BT Internet – missing emails.
If you are a BTInternet user and you use Outlook Express (or similar), then you may be losing emails.
This note explains why it happens, how to discover if it is happening to you and how to overcome
the problem.
BTInternet uses Yahoo to process its email. Yahoo employs a spam filter, which normally works
quite well. However, occasionally it gets it wrong and decides that a perfectly valid email is
spam. By default, it holds this message on the server and does not deliver it to Outlook Express on
your computer. You will never know that the message even existed. Furthermore the sender will
not receive a ‘bounce’ message, so will assume that the message was delivered and that you
have received it.
This has been a particular problem with messages sent to Chiltern U3A convenors and those sent
from the webmaster to all members. However, you may be losing mails from other sources as well
as the U3A.
There are two things you should do to overcome this. First, you must check on the server to see if
any messages have been wrongly identified as spam. Then, if you don’t want to keep doing this,
you can switch the server spam filter off altogether.
(It may be that your system differs a little from the following. If it does, hopefully you will still be
able to follow the principles).
To check on the server for ‘spam’.
a) Go to https://login.yahoo.com
b) Enter your BTInternet User ID and Password
c) Click on ‘Spam’ (but if it shows as [Empty] then there is no spam and you can exit immediately)
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d) A list of all the spam messages will be displayed. Ignore any that obviously are spam – you will
usually be able to tell from the sender’s name and the subject. If any look genuine, click on the
message line to display the message. (Don’t worry, the message stays on the server and no
nasties can be downloaded to your computer).
e) The message text will be displayed and you can be sure whether or not it is spam. If it is a
genuine message, click on ‘Not Spam’. This will release the message and it will be downloaded
into Outlook Express. It should also help to ‘teach’ the server that messages from this address are
not spam, so should help other members as well.
f) You can now exit from the Yahoo site. Any messages you marked as ‘not spam’ will be
delivered to you. Any that you did not mark will be automatically deleted after one month.
To switch off the spam filter
You can go through the above exercise regularly, say once a week, or you can switch the filter
off.
a) Log on as in a) above.
b) Click on 'Options' - top right
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c) In the drop down box, click on 'Mail Options'
d) Click on 'Spam' - left hand column
e) UNTICK 'automatically send suspected spam to my spam folder'
f) Now click on ‘Save changes’
j) Repeat this for any email sub-accounts you may have.
You will now get all the spam delivered to you but you will also get all the non-spam as
well. Better the aggro of deleting the rubbish than the risk of losing important messages.
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Complain to BT
If you find that you have been affected and perfectly valid emails are not being delivered to you,
you might like to complain to BT. Complaining via the website will get you nowhere but you could
try emailing [email protected]. She handles complaints at Chief Exec level. If enough of us
make a fuss maybe something will get done.
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