Comcast deleting spam folder contents after one week?!?!

---

@donander1 wrote:

Today I received a message from Xfinity with the subject "We made some changes to comcast.net email settings" Boy did they ever. I have pasted two sentences from that message below in quotes.

 

"We don't want you to miss any important emails, so we have changed spam email settings for all comcast.net email accounts.
Beginning this week, all emails sent to your comcast.net email account that are categorized as spam will now be stored in your spam folder for 7 days. After 7 days, those emails will be deleted."

 

The second sentence contradicts the first. If Comcast doesn't want me to miss any emails why would they delete the contents of my spam folder after 7 days? This is insane. It is doing just the opposite of making sure I don't miss any messages. Trying to figure out their arcane logic, I wonder if they figured that if they delete the contents of the spam folder after 7 days, people will REALLY be motivated to check their email at least once a week or a little more often. I have never been able to figure out the logic of Comcast's spam filter. They filter out legitimate messages and send spam through to me. You would think if you click on "Not Spam" to put the message in the inbox, the system would remember this and not filter out messages from that sender in the future. But that is not how it works. You have to make a filter. Not only that but you have to make a filter that says "Keep" the message AND "move to inbox" for it to work. But THEN you get TWO copies of the message. Please Comcast, reverse this insane idea about deleting spam folder contents after 7 days.

 

Don

---

First, make sure the email you got is legitimate.  I have 5 Comcast email accounts at the moment, and I've not gotten that message in any of them.  To check, look for the red Xfinity logo in the header-------

https://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/comcast-verified-email/

Also, the default retention settings have not changed since the Appsuite software was put into service about 3 years or so ago--------------

Spam is stored for 7 days or 2,000 messages, whichever comes first
Trash is stored for 14 days or 5,000 messages, whichever comes first

After that, emails drop out of Trash and go to the "dumpster" for another 30 days.  This is accessed by right-clicking on the Trash folder, and then on "Recover deleted items".

I also got the spam notification emails, one message per email account. The red Xfinity logo appears in the header, the emails appear to be legitimate to me.

Same here with getting the messages. The links in them all go to emails.xfinity.com, so appear to be legitimate.

---

@Latoque wrote: ... I've not gotten that message in any of them.  To check, look for the red Xfinity logo in the header ...

---

I got the same email complete with Xfinity Verified logo. Comcast appears to have locked the "Save a copy of emails marked as spam" setting under "Enable spam filtering" at

    (gear icon) / Settings / Mail / Advanced Settings / Spam Filtering

ON and then removed the option so users cannot turn if off. It's probably a good idea, as it makes it more likely that mail improperly classified as Spam will be noticed by recipients.

---

@BruceW wrote:

---

@Latoque wrote: ... I've not gotten that message in any of them.  To check, look for the red Xfinity logo in the header ...

---

I got the same email complete with Xfinity Verified logo. Comcast appears to have locked the "Save a copy of emails marked as spam" setting under "Enable spam filtering" at

    (gear icon) / Settings / Mail / Advanced Settings / Spam Filtering

 

ON and then removed the option so users cannot turn if off. It's probably a good idea, as it makes it more likely that mail improperly classified as Spam will be noticed by recipients.

---

So I just checked again and the option is gone.  Oddly though, I still haven't gotten the notification emails you and the others described. 

---

@Latoque wrote: ... I still haven't gotten the notification emails you and the others described. 

---

So far this has only appeared in my Primary User account, where it looks like:

---

@donander1 wrote: ... I want ALL messages sent to me from *@kp.org to stay in my inbox. What filter would I make? ...

---

Filters only operate on mail Comcast delivers to the Inbox, not to the Spam folder, so you can't use a filter to move selected messages from Spam to Inbox. Nor is their any way to prevent mail from a particular sender or domain from being sent to the Spam folder -- Comcast simply does not provide any way to do it. They should, but they don't.

The only thing you can do to keep mail out of the Spam folder is the rather drastic step of turning off Spam Filtering altogether, but it's not selective, it's all or nothing.

Wow, I did not know messages in the Spam folder have been deleted "for a while now". I guess I better check that Spam folder more often because, as you say, Comcast's spam filtering is not 100% foolproof. So, since you are a Comcast expert, can you tell us how to make a filter to prevent email from going into the Spam folder that does NOT result in getting TWO copies of those messages? The instructions for setting up email filters, especially what the Actions do, is pretty vague.

To elaborate on my comments about this in the original post, I have tried choosing "Keep" as the action and that did not have the result of keeping the message in the inbox. Then I tried "Move - To Inbox" and that alone did not work. I had to set BOTH actions to keep a message from a specific sender from going to the Spam folder. However, then I end up getting TWO copies of messages from that sender. Suppose I want to make sure emails sent to me from my healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente never go to the Spam folder. The "from" domain is "kp.org" (without the quotes). I want ALL messages sent to me from *@kp.org to stay in my inbox. What filter would I make?

Thanks,

Don

According to this web page

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-whitelist-email-addresses-on-comcast/

adding a sender's email address to your Comcast address book will prevent messages they send you from being put in the Spam folder. Do you know if this is true?

Thanks,

Don

---

@donander1 wrote: ... adding a sender's email address to your Comcast address book will prevent messages they send you from being put in the Spam folder. ...

---

I know of no official word on the subject, but I've never found that to be true, not in 2016, and not today.

ETA: See https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Email-Web-Browsing/Address-Book-Exemption/m-p/3368877#M220644