Yahoo mail’s awful spam assassin system

I’ve only used Yahoo’s email services because its bundled with the account you get to make if you want to use their instant messaging service. Although these days you can barely find me online on Yahoo Messenger, a couple of years ago I would have been one of those regular users who are online whenever their computers are powered. Given the fact that Romanians tend to use Yahoo Messenger without any chance for any other service, I didn’t have a chance and had to get the account to talk to friends, family or colleagues.

Yahoo’s spam detector has serious issues

A couple of years ago I had a server hosted in UK (don’t exactly remember where) which was running a website for a client I had back then. The main problem with the website was that it was a subscription service requiring email address validation and Yahoo was blocking (not just placing into spam folder) all the emails sent from that server. 

Whoever signed up with a Yahoo email address couldn’t validate their account. After weeks of research and contacting Yahoo support the cause was identified and unfortunately it could only be solved by Yahoo (as it was on their end). The problem wasn’t solved so we had to switch datacenters, update DNS, experience downtime and the whole bundle of issues.

You’d think that since 2006 Yahoo’s problems with spam are solved, but no. WebRaptor [new window] hosts a couple of servers with BurstNet in UK and US. Neither could send initially any emails to Yahoo accounts as all of them very permanently rejected.

Had to go again through the entire process described above. The good thing was that this time Yahoo managed to solve the issue and emails are now going through. Finally! 

The irony [ The “best” web-based email ]

I haven’t accessed my Yahoo email account much since I signed up (I think it was about 10 years ago). I never gave anyone that email address so nobody send me legit email on that address. However, although Yahoo has a very strict policy against spam blocking a lot of emails, legitimate emails, they fail to block spam from reaching my inbox. 

My inbox now contains about 50.000 emails. My spam folder contains 62 emails, the oldest dating back to 1st of January 2003. 

If you want to check out a long topic with the issue, check this one on Web Hosting Talk [new window].