How to stop incoming emails being filed as spam.

[IanLewis]

Every email that is sent to my talktalk.net email account from the metronet.co.uk domain is put into the IMAP spam folder.

I've tried selecting 'Not Spam' many times, and the email is moved to my inbox, but the next one will be put in spam again. I've added the senders to my address book, to no avail. I've set up a rule to move any email from that domain to Inbox, but it has no effect (I suspect the rules are only run on emails that make it to my inbox, though it's not stated anywhere.)

How can I tell talktalk's spam filters that these emails *aren't* spam?

Ian.

[siphosethu-TT]

That's wonderful news, should you require any assistance in future I take it you know where to find us. Take care

[Billx]

Hi @IanLewis 

Thanks for informing the rest of us.

[IanLewis]

I've only had a couple of relevant emails since making the change, but yes, they seem to be making it through to my inbox, rather than spam. So it looks as though allowlisting the addresses has resolved the problem.

Thanks.

[siphosethu-TT]

Hi there @IanLewis, please respond back if you are still having any issues with your email services.

[Billx]

So , @IanLewis ,

were you able to force those 'X-VadeSecure-Status: DCE, X-VadeSecure-Score: 107'-marked emails into the Inbox folder, by 'Allowlisting' the domain of those emails in the Allowlist?

Thanks

[Mandisa-TT]

Hi @IanLewis let us know if you still need assistance. 

[Billx]

The following are statistics (data) gathered since December, 2024:

X-VadeSecure-Status: clean     --> X-VadeSecure-Score: 0, 30, 40, 50
X-VadeSecure-Status: Purchases --> X-VadeSecure-Score: 10
X-VadeSecure-Status: Account   --> X-VadeSecure-Score: 20
X-VadeSecure-Status: MCE       --> X-VadeSecure-Score: 17
X-VadeSecure-Status: DCE       --> X-VadeSecure-Score: 107
X-VadeSecure-Status: Spam      --> X-VadeSecure-Score: 280, 290, 300, 320, 330, 350
X-VadeSecure-Status: Phishing  --> X-VadeSecure-Score: 290, 300, 330, 350, 600

These Vade Secure classes seem to be all the current Vade Secure classes. There might be a Malware class, but so far Vade Secure does not seem to have caught any Malware emails.

You can see that 'X-VadeSecure-Status: Purchases', 'X-VadeSecure-Status: Account', 'X-VadeSecure-Status: MCE', and 'X-VadeSecure-Status: DCE', have not varied in the past.
But 'X-VadeSecure-Status: clean', 'X-VadeSecure-Status: Spam', and 'X-VadeSecure-Status: Phishing', HAVE varied in the past. So, Vade Secure is not too sure, whether an email is Spam, or whether it is Phishing (like the rest of us). So, both Spam and Phishing are put into the same Spam folder.

By the way,
MCE is short for 'Miscellaneous Commercial Email'
and DCE is short for 'Dirty Commercial Email'

Note that MCE and DCE are NOT classed as 'Spam' or 'Phishing'
They are commercial emails, basically advertising/hard selling, mostly harmless, but can be a nuisance to some, including myself. There seems to be a well organised scheme/effort from major internet companies to allow/direct these into the Inbox folder.

More generally, Vade Secure have often grossly misclassified emails in the past.

DCE with X-VadeSecure-Score: 107, is near the border of whether an email will be put into the Inbox folder or into the Spam folder. I haven't received any recently to verify myself.

So, @IanLewis , we will see whether adding those email addresses to the AllowList will in future force the server to put those DCE marked emails to your Inbox folder.

[amahle-TT]

Please do let us know how it goes so we can raise an escalation if it's still not fixed, thanks.

[IanLewis]

Thanks Billx,

The headers look reasonable:

X-VadeSecure-Malware: Clean
X-VadeSecure-Verdict: commercial:dce
X-VadeSecure-Status: DCE
X-VadeSecure-Cause: gggruggvucftvghtrhhoucdtu<snip>
X-VadeSecure-Score: 107

So I don't know why the emails are being flagged as spam. However, I'd not spotted the AllowList in settings, so have added the email addresses to that and we will see if that helps.

[Mandisa-TT]

Thank you @Billx 

[Billx]

Hi, @IanLewis 

You say, "I suspect the rules are only run on emails that make it to my inbox, though it's not stated anywhere"

Yes, I agree with you

After TalkTalk's spam filters do their work and put what they think is spam or phishing to the Spam folder, the remaining emails go to the Inbox folder.

Your spam filters(rules) will apply only to the remaining emails that TalkTalk has directed to the Inbox folder.

You can do a little check:

In TalkTalk webmail,

--> click on one of those metronet.co.uk emails in whichever folder they are,

--> click on the 3-dot button (there are 3 of those, click on a 3-dot button that has a garbage bin near it),

--> click on 'View source',

--> on the screen that comes up, scroll down until you see 'X-VadeSecure-Verdict:' and 'X-VadeSecure-Status:' header fields,

--> do you see 'Phishing' or 'Spam' in the 'X-VadeSecure-Status:' header field?

--> If you do, that's why you can't override them

Edit 00:35 (AM)

1. 'X-VadeSecure-Verdict:' and 'X-VadeSecure-Status:' mean more or less the same thing, so only consider 'X-VadeSecure-Status:'
2. I will contradict what I said previously. If 'X-VadeSecure-Status:' is 'Phishing' or 'Spam', you may be able to override it, by 'Allowlisting' it in TalkTalk webmail settings. I have had only 1 example of that, where I was able to override the default to Spam folder and direct the email to Inbox folder, by 'Allowlisting'  it only. There was no need to create a filter(a rule) . I am waiting to get more examples.
3. Other spam emails, which do NOT have 'X-VadeSecure-Status:' as 'Phishing' or 'Spam', but end up in the Inbox folder, and are nevertheless spam emails, may be 'Blocklisted'  individually, or by using a common formula (a rule) to encompass all of them.

[Gliwmaeden2]

There's an ongoing issue for many people with this, @IanLewis, but I  reckon all email services are struggling to manage the sheer quantities of real spam out there, and perhaps inevitably they cast the net too wide.

I repeatedly get wrongly designated Spam in my Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail accounts, despite approving certain senders, and the emails addressing me both by name and certain reference numbers - these are still being wrongly designated as Spam after systematic corrections from me over years.

Assume that you need to check your spam folder frequently. 

Annoyingly, Talktalk seems not to pick up obvious phishing scams sometimes and they show up in the normal inbox...