plumld's profile

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260 Messages

Monday, August 15th, 2022 9:00 PM

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Email Filter Rules Difference!

Having been told time after time to add Filter Rules to combat spam, via the Email Settings / Mail / Filter Rules, I've repeatably asked why I cannot use Boolean type logic for various rules. For example, I'd like to use multiple conditions, with an OR logic. If this or that, send the email to the SPAM folder. Using the method via Email Settings, this can't be done. When setting up the Email Filter, it states Apply rule if all conditions are met.

Well, by accident, I stumbled on the following. If you open up an email that you deem to be spam, click on the More Actions symbol, following the Reply / Forward / Delete.

To my astonishment, the bottom action is Create filter rule. Then amazingly, when you click on it, you are taken to a screen, very close to the screen in the Email Settings approach, with one, big, difference. Just below the Rule Name entry box, is now a drop down. Clicking on this, you are given two options:

  •           Apply rule if all conditions are met
  •           Apply rule if any conditions are met

In addition, you can also add an additional condition, Nested condition. This is also absent from the Email Settings approach. Now, instead of using a dozen specific rules to fight a dozen different spam emails, you could create a single filter rule to accomplish the same thing. This of course requires the whole approach to using Email Filtering to actually be used by Comcast. From what I've seen, I have my doubts. I have multiple accounts with Comcast, MSN & Gmail. Both MSN & Gmail appear to be barely letting spam through, Comcast sends a torrent.

More importantly, if Comcast continues to push people to using the filters, they very definitely need to provide some better documentation, and possibly have both paths to setting up the filters provide the same capability!

Gold Problem Solver

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26.3K Messages

3 years ago

... Email Settings / Mail / Filter Rules ... More Actions ...

However you reach Filter Rules, a filter with just one condition will only offer "Apply rule if all conditions are met". But if you add a second condition, a small downward pointing arrowhead appears at the end of that statement that you can use to change "all" to "any". Nested conditions are also available regardless of how you navigate to Filter Rules.

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Contributor

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260 Messages

@BruceW​ amazing! It appears the big difference between the two paths to the Email Filter is that by taking the More Actions route, it automatically creates two conditions, one on Subject, one on Sender/From. This is mechanism that produces the difference that I am seeing. Taking the other path, when adding a condition, about 2 percent of the "Apply rule" statement changes, with the addition of the drop down arrow.

My main criticism remains, the documentation of building and applying filter rules is woefully inadequate! I also stumbled onto the ability of using REGEX or DOS wildcards, only from a chance of discovery, not from any clues in the documentation. With regards to REGEX & DOS wildcards, it appears that only if you select a condition on Sender/From, do you get to see the hover explanations for the Contains choices. The other conditions, like Content or Subject, the hover explanations only parrot the phrase you hover over.

(edited)

Gold Problem Solver

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26.3K Messages

3 years ago

... the documentation of building and applying filter rules is woefully inadequate! ...

Employees like to link to https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/spam-filters-and-email-blocking-new-experience but as filter documentation, that page (and I'm being kind here) is pathetic. Open-Xchange, the vendor who supplied Appsuite webmail, has a page that's slightly better at https://documentation.open-xchange.com/components/middleware/http/7.10.6/index.html#mail-filter. But for questions like "What regex syntax does webmail use?", customers are on their own. All we can do is guess.

Please be aware that there are 2 kinds of responses in this Forum: Replies and Comments. When you Comment on a post by scrolling down to "Comment on this post here...", I am notified of your response. But if you select Reply, I am NOT notified and may not be aware of your response.

Official Employee

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135 Messages

3 years ago

That is based on the sieve specification here: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-murchison-sieve-regex#section-3

Contributor

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260 Messages

@XfinityGabrielS​ that's great, but you're illustrating the lack of documentation that would help anyone understand how to take advantage of the filter rules!

Gold Problem Solver

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26.3K Messages

3 years ago

@XfinityGabrielS wrote: "That is based on the sieve specification here ..."

Thank you, much appreciated!

Gold Problem Solver

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26.3K Messages

3 years ago

... it appears that only if you select a condition on Sender/From, do you get to see the hover explanations for the Contains choices. The other conditions, like Content or Subject, the hover explanations only parrot the phrase you hover over.

And worse, none of the options under Action have any mouseover help at all. They don't even parrot the name of the Action, leaving us wondering what, for example, the "Tag mail with" Action does. @XfinityGabrielS any help with that one?

Note that in https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/email/how-can-you-view-the-tags-that-were-set-into-an-incoming-email-by-a-filter-action-ie-flag-mail/602dae4ac5375f08cde522d2?commentId=602dae56c5375f08cde71374 (two years ago!!!) Employee @XfinityCSAEmail wrote that the "Tag mail with" Action had been "decomissioned" and was "pending removal from the filter rule set". Two years ago!!!

Please be aware that there are 2 kinds of responses in this Forum: Replies and Comments. When you Comment on a post by scrolling down to "Comment on this post here...", I am notified of your response. But if you select Reply, I am NOT notified and may not be aware of your response.

(edited)

Official Employee

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135 Messages

3 years ago

 A few things we are going to work on: 

  • Better documentation to start with. 
  • Most likely rename "flag mail" to something close to "Set Color Flag"
  • "Tag mail with" is to add IMAP tags/flags outside of the standard - Color, Seen, etc.  It basically calls the addflag from the RFC standard https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5232/ . We most likely will remove this one as I don't see many if any email clients looking for IMAP tags beyond the standard. And we don't provide a way to remove them once they are added.  Below you can see the test tag that got added when I set up a rule using the filter. You may be able to get Thunderbird to recognize them knowing the standard they follow, but not positive. 

b15 FETCH 65854 flags
* 65854 FETCH (FLAGS (\Seen $cl_1 $HasAttachment $testtag))
b15 OK Fetch completed (0.001 + 0.000 secs).

(edited)

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