Spam

[MattWood]

Recently (last 6 months) I have had a massive increase in the amount of spam getting in to my inbox when using the Optus Webmail. I don't fill in online surveys or any of those things that will generate junk offers, the range of spam is broad, mostly shopping/sales offers but also includes gambling, dating, pharmacuetical and others. I have tried to mark them as spam but I get pretty much the same thing the next day. Also when I'm using webmail it takes anywhere up to 20-30 seconds for an email to register as spam after I have clicked the report spam button, this is frustrating when I'm trying to get rid of 20 spam emails, can I do something about that? I can't seem to mark more than one email at a time as spam either, is that part of webmail or is that something I can fix?

Thanks,

Matt.

[Davelew · Accepted solution]

Hi Matt

There has been a lot of discussion on this forum with regards to spam mail in Optus webmail.

The opinion seems to be when you mark an email spam Optus doesn't recognise news emails from the same source as spam.

The best solution is to migrate your emails over to Gmail or similar where they seem far better at managing spam.

Dave

[MattWood]

Thanks Dave, now the really rookie question. If I were to migrate things to gmail do I still use my optusnet email address?

Matt

[Davelew]

I afraid the answer is no, you will need a Gmail email address.

There is a bit of work involved in migrating but not too daunting.

First of all drop an email from your new Gmail address to all your regular correspondents of your change of address.

List all the companies and particularly banks and credit cards and go into your profile on their sites and change your email address 

I don't use Optus email but there should be an auto reply where you can leave the message of your new email address.

Then you will need to monitor the Optus webpage over the next couple of months to ensure you have not missed anyone.

Hope this helps and you should then find with Gmail your spam drops dramatically.

[Davelew]

Forgot to mention the other big advantage is if your leave Optus for another ISP you don't have the problem of changing you email address 

[MattWood]

Thanks Dave, you've been a great help.

[petergdownload]

Just to add to Dave's good advice. GMail has an auto import feature (to grab all your current Optus emails) as well as an auto link feature so you can just get any new emails from Optus straight to the GMail Inbox.  Also turn on two factor authentication on GMail - stop your account getting hijacked. 

Peter Gillespie

[Davelew]

Hi @petergdownload

I was a little worried about the import feature, so didn't mention it.  Would that also bring all the spam emails with it?

Dave

[petergdownload]

@Davelew

A very good point. I honestly don't know if GMail applies its spam checking to emails specifically imported from another acount. Since Gmail is designed to be a nexus of multiple accounts (if desired) then my guess would be

1) The inital bulk import would come in without filter (including existing spam)

2) New emails to Optus would however be run through the filter.

But that is just a guess. Perhaps the @MattWood can let us know if he tries.

Peter Gillespie

[MattWood]

It won't be today but I think I'll be giving it a shot, I'm not so attached to the webmail in any case. I'll be sure to add a comment as to how it went.

Thank you both for your help.