Web Mail Blog

( FIXED )

Users have reported that sometimes using the Spell Check is deleting the typed message.

We have been able to reproduce one scenario where this will occur, and it is a bug to be fixed. If you receive a plain text message, you click Reply (or Forward) and then you click "Color and Graphics" to change the message type, if you then use Spell Check the new text you entered will be deleted. In our testing if you simply reply and leave the message type as it was in the original (whether plain or html) then the problem doesn't occur.

If there are other scenarios where this problem occurs, please report them here.

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This morning at about 2:30 AM EDT we released Web Mail 5.15. The only change in this release is the addition of the optional News Preview feature described in this post.

Let us know if you find this feature useful or if anything doesn't work as expected. As mentioned in the description linked above, a future release will give some customization options for choosing the type of news to show in your preview. Also, if you want to skip the news and have your login go straight to the Inbox, just click the link "Choose my default view" and set the option there.

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Users wonder if anything really happens when they use the "This Is Spam" feature in Web Mail, since they usually don't see an immediate result. We hope to add some features later that allow you to see reports about the effect of your own reporting. But in the meantime, know that several very useful things do happen, and please continue to use that feature. Here are some of the things that happen when you report a message as spam:

• The IP number of the message origination is automatically checked against public blacklists of known spam sources, and against lists of dynamic IP numbers. A dynamic IP number is one reserved for assignment to individual end-user's computers on a per-connection basis and should never be hosting a mail server that originates messages. So email that comes from a server at a dynamic IP number is almost always being generated by spam-bots on compromised computers (search Google for "bot-net" for more info). When an actual human user sends email they should be sending through a legitimate mail server hosted by their provider, or they host their own mail server on a fixed IP number that they own. So when you report a message as spam, and the originating IP number is found to be a dynamic IP number, that IP number is added to a global block list at EarthLink and no more email is accepted from that IP number. So in these cases, the result of your report is almost immediate. That doesn't mean you won't get more spam from the same sender, since the spammer may use a large bot-net that contains many compromised computers. But at least one source gets blocked, and over time many do. Our IP block list has over 200 million blocked numbers at any given time.

  Note that the IP block described above does NOT result in blocking a real user from sending legitimate email, as they will be using the *outgoing* mail server set in their email software, which is not the same as the mail server where EarthLink accepts incoming email from other servers (MX server). Only connections to the latter are blocked, which doesn't affect anything legitimate that a user is doing, it only blocks the spam-bot mail server running on the unsuspecting user's computer.

• If the originating IP number is found on a public blacklist of known spam sources or open proxies (such as the CBL), your report results in it being blocked from sending any more email to EarthLink users, just as described above.

• The messages you report are compiled and analyzed along with all other reported spam, to create new content-based filtering rules that recognize the characteristics of that particular spam, but in a way that prevents false-positive blocking of legitimate messages. Not every spam report can result in a new rule being created, but when a critical mass of similar spam is reported, it does often result in a new block being created. Once a rule is created, those messages are then flagged as Known Spam for all EarthLink users, and deleted according to your own account settings.

• The total count of reports from the "This Is Spam" feature is closely monitored and tracked, and when we see that number going up or down, we know how effective our efforts are at blocking spam.

So yes, we do act on your reports of "This Is Spam". Please do keep using this feature. And watch for some news later this year about us creating ways to give you more insight into the direct effect of your own reporting.

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I've answered this question enough to warrant adding it to our FAQ list now. There are a couple of pending comments with the question again, so I'll just answer it here for everyone and add it to our FAQ.

Click on "My Account" at the top of any EarthLink page. Log in there with your primary account (might be your only one if you have never done this). Then click on Profiles. Most accounts allow up to eight profiles (mailboxes) with no extra charge.

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I'll be away from my computer while on vacation and will try to catch up pending comments and questions on Monday April 16. Look for any pending comments to be published at that time.

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If you use myEarthLink you already know there is a handy Email Preview widget there that you can use to view the subject lines of recent messages arriving in your Inbox, and you can click them to go straight to that message in Web Mail. Well now we're going to do the same thing from our end, and allow you to view current news headlines in Web Mail, and you'll be able to click them to go straight to that news channel in your myEarthLink pages. All headlines are linked directly to the full story, which will open in a new window when clicked and not interrupt your Web Mail session.

The News Preview is completely optional, and there's a handy link on the upper right that allows you to choose whether you want to view the news headlines first, or your Inbox list first when you log in to Web Mail. The new Preference setting is shown below.

A new "News Headlines" link on the left also allows you to bring this view up in Web Mail any time you want to check it. The news feeds are updated every few minutes 24/7 and are always current.

This feature should debut in about 3 weeks. In this first release of the feature you won't yet be able to customize the selection of headline sources and we've chosen the two most popular ones. In a future release we plan to add some options to allow you to choose from among a variety of news categories to be displayed.

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