Could Yahoo help be any more worthless?

March 6, 2006 4:58 PM

I'm using Yahoo Mail to interact with several Yahoo groups, and I have a bit of an issue. An important email address got blocked as spam, and I can't figure out how to unblock it.

I am an SBC customer, so I have the whole "extras" package, including the ability to tap into Yahoo's SpamGuard plus. I can see a setting under Mail Options that allows me to say that if I mark an address as "not spam" it should move it to my inbox, but there is NO WHERE that I can find to mark an address as "not spam". I go into my bulk folder, click on the check mark next to a message from the account in question, and then look everywhere - but there's no "unblock" choice. There's a "Mark" button that lets me mark the message as read or unread; there's a move button that will let me move the message to my inbox (but future messages from the sender will still get tagged as spam).

Like any Yahoo user, I receive hundreds of spam per day, so constantly checking the bulk folder for messages from this list isn't really practical - I might as well throw in the towel and turn SpamGuard off.

And while I'm at it - is there any website out there with more useless help than Yahoo?? They have a Yahoo Mail help, but of course it's only FAQs - no place to ask an actual living person an actual question that (gasp!) isn't included in the FAQs. And the kicker - all of their help documents come up as blank pages. Nice.

Sure, I could go to the user forums and have my message lost amongst the thousands of other ignored questions, but then that's why I have MeFi, right?

posted by robhuddles to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Set up a filter on that address, and all messages from that address will go to the inbox.

You could also (or in addition) set up a filter for the group.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 5:07 PM on March 6, 2006

Hmm. From my experience as an eight-year Yahoo! Mail user, what you have to do is wait until it shows up in your bulk mail folder again and then mark it as not spam. This really isn't that difficult—just don't empty your bulk mail for a day or so, then go into the folder and just hit Ctrl-F (or Apple-F on a Mac) in your browser to search the page for e-mail from that person. You could even use Yahoo! Mail's built-in search for that.

To mark as not spam, you have to actually open the e-mail in question, and then there's a button provided on the bar above the message that says "Not Spam."

As for future help from Yahoo!, there's always Yahoo! Help and Yahoo! Answers. The latter provides answers from actual human beings.

When you search in Yahoo! Help and don't find an answer, there's a way to provide feedback that may get someone to help you. After you submit a question, the answer page includes an area that asks, "How are we doing? Are we answering your questions?" and you can choose a radio button like "not even close!" and hit Submit, in which case a window pops up and allows you to add comments or ask a further question. I believe actual human beings read these and possibly answer - putting your e-mail address in your comment might help, though.

As a side note, it's not really Yahoo!'s fault if you receive tons and tons of spam—you just need to make your e-mail address less available. Use an alternate e-mail address when signing up for things, and don't put your e-mail address in html form on Web pages. Even if you only sign up for one or two things using that e-mail address, it'll eventually get out there, as that business will sell their lists to another one, and then they sell their lists to someone else, and so on.
posted by limeonaire at 5:53 PM on March 6, 2006

Marking it as not spam won't work. The "not spam" button is just for helping Yahoo figure out, over time, what is and isn't junk mail. It's not a specific inbox filter.

You will need to create a filter, as SuperSquirrel mentioned.

Yahoo Help is less than useless. If you want answers, the groups are actually pretty darned good. The not-spam button came up in the email group recently.
posted by frykitty at 6:55 PM on March 6, 2006

But...that e-mail thread you cite, frykitty, implies that classifying something as "not spam" if you're a Mail Plus user—which robhuddles is—should work to reclassify it and make it go to your inbox, since Mail Plus gives you SpamGuard Plus, which works more like a personal filter.

And yes, with normal SpamGuard, if enough other people are classifying e-mail from a certain sender as spam, your "not spam" mark may not immediately make Yahoo! reclassify that e-mail as legitimate. But two things: (1) if you're one of the few (or perhaps the only one) who marked it as spam in the first place, then it's likely that marking it as "not spam" will accomplish the result you're seeking, namely to get those e-mails coming into your inbox in the future. (2) Even if a number of people are classifying certain e-mails as spam, isn't it possible that one may be able to counteract that by repeatedly marking said e-mails as "not spam"?
posted by limeonaire at 9:02 PM on March 6, 2006

Here's that elusive Not Spam button:



I don't use the web application that often so I always have to look for it when I do my infrequent checks for misdirected mail (and even more infrequent false positives).

As for the other aspect, I do believe that Yahoo is one provider that does not provide automatic support for whitelisting by simply adding an address to your address book, thus instructions such as this one. At least with the "Plus" version of SBC Yahoo, you are able to have more than 10 filters (or whatever the free app gives you these days). But you do have to set up a filter.

I don't know why they don't let you whitelist by using the address book. It doesn't strike me as more computationally intensive, for example. It's probably more of a load on Yahoo's servers to have you go through the interface for the filter once than it is to have it executed a gazillion times.
posted by dhartung at 10:35 PM on March 6, 2006

Thanks, everyone. It didn't occur to me to actually open the message and look for the button. I'll set up the filter. Again, thanks for the help.
posted by robhuddles at 8:29 AM on March 7, 2006

You definitely need to set up the filter. I'm on a mailing list where a significant fraction of the digests go into the Bulk folder, despite my patiently marking each one as Not Spam.
posted by pmurray63 at 2:49 PM on March 7, 2006

But...that e-mail thread you cite, frykitty, implies that classifying something as "not spam" if you're a Mail Plus user—which robhuddles is—should work to reclassify it and make it go to your inbox,

I'm also a Plus user. It puts that individual email in your Inbox, but doesn't really help for future emails. It's an annoyance.
posted by frykitty at 2:15 PM on March 8, 2006