Several weeks ago, I converted my faithful bellsouth.net e-mail account to the Yahoo version in a rare moment of corporate obedience. I didn’t think it would really affect me very much, because I rarely use web mail – I prefer clients.
It recently came to my opinion, however, that I have been missing e-mails, specifically from my mother (not a good thing.)
After a little research, I have discovered three disturbing things about my new mail set-up (pardon the shouting):
- SPAM FILTERING IS DEFAULTED TO "ON."
- THE FILTERING IS NOT VERY GOOD. It quietly filtered out about 20 legitimate e-mail messages last month, some of them important.
- THE ONLY INDICATION I HAVE OF THIS IS THE PRESENCE OF 350 MESSAGES IN A SPAM FOLDER WHICH IS ONLY VISIBLE FROM WEBMAIL.
To say that I am perturbed is an understatement. There is a reason I prefer to manage my own spam filter, and I think the user should be clearly notified of this behavior. By the way, I generally read all the fine print when I sign up for stuff, and I’m pretty sure there was nothing about the spam filter defaulting to "on".
So if you decide to migrate your e-mail to AT&T/Yahoo!, be forewarned.
Addenda:
- After posting the above on my blog at work, I did a little more exploring and found this link which not only reinforces my comments, but also shows a humorous example, in which AT&T filtered its own important security warning message!
- This posting is just a small "public" service announcement – don’t miss my post, below, about Wonko the Sane.