Web Mail Blog

I just discovered a very troubling issue with Web Mail, and I thought everyone should know about it.

A friend of mine with a yahoo account sent me several emails last week. I didn't receive any of them (they weren't in my spam folder either), and he never got bouncebacks. When I called Earthlink's tech support, it was discovered that the yahoo domain was in my blocked sender list. How did that happen? I asked. I never put it there. It was explained that if I report more than 10 emails from the same domain as spam, Web Mail will automatically block the entire domain - even if I don't check the box in the spam report that requests the domain to be blocked (I never check that box anyway).

He could not tell me how long the yahoo domain has been blocked on my account. How many emails have I missed? I wondered. And the senders wouldn't know that I didn't receive their emails, because they wouldn't have gotten bouncebacks.

This is a terrible policy. Earthlink should not automatically block domains in users' accounts without the users' knowledge. At the very least, they should notify us that they've done so.

Hi Email Guy,

I occasionally have an email sent to the "known spam" folder when the message is from a sender with whom I correspond regularly. This has happened from different domains, and the senders tend to use the same interface that they normally use (e.g. Yahoo web based email). It has even happened from a friend who uses Earthlink.

Like I said, this is a "once in a while" occurrence and difficult to reproduce, so I don't know if you would have any documentation on this.

Thanks for your help (and for moving the banner back to the top!).

I searched for comments on frequent session returns to the WebMail login page. This has sometimes happened to me in the past, but this week (week of September 8, 2008) almost every action (back to Inbox, print message, delete message, return from message link, etc) I am kicked out to the login page. I found your reply to Gary Powers of Feb 17, 2008 and verified that I "always allow" cookies from earthlink.net. I have not modified the default session time in WebMail. I've closed and reopened IE7 and have done a cold restart of Windows XP SP3. I do a weekly check using Webroot AntiVirus with AntiSpyware and use Webroot Firewall where WebMail and earthlink.net are Trusted Sites. Any other suggestions?

I am wondering why this (that follows) has happened and hope you have an explanation for me. I have had two different people send important attachments that did not reach me at my web mailbox. The messages arrived without the attachment. A person today tried twice and the attachments were not with the messages. I had to go to another e-mail address to pick up the attachment. This happened one other time. I know the individuals sent the attachment from their end; it was not that they forgot to attach. Is there some infiltration on your end... or what? Could you respond to this very disturbing phenomenon?
V H

E-Mail Guy:

Wanted to inform you of a bug which I worked through with your Support folks, and a suggestion as to how to help work around it.

I primarily use WebMail to check E-Mail when I'm away from my home computer, and to assist in my "de-spamming" ritual, which involves sending the raw messages that make it through to the "Suspect Mail" folder to "spamcop.net," in addition to reporting the messages as spam in WebMail. I then download all valid messages into Outlook 2003 at home. This has served me well for several years! (I had noticed an increase of the "Nigerian scam" type of messages which got through your filters to Suspect Mail early this summer, but this has leveled off lately, so kudos to you folks!)

I have SpamBlocker set to "High," and had an extensive list of domains in the "Companies (Domains)" section of my WebMail Address Book, which I assume amounts to a "whitelist."

A couple of weeks ago, I logged in to WebMail to add a domain to the "Companies (Domains)" section of my WebMail Address Book. Lo and behold, the list had disappeared! Yet, there were valid E-Mails with domains not in the "Contacts" section of my Address Book which still made it through to my Inbox with no trouble! Being a computer programmer by trade, I immediately recognized this as some sort of bug which could have been caused by some sort of corrupt database; depending on how WebMail is coded, that information could still exist on your servers someplace, and for whatever reason, it's not being displayed. I feared that if I attempted anything with that list, any information that was there would be wiped out!

After not seeing any change in the status of this problem, and not finding any solutions by Googling every combination of "WebMail Earthlink Domains" that I could think of, I finally initiated a Support Chat on September 7th. Unfortunately, even after giving the Support rep. my logon information and having him verify my problem, he could not help any further. I did ask if this issue may have been related to the WebMail 6.0 upgrade which I've seen detailed on this blog, and the rep. couldn't answer that question.

I don't mind having to re-enter the domains again. (Welllll..it's not THAT BIG a deal, but...!) What I'd REALLY like to know is if there is some way to export just that "Companies (Domains)" section of my Address Book to some sort of file, in order to have the list backed up in the event that this happens again. I attempted to export my Address Book earlier today, after I had started rebuilding my "Companies" list, and only the Contacts came up in the resulting file. (I only keep a list of Contacts in the WebMail Address Book who I might have to E-Mail from work or from anyplace where I don't have access to my Outlook addresses.)

So please, E-Mail Guy, give us Earthlink-ers with SpamBlocker set to "High" the ability to export our "whitelist" of "Companies (Domains)" in our WebMail Address Books, or ensure that those lists don't get wiped out in the future.

Recently, a number of times during the day when I send an email I get the following response "Sendmail error. Your message may not have been sent. Please try again." The failed letter appears in my Sent box. When I try to resend the letter, it has gotten sent on the first or second resend attempt. When I checked with one of the recipients, they had not gotten any of the letters that had generated the "Sendmail" error. I think this started happening on September 10th but I can't swear to that.

Hi. Within the last few days I have a problem with Web Mail. I sign in as usual, go to my Suspect Mail folder...but if I choose to delete messages or go to another folder (Trash folder for example) I am bounced back to the sign in screen and have to sign back in...it is happening all the time now. I'm a long time Earthlink Web Mail subscriber and this just started happening. I called Earthlink to get help and they had me do the delete cookies, be sure my security settings were right...it doesn't do in on every action when I am in Web Mail but it is almost every other action I take...have others experienced this? I really want to get this fixed...it is a big hassle. Thanks. K.

I forward my email to my Yahoo account so I can access it on my phone.

Unfortunately this function forwards ALL of my email accounts - including the anonymous accounts - and I don't want that.
These accounts are where my spam, and subscriptions, listserve stuff, goes.

I only want the mail that goes to my main address.

Is there a way to set this up?

For the last few days almost every message I send fails the first time. Click send again and it goes through. In the meantime, two copies show up in the sent folder. Is this a known bug? Is it being addressed?

Hi, I could not find this problem posted or on FAQ

For the last few weeks, when I try to send an email, it is "in the process of sending" for a long time, sometimes 2+ minutes. Then, it often does not send it, but gives an error message and places the email in my draft folder.

I have much less difficulty sending email from my Draft folder.

Why has this started to happen and what can I do about it?
It is combersome to save every message to Draft and then send it from there. AND, sometimes it will not send it from there either.

I had hoped rebooting a few times would help the problem, but it has not.

I would appreciate your input

Thank you

Barbara

This is my 3rd time asking you the same question. My problem is the same as "Larry Moore,#2303", but why not respond to my quiey too? Obviously, more folks are having the same prob and it could be AT YOUR END!!????

Re 2299 -I can't believe it, but I'll accept it - what else can I do? Thanks, though.

E-Mail Guy,
Having a problem with constantly having to login my e-mail. No matter
what I do in e-mail, after each action I have to login. I did notice someone
else having the problem. Is this being addressed?
Thank you,

When I try to get to the Color and Graphics part when writing an email, it is not there. I am using Windows XP and my browser is firefox, does firefox support that feature?

I keep getting an error message while navigating around my email screen. The box is titled:

The page at earthlink.atl.webmail.... The error msg reads: ERROR: status code 0

I click it out of the way and continue but don't understand what it means or why I get it.

Hi Email Guy,

Can a link be put within WebMail to the WebMail blog?

Thanks,
Marcye

We need customized mail filtering. I get so much spam with the same old keywords in the subject like: credit, pharmacy, Viagra, sex, loan, credit, meds, etc. I KNOW these are spam without even opening them.

I would like the ability within WebMail to create filters to automatically delete messages containing certain words like these in the subject. I would also like an option to NOT mark messages as spam if the sender is in my address book -- just in case a friend sends me something that the filter might find questionable. Some other webmail services offer custom filters, and I would like to see it in Earthlink too.

When I compose a message, how can I get "Color" to be my default style, with the type and font I choose? Now, I have to manually enter that everytime I do a new email.

Thanks,

DAVID

This morning I received an email message from hawttamale@earthlink.net letting me know there would be a web mail upgrade and if I didn't enter my username and password along with other confidential information, I would lose access to webmail. Is there any truth in this? Is this phishing for personal information? It felt wrong because the grammar was not correct. It seemed as though a foreigner was writing it. If this is not a true email from anyone in authority at Earthlink, somebody from Earthlink should send out a note telling us all to ignore it.

Having the repeated login problem in webmail. Usually occurs after two or three clicks on any action after logging in. I'm using XP SP2, IE 7, and dialup (!). Haven't tried Firefox yet.

Hi there,
My company has been using Earthlink for quite some time, and enjoy the email service that is provided.
What's up? - I'd like to be able to report virus attachments, or otherwise infected emails that occasionally make it through Earthlinks AV scanners ( on EL's servers).

We use a statefull inspection firewall, that provides faily detailed info on the virii it catches, and I want to know if it would be of any assistance to provide info to Earthlink in the case that virus's are detected coming in via POP mail from Earthlink's servers.

It may well be that the AV signatures are completely automated, and that additional AV info is not of any use.

It always worries me when I see virii in email at the firewall, (from EL's servers) because I know there are many end users that don't have the extra protection that my firewall appliance provides.
The AV detection at EL is pretty good, and a valuable asset.
Nick

I use Outlook Express for email. I have received several messages from Earthlink that my mailbox is nearing its limit for messages. I have cleared out everything but the minimum that I needed to save (really not much left), but today I received an Earthlink message that I have exceeded the limit and the mail will be returned to sender. I have never had this problem before. Please help me with this. Thank you.