Changes to spam filtering on email services

As of around midday yesterday we've implemented a new strategy to fight the ever increasing volumes of spam, viruses and similar junk coming in. Based on our tests and the initial response over this first 24 hours we believe these recent changes have made a massive improvement.

This is great news as we recognise that lots of email accounts are getting almost unmanageable with the amount of junk coming in these days, even though we've already been blocking hundreds of thousands of dubious emails each and every day.

As a consequence of the new filtering strategy, legitimate mail may be slightly delayed. However, in nearly all cases this should only happen the first time someone emails you. After that, mail should come through straight away. The delay on mail from people who have never mailed you before will usually around 5-10 minutes, although could be longer depending on the setup of the sender's mail server.

We hope you enjoy more usable email facilities with time spent on more productive things than weeding out spam messages (or as was sometimes the case, trying to locate the few real messages among immense volumes of junk).

If the delay on new messages coming in causes too much inconvenience for your circumstances and you'd rather go back to the old way - with the consequence of also receiving a lot more spam again - please let us know. We can turn this latest lot of filtering off on a "per-domain" basis if required.