rules not working consistently

[Barry Watzman]

Ok, Outlook 2003.

I am getting a ton of junk mail for various medications (you know the
medication that comes in a blue diamond shaped tablet) (see the last
paragraph of this post).

So I created a "rule" to delete any incoming message with in the subject.

But the rule works inconsistently. Most such messages do get deleted,
but not all of them. And I can't figure out why it's inconsistent.

There is nothing wrong with rule; if I go into the Junk Mail Folder, and
I "run rule now", it gets rid of those messages in the Junk Mail Folder
with the medication's name in the subject. But why didn't it do that in
the first place? Why does it only get rid of about 80% of such target
messages, while maybe 20% do not get deleted (it's not because of some
weird characters in the subject because, remember, if I manually "run
rule now", it does delete the messages that were not automatically deleted).

Funny story, btw .... I have been trying to post this message for 2
weeks. It would NEVER post. I finally figured it out; in the message,
I was spelling out the actual name of the drug that comes in a blue
pill. Apparently, somewhere, there is a filter for this newsgroup that
blocks messages which contain that word. I understand the point, BUT
..... sometimes, the word does appear in a message that isn't Spam.

It's worse ... even after removing the vee-word, that wasn't enough. My
post also had the name of the condition that it treats (2-letter
abbreviation starting with e). Apparently that is blocked also.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Well that drug does come with a lot of spam. What you get is what you get (I know
exactly which one )

Nobody's fault but yours. Using that drug and ordering it on line will get you these
results. You can start configuring rules from here to eternity and it will not get
it stopped. Too many variables . Too too many.

 

[Barry Watzman]

I have never ordered that drug online, and virtually everyone gets those
messages at some level. But yesterday I got over 2,000 of them, which I
chalk up to the trigger date of conficker.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Maybe you did not order it but for sure you opened it

 

[Barry Watzman]

Well, two point:

First, I received over 2,000 messages for that drug on Wednesday. That
was the trigger date for the confictor (?) virus. It was also,
independently, April fools day.

But, as to your point: I've never ordered that or any similar drugs on
the internet. And, generally, I have never opened E-Mails offering such
drugs, I just delete them (in most cases, they go automatically into my
junk mail). But, ok, sometimes you don't know that it is a "drug offer"
until after you open it.

SO WHAT? Why should that matter, whether you open it or not? I never
click on anything within the message, and I don't allow "receipts" to be
sent that I have opened or deleted that or any other message. And I
have an active outgoing firewall.

I get a few (perhaps a dozen) such messages every day, but got 2,000 on
Wednesday. I believe that there is nothing exceptional about me, but I
have been on the internet and EXTREMELY active for more than a decade
with the same E-Mail address. I believe that everyone with my level of
activity gets such messages, and in fact that most people with a similar
history would get far more. However, one thing I have done is that I
have turned off ***ALL*** filtering of messages by my ISP (because I
discovered that they were filtering out a small number of important,
legitimate messages by accident). So I actually see and receive all of
those messages, while I suspect that most people don't ever receive them
and consequently never see them (and don't know that they are not seeing
them) because most ISPs have their own filtering software before such
messages would ever get to you. In my case, my ISP (time-warner) does
this automatically, they don't notify you that they are doing it, you
have to "opt out", and most users don't even know that the ISP is
"pre-filtering" their E-Mail for both virus' and spam. I didn't know it
for years, until I missed critical E-Mails from a credit card company
that the ISP mistakenly filtered as "spam".

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

There is nothing wrong with rule; if I go into the Junk Mail Folder, and I

"run rule now",

Junk mail runs before regular rules. As long as it's not leaving messages in
the inbox, the rule is working.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



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