btinternet.com email addresses - why does so much go to "junk"??

[AnonEnormousStuffedBird]

Very infuriating, I have so many "normal" emails go to my junk folder which I only check every now and then. I then move the emails I want to my Inbox, and had assumed that the server would then remember those emails don't go to junk, but go to Inbox. They still go to Junk. I had two emails from Amazon on the same day, two separate Amazon orders made within five minutes of each other. One confirmation email went to Inbox, the other to Junk. I mean what the hell is that about? How can it be so inconsistent?

Anything I can do to prevent/improve this???? I don't dare speak to BT about it, I am not their biggest fan and am bored of waiting for ages and going round the houses and getting nowhere.

What I need is good solid advice, so I turn to the MN Geeky Stuff board, as I know I'll get it here!!!

TIA.

If you add the sender's email address to your contacts list, the emails should just go into your inbox. There may be settings you can change to better control what's seen as "junk".

Something else to consider is switching to a free MS Live.co.uk or Google Mail account.

A friend switched from BT Broadband to another ISP and initially there was a request to charge 1 pound a month to keep his old mail account. Later it went to 4.50 a month, just for e-mail.

Using ISP-based e-mail accounts is something I would always suggest is avoided. Sure, check that mail account for ISP messages, invoices etc, but as a contact mail address I would suggest a free account elsewhere.

If you enter competitions, or use a number of shopping sites, or even social networking sites, it is probably a good idea to have different mail addresses, so if one gets hacked (or you are conned into signing up to some website which is actually run to grab mail addresses and passwords) then the loss is only of one mail address.

I recommend using SpamGourmet.com which would allow you to have a unique mail address for each site you use. It is intended to cut down on how much spam reaches you, because it offers a couple of controls to do this.

First, when you sign up, and specify mail address, you can limit the number of mail messages which will be forwarded to you. I just signed up for a competition for some free music gear, and by entering my mail address as
website.5.myaccount @ spamgourmet.com

I have limited the number of messages to just 5 from If any further messages are sent, they will be 'eaten' by spamgourmet.

Second, if I find I want all messages from a website (eg MN, or the BBC) then I can 'whitelist' the sending mail address, or domain (bbc.co.uk) and then any messages from that 'accepted' sender gets through without reducing the count.

If the site is hacked, or they sell the mail addresses, then messages from some other domain will decrement the count and once it reaches 0, no more will come from unwanted senders.

I don't use the same password anyway for different sites, but also, by having different mail addresses for different sites (and none of them actually mention Google Mail anyway), it makes ID theft or hacking my mailboxes much more difficult.

It also means that none of the mail addresses I use are tied to my ISP - I have changed ISP a few times in the last 10 years, and know how awkward it would have been if I had tried to keep mail with one, when they are no longer ideal for my needs regarding internet access/ costs.

Of course, it takes time to make sure all your friends and relatives switch to sending mail to your [non-ISP] mail address, and changing contact address on shopping websites etc also will take time, but in the long run, it means you no longer have a massive 'hate the hassle' reason for not changing ISP if some better deal comes along.

All too often I have seen people moan that they hate their ISP (too expensive, too slow, limit how much they can download etc) but are reluctant to switch because 'I have had this e-mail address for 12 years'.

I once had a mail address for 8 years, with Ultranet.com near Boston, USA, until the ISP was taken over and my mail address died.

I'll never use an ISP address for general mail again - it is all too similar to the way banks don't expect much churn - people are more likely to divorce than switch banks, according to one old report... that level of loyalty is undeserved, and for ISPs the deals change every few months so definitely worth limiting how much you are tied to one firm...

If you phoned BT support, they would probably tell you it's something wrong with your PC...

The spam filter BT uses is atrocious, it generates false positives and false negatives all over the place - it's almost a random filter. If you want to use that email account then I would recommend turning off the spama/junk filters and relying either on something on your local PC to do the filtering or pass the email through a different email account, such as google or spamgourmet mentioned by NG.

Google isn't perfect, it still slips one or two false negatives per month. But I've rarely known it to do false positives.