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Why can't YAHOO do more to filter "NIGERIAN SCAM" type messages?? Surely you have the technology to do so.

DAILY SCAM MESAGES ARE A PAIN IN THE POSTERIOR. DESPITE BLOCKING THE DOMAIN OF EVERY NON-YAHOO SCAM ORIGINATOR, I RECEIVE MULTIPLE SCAM MESSAGES DAILY. I AM SURPIRISED THAT, WITH ALL THE PROGRAMMING EXPERTISE AVAILABLE, THESE MESSAGES CAN NOT BE BLOCKED BEFORE THEY ARE RECEIVED BY END USERS. THERE ARE ENOUGH WORDS/PHRASES THAT COULD BE USED TO EFFECT THIS. FURTHER MORE, I AM NOTBEING RUDE USING ALL CAPITALS, I HAVE VISION PROBLEMS AND MUST USE CAPS TO READ WHAT I'M TYPING!

Public Comments

1. I know what you mean about those scam but there is so many of them that it's hard to keep track of it because most is really not Nigeria it's from the U.S. and Canada and it's very hard to filter because this nasty malicious scams are actually being from home from people like you and me just make sure you don't respond to it, don't even open because it let's the spammers know that the e-mail address they sent it to is active and just make sure you SPAM it so it will go directly to your bulk folder and just empty it out.
2. Customized filters automatically sort your incoming messages into folders you create according to rules you define. The benefit of filters is that you don't need to read through each message to decide where it goes. For example, you could create a filter so that messages about your favorite sports team are automatically delivered to a personal folder called "Sports." You can create up to 50 filters with your Yahoo! Mail Plus account. To create a filter: From the upper-right corner of your Inbox page, click "Mail Options." At the list of mail options, click "Filters." On the Filters page, click "Add." Enter the rules of the filter. For example: Any message that has "Boston Celtics" in the body of the email is directed to your "Sports" folder. Click "Add Filter" and in the future those messages will automatically be sent to the folder you specified. What are filters, and how can I set them up? Filters automatically sort your incoming messages into folders that you create or alert you of new email on your mobile device. They do so according to rules that you set up. The benefit of filters is that you don't need to read through each message to decide where it goes. For example, you could create a filter so that messages from your family members are automatically delivered to a personal folder called "Family," or messages from coworkers trigger a text alert on your mobile phone. You may create up to 15 filters in your free Yahoo! Mail account. If you need more filters, check out Yahoo! Mail Plus. One feature of the Yahoo! Mail Plus service is a limit of 50 filters. To create, edit, or delete a filter, click the "Mail Options" link on the top-right navigation bar, and then choose "Filters" located on the left side of the page, under the Management column. You can also add a mobile alert for a particular sender by clicking on the "add mobile alert" link in the message header of the message view. This link will prompt you to register your phone to activate this service. Once you register, the link will pre-populate the filter page to enable you to easily add a mobile alert for this sender. Creating a New Filter To create a new filter, click the "Add Filter" link on the Filters page. Choose the field you want to match in the incoming message. For example, select the one of the following headers: From:, To:/Cc:, Subject:, or Body to match. Choose the criterion by which you want a match to be made. For example: contains, ends with. Enter the text string to compare. For example: @rocketmail.com, Love, InfoBeat. Choose the destination folder to which you would like the message delivered. For example: Personal, News, Admin. If you have more than one filter, you'll also see "up" and "down" arrrows to the right of the filter list. Use these buttons to select the placement of your new filter within your existing sequence of filters. Filter order is important because Filter 1 will be the first filter applied to an incoming message, Filter 2 will be the next, and so on until a match is made or all filters are passed. If no filters match an incoming message, it will be delivered to your inbox. Be sure to click the "Add Filter" button to put your new filter into effect. Editing or Deleting an Existing Filter Once you reach the Filters page, click radio button to the left of the filter you would like to edit and click the "Edit" button located on the top-right side of the Filters page. After making the desired changes be sure to click "Add Filter" for your changes to start taking effect. To delete one of your filters, click radio button to the left of the filter you would like to delete and click the "Delete" button located on the top-right side.
3. Yahoo and its customer base are both a major target of 419 spam (fake lotteries / Nigerian proposals) and a major source of it. Approximately one third of all email accounts currently used in 419 scams are Yahoo.com accounts or international variants of it. I believe the reasons for not doing more are primarily commercial. Yahoo offers Yahoo! Mail Plus which uses Bayesian filtering, which should do a decent job at stopping 419 scams. As long as users of Yahoo's free email services do not get this feature they have an incentive to upgrade. On the spam sending side, Yahoo could do more too, as a lot of the spam comes from known IP addresses in Nigeria or of satellite broadband providers. If they were to do content based filtering (which admittedly would use a bit more processing power) it would help protect everyone. The problem is that despite the increased use of computing resources this would not increase revenue in any way. It's the right thing to do, but it doesn't pay for itself, at least not directly. I think in the long term Yahoo would benefit significantly from applying better spam filters both at the sending and receiving side. It would act as a deterrent to spammers, who would go elsewhere, instead of using Yahoo's email resources and technical support time via spam reports.