You also have the choice to toggle SpamGuard checking on or off for each AddressGuard address you create, and to create a special filter for that address. You can also alter these settings in Mail Options - AddressGuard - select a particular AddressGuard address and click on the Edit button.

This means you have several options for dealing with spam on an AddressGuard address. Firstly - you can switch SpamGuard ON if it isn't on already for that address, which may be enough for small quantities of spam on a compromised AddressGuard address. Then if you are still having problems, you can simply delete that AddressGuard address, and decide whether you want to receive mail from the individual you created it for in the first place - as their system may have been compromised.

NOTE - at the present time, one place you CAN'T use your AddressGuard disposable address is on Yahoo! Groups - go figure! They do not allow yahoo.co.uk addresses. It is possible to get round this but only by signing up to groups via email using an AddressGuard address, and administering them soley by means of email commands, as you cannot enter an AddressGuard address using the webmail Yahoo Groups interface. This author has successfully signed up to one Yahoo! Group with an AddressGuard address.

Yes. In the webmail page, click on Mail Options, and then explore the various options - remember to scroll down the page, as the most useful links are near the bottom.

Go to General Preferences, where you can decide how many mails to view per page (useful for checking lots of spam) -maximum setting is 200 per page. You can also decide whether you want images and html links to connect (best to answer no if you are opening spam so that the spammer does not get confirmation that you have opened their mail) - plus a host of other settings that will be of relevance if you use the webmail interface to send mail, for example when you are away from home using a library or internet cafe. You can store useful addresses online, and you should keep a note of the webmail url in your diary.

Filters are like rules in an email client. They do things to mail based on rules you set up. They are acted on AFTER mail has been through the SpamGuard process. You can set up webmail folders and sort mail into the various folders automatically as it arrives, based on its content in the From, To/Cc, Subject and Body fields. You can have up to 50 filters on each account. Remember though that you can only access your Inbox and Bulk folder via your pop3 email client - you won't be able to download email that way from any new folders you create.

Address blocking is a specialised rule that blocks mail based on the address it appears to come from (remember it may well be spoofed) - mail from these addresses is deleted. Users have recently noted mysterious entries appearing in the address blocked list - an entry "Blocked" which support staff have been unable to explain the origin of, and which they say may even be harmful. You can block up to 200 adresses. DON'T set up address blocking to work automatically on all spam - you will use up your 200 limit in no time, as spam uses continuously changing spoofed From addresses.

SpamGuard Plus simply decides whether mail is spam or not, and whether to put it into the Bulk folder. SpamGuard Plus is trainable (on an individual user basis as well as collectively) andsince 15th June 2004 it has been possible to whitelist genuine mail by inserting the From address into the your online btyahoo Address Book.

SpamGuard can be toggled on or off for a given mailbox, and if you are using AddressGuard disposable addresses, there is an option to toggle SpamGuard on or off for each AddressGuard disposable address at the time you set it up or later by using the edit function.

The storage limits are now 2Gb for the primary account and 100Mb on each secondary. Maximum size of each email (including attachments) is 10Mb.
The bulk folder does NOT count towards your mailbox limit.

If you want to empty your bulk folder you can go to webmail at <a href="http://uk.mail.yahoo.com" target=BLANK>http://uk.mail.yahoo.com and check the contents of the bulk folder. You can speed up the way you view your web mail by clicking on General Preferences (scroll down the page to get this option) and setting the view to 200 messages per page. You can also go to the security settings on the same page, and prevent html graphics being downloaded, which stops spammers knowing you have opened their mail, should you open one of their messages by mistake.

You can also go back to Mail Options - Spam Protection, and check the setting for how long spam will be retained in your bulk folder - one week, two weeks, or one month - the shorter time you set here, the less time the spam has to build up. Alternatively you can arrange for spam in the bulk folder to be downloaded to your computer and deleted from the btyahoo mail server, by going to Mail Options - Pop access and forwarding, and arranging for your bulk folder contents to be included in your pop3 download. (see above).

After some initial difficulty the SpamGuard Plus product has settled down and is now responsive to training. There are four things you can do.

First - when you get falsely classified mail, go to webmail and in the folder view of the Inbox, or in the message view in the Bulk folder, you will find a reporting button - "Spam" or "Not Spam". Clicking this will report the mail to the central SpamGuard Plus database. Obviously the more people report a particular type of mail as spam the more likely it is that the central database will be modified.

Secondly - If you save the From addresses of false positive email (genuine mail that is classified as spam by SpamGuard Plus) in your online Address Book, then it will no longer be classified as Spam. This feature was implemented on 15th June 2004 and seems to be working well - it is user specific and should work immediately. Highlight the individual message and mark the check box, then click on the message itself. In the message view, there is a link to add the From address automatically to your online address book, and you can also import easily from popular email client address book formats. Remember that newsletters etc. sometimes change their From address so you need to keep your online Address Book up to date with any changes. Once an address is in yoour Address Book, the mail from that address should not any longer contain the X-YahooFilteredBulk string, or the [Bulk] addition to the subject line, so will not be filtered by your client-side filters.

Thirdly - you can set Address Blocking by default in Mail Options/Spam Protection/Mark Spam + Not Spam, and each time you report a mail as Spam using the reporting button, the From address will be noted and blocked. This unfortunately is not much use with spam, the majority of which comes with a spoofed and continually changing From address. There is a limit of 200 blocked addresses which is quite quickly reached if address blocking is on by default. We suggest that you do NOT use this feature to block unsolicited spam, but only to block mail from individuals or genuine mailing lists you have been unable to unsubscribe from by the normal methods.

Fourthly - you can set up filters to permanently move mail with given content in To, and From fields, and Body, to selected folders. (Mail Options/Filters) For spam, you would arrange for the filters to move it into the Trash folder. Some people have found that filtering for body content of voila.fr, voila%2Efr, and FreeTeensMovies.exe has helped reduce one particularly nasty brand of spam. But - be aware that filtering to deal with persistent false positive identification of spam does not remove the SpamGuard Plus identifier in the header - X-YahooFilteredBulk - so your own antispam software will still recognise the mail as spam if it is using this string as an identifier. Following some changes to SpamGuard in September 2006, it seems that the [Bulk] string in the subject line may be a more reliable indicator as this does seem to be stripped out if the mail is filtered by a webmail filter (or the address book entry) to be moved to the Inbox as legitimate after it has been flagged as spam by SpamGuard. This [Bulk] subject line string is available now for use in Mailwasher filtering.

Strictly speaking you can't - but there is an unofficial workaround using the email subscription route.

First - create the AddressGuard address, and make sure you allow it to be used as a From address for sending mail.

Then, find the home page of the group you want to join. Copy the subscribe address, and then use it to address a "subscribe" email to the group, using your BTYahoo! webmail interface, and in the From drop down box, choose the AddressGuard address you created for the group.

When you get the subscription confirmation by email, don't click on the url link, but use the Reply function, again sending From your AddressGuard address.
The moderator will send you a confirmation email about moderation of your posts - make sure you save that somewhere safe as it includes the various admin commands and how to use them via email. This is important as you can't use the Yahoo! Groups web interface to administer your membership if you are using an AddressGuard address.

If you want to send to the group from your email client using smtp you may need to do some tweaking to make sure that the message is sent using the correct sending address by setting up a "service" or account using the AddressGuard address, or else posts will appear to be from your default smtp sending account.

Its a workaround, but it seems to work - I now get my Yahoo! Groups mail on an AddressGuard address even though I am not supposed to, and I can also post successfully to my Yahoo! Group. Good luck.