Jay_G's profile

New Poster

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7 Messages

Monday, November 25th, 2024 5:10 AM

Filter rules don't work with underlined text - needs fixing

It appears that any rule for email content no longer works if the text in question is underlined in an email. And pretty much everything is now underlined, so the number of spams I get per day that SHOULD be trimmed out by my existing rules grows, day by day.

So please, either fix the problem, or, allow a rule that discards all junk mail.

Expert

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108.6K Messages

3 months ago

The concern is not "Home Security / Rules And Automations" help related..................... Topic moved here to the proper help section for assistance. 

New Poster

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7 Messages

3 months ago

I have three filter rules, with a few dozen conditions each. But it appears that many of them were, but now are not working. Erratic operation of mail filter rules seems to be the rule.

 

As an example, I have conditions set to discard mail in which the header OR the content contains either Elon or Elon Musk. Yet every day, my IMAP connected Mac Mail receives lots of spam with that in both the header and body.

 

And that’s true for many other conditions in my three filter “rules.” Plus, nothing that’s underlined in an email is filtered even when the other conditions actually work.

 

Given that I’m certainly not the only one seeing this problem:

 

First: Why are users not reliably getting a service that we pay Comcast for each month? Has Comcast no access to reliable programmers?

 

Why is no one at Comcast smart enough to offer the option to simply not send ANY spam via IMAP? That would mostly eliminate the need for rules.

 

Bottom line. If you offer the ability to automatically delete an email based on content, then make it work, or offer an alternative that does.

Note: This comment was created from a merged conversation originally titled Why offer filter rules for email that don't work?

Official Employee

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1.5K Messages

 

Jay_G Good morning! We appreciate you reaching out to our Community Forums Team for assistance with your email filters. Having unwanted emails can be frustrating, and I'm happy to help you today. Thank you for giving us detailed information on what you are experiencing. 
 
To clarify, under your conditions are they still listed when you go into your Rules? Under Actions, can you please share what is listed in there as well? 

 

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New Poster

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7 Messages

As an example of my rules, the first contains:


Under Subjects:
Congratulations, WIFI, WI-FI, Meds. Prescription, Jay!, Quote, Weight, Rewards, Free, Musk’s, 50%, 35%, Promo, HDTV, Deals, Antenna, Elon, AI Powered, Dashcam, Offer, Christmas

Under Sender/From:
 .it, .store, .edu

Under Content:
to enable, to view, discount, rewards, congratulations, you have won, Elon, CLICK HERE

-------------

Yet in the five junk emails received since last batch was deleted at midnight, one has "Elon Musk" in both the header and the content. So there are two spots where that spam should have been discarded. Another contains 75%, which is in another rule, and a third contains 50%, which is in this one. So three of the five SHOULD have been discarded by your system, but wasn't.

Official Employee

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1.5K Messages

Thank you for providing even more details, @Jay_G! Doing some research, I have found that our email filters currently do not support filtering based on underlined keywords. We acknowledge this, and there is no current workaround to specifically target underlined text in your filters.

 

However, you can still create effective filters using other criteria like:

 

- Sender's email address: Filter emails from specific senders or domains.
- Subject line: Filter emails containing specific words or phrases in the subject line.
- Body content: Filter emails containing specific words or phrases in the body of the email.


While these methods may not be as precise as filtering by underlined text, they can still help you organize your inbox and reduce clutter (and it sounds like you're already utilizing what you can).

 

Another great resource is our email and spam filters article, here, which I'm sure you've also seen. But if you are willing to submit feedback, you have the option of scrolling to the bottom of the page, where you'll see "Was this page helpful?" There, you can select "No" and the reason. We appreciate any and all feedback! If you'd like the further troubleshoot your email account, and potentially submit a ticket to one of our engineering teams to take a closer look, we can also have you send us a direct message to get started. Just let me know if you'd like to do so, and we'll do whatever else we can to help :)

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer.tick

New Poster

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7 Messages

Filter by sender address? Seriously. Spammers constantly change this, so it's impossible.

Filter by subject line? That's part of my other post, because that function doesn't work, either. Going back to the "Elon Musk heater" scam mail that so often shows up I have subject line filters, and content filters set to "Elon" and "Musk." But still I get them daily. I have filters for 10% 20%. 30%, etc in both subject and content lines,  but still get lots of them, daily, via my imap connection from Mac mail.

• our email filters currently do not support filtering based on underlined keywords.

Wrong answer. The proper one would have been that it's being worked on. I pay for a working system, not excuses. As a computer professional of 40 years, I well understand that software problems come up. But when a customer reported a problem with our systems I didn't suggest workarounds. I told the customer WHEN the problem would be corrected.

• While these methods may not be as precise as filtering by underlined text, they can still help you organize your inbox and reduce clutter

I'm getting 300 or more [Edited: "Language"] emails daily that YOU place in my Mac's junk folder. So without my flters you recognize them as junk, but currently, neither offer the ability to discard spam or, filter it.

Recently, out of 27 spams20 should have been discarded by my existing rules. 7 weren't filtered. By no stretch of imagination can that be called an operating filter system.

Bottom line: You offer the service. You charge for the service. Unstead of excuses and workarounds fix the problem!

(edited)

Official Employee

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1.9K Messages

Thank you so much for the response and for your time on this @Jay_G. I see how frustrating this especially since you are being proactive trying to set up those rules to avoid that additional spam. We are here to help you work around this to see how we can further assist. Have you by any chance heard of our Email Safe List? If not I will be happy to tell you about it and share a link. Overall the Email Safe on our email allows you to create a list of email address, mailing list and domains that you specifically only get messages from helping climate the additional spam. Here is a link https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/xfinity-connect-safe-list with more details about the program and how to sign up.

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer.tick

7 Messages

3 months ago

These "filters" are a joke. I get better junk email screening from my Gmail account. I too have been flooded with junk emails with ELON in the header and subject lines multiple times a day.

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