Norton Antispam suddenly stopped detectinf spam emails

Norton Security | Norton Internet Security
1

Hi,

 

I have read previous threads on this, so others have obviously experienced similar problems, but I have failed to find a solution.

 

I had used Norton antispam with Norton 2007 and then 2008 with no problems, then one day it suddenly stopped detecting spam emails. Everything else worked, the toolbars were there and I could manually select emails and send them to the norton spam folder with the "this is spam" button, it just failed to detect any spam at all. This happened just after a Liveupdate patch for Norton Ghost was installed but I don't know if this is relevant or not.

 

I contacted support who suggested I upgrade to NIS 2009 as this would sort the problem. I upgraded and installed NIS 2009, enabled norton antispam and lo and behold - exactly the same problem!

 

Any ideas anyone?

 

Philip

2

Hi,

 

I have read previous threads on this, so others have obviously experienced similar problems, but I have failed to find a solution.

 

I had used Norton antispam with Norton 2007 and then 2008 with no problems, then one day it suddenly stopped detecting spam emails. Everything else worked, the toolbars were there and I could manually select emails and send them to the norton spam folder with the "this is spam" button, it just failed to detect any spam at all. This happened just after a Liveupdate patch for Norton Ghost was installed but I don't know if this is relevant or not.

 

I contacted support who suggested I upgrade to NIS 2009 as this would sort the problem. I upgraded and installed NIS 2009, enabled norton antispam and lo and behold - exactly the same problem!

 

Any ideas anyone?

 

Philip

3

Hi Philip,

 

Are you able to find the Norton AntiSpam toolbar in the Outlook/ Outlook Express (not sure which email client you use)after the upgrade?

Can you check the ports configured for the email client, confirm that the incoming POP3 uses 110 and outgoing SMTP uses 25?

 

Run LiveUpdate repeatedly from the NIS 2009 until you get the message no updates. Then check for this issue again.

 

Yogesh

4

As I said in my post - all the toolbars are there and are functioning fine. I am using POP3 accounts, no SSL, and ports 110 and 25 which are the defaults. Antispam was working fine for the last few years and then suddenly stopped detecting emails just before Christmas. No settings were changed and no programmes added so I do not know why it has stopped. Upgrading to Norton 2009 has made no difference

5

Hi plhermette,

 

Sorry for the delayed response.

 

How did you figure out that AntiSpam feature has stopped detecting spams?Are you receiving spam emails that you have configure the software to block.

 

Please feel free to post back.

 

Thanks,

TomV

Norton Forums Moderator

Symantec Corporation

6

>>How did you figure out that AntiSpam feature has stopped detecting spams?<< Well ~I ususally get 20 or 30 detected spam emails a day and so far Norton has not detected a single spam email since mid December despite a lot of Cr*p arriving in my inbox. The outlook junbk email filter finds quite a few but Norton appears to have given up completely. As I said before - all the toolbars are there and woirk fine - it just fails to detect any spam at all!

 

Philip

7

I have exactly the same problem.  They  (support) had me upgrade to 2008 (since 2009 does not have GO BACK which I use) and said this would solve it.  It has not and I cannot get anything to go to the Anti spam folder on the download from the mail server.  I can mark each piece as spam and it moves it to the folder but the next download just moves it to my INBOX.  I am running XP with outlook express.  Any suggessions? Tech support tried to help but I think they are clueless as to what is going on.   This has been going on for about 2 weeks or so.  Glad to see it is not just me...  I may have to go to 3rd party spam filter.  Does anyone know of a good one?

William

8

When they went back to 2008 they did install the Add-On I hope since prior to 2009 AntiSpam was in the free downloadable add on that does spam, privacy and parental control.

9

Yes.  We added the ADDON pack for 2008.  This is trully frustrating.  I am like Phillip and think they broke something in one of the liveupdate runs. Because it was working fine one day and stopped the next.  

10

It's certainly puzzling! I have NIS 2009 running under XP Pro SP3 and previously had NIS 2008 with the add-on pack. I use Outlook Express for my mail client and IE7 is the version of IE on that installation.

 

More background: It's a multiboot machine with VISTA and Windows 7 Beta on it all in separate drives so they don't interfere but I only handle mail on the XP Pro SP3 installation so let's leave that aspect on one side.

 

This is a desktop that my wife and I use each having our own desktops and our own email accounts on RoadRunner.

 

We use Windows Fast User Switching so can log on and switch from one desktop to the other without logging out and without passwords. I mention this because under NIS 2008 the Norton AntiSpam Icon on the Outlook Express toolbar did not follow when you Fast User Switched; it appeared for the one who logged on initially but if the other wanted to use it the first had to log out and the second log on.

 

Nevertheless, the AntiSpam identifying and sorting to the Spam Folder worked for both even if the icon was not there. You could right mouse click on a message and change its status to and from spam but not with the toolbar.

 

When I upgraded to NIS 2009 perhaps because antispam was integrated this problem disappeared.

 

So for me at present all I can say is that I don't have the problem the two of you describe.

 

----------------

 

Since you both have switched between NIS 2008 & NIS 2009 -- and for one of you 2007 > 2008 > 2009 and for the other 2009 > 2008 -- without affecting the problem and given the total difference in the engines and behavior of the two versions I would suggest that it is best to assume for the moment that the cause is not in NIS. I don't suggest that to avoid it being Symantec's problem but because it seems more logical.

 

If we assume that for the time being, then the questions that arise would involve the mail client used:

 

-- plhermette refers to outlook; you don't say; are you both using Outlook or Outlook Express?

 

-- and whether Microsoft changed anything

 

and/or whether some external security change occurred?

 

Also whether your user/desktop/switching is similar to mine or not?

 

Can you both fill in the gaps on the various questions so we can see if we can get anywhere that way?

11

Could you have a look at the message I’ve just posted to wmedcalf and see if you can fill in the gaps an the background between the three of us?

12

Hello nhuwyngr,

 

I am running OULOOK exp.  I have not checked to see if MS has updated anything but that is a good lead and I will check that out.  I also uninstalled and reinstalled the 2008 ADDON pack and that did nothing either.  I no of NO external Sec change that has been made unless MS changed something in one of the update. SYMANTEC has been no help in attempting to resolve this.   Perfectly nice folks to work with but clueless about this problem   

Thanks for taking the time to help!

Regards,

William

13

<<  SYMANTEC has been no help in attempting to resolve this.   Perfectly nice folks to work with but clueless about this problem    >>

 

I think you may be referring to Chat ....

 

All those names in red you see here -- like Tom V in this thread -- are Symantec Staff and they know their stuff since they are actually working on writing and debugging the programs!

 

You've answered the questions Tom asked you so once this Holiday Weekend is out of the way perhaps he will be able to come back with some suggestions.

14

You are right it was the CHAT room folks. 

 

NOTE:   TOM V if you are out there any help would be appreciated !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks,

William  :o(

15

Moved the post and its replies to Norton 360 board for a better exposure.

16

Hi plhermette

 

I have a couple of questions to help diagnose your issues.

 

1. Are any incoming messages sent to the "Norton AntiSpam" folder?

2. For the messages that are sent to Outlook's Junk Mail folder, do any of them have the "Norton AntiSpam" tag in the subject?

3. Does changing how strict the AntiSpam treats email make a difference?

4. Does your email messages contain any headers that begin with "X-NAS"?  To check for the email headers, right-click on any email in your inbox and then click "Options".  The headers are listed in the "Internet Headers" portions of the dialog.

 

Thanks for your help

 

JamesK

 

17

In my case I am using outlook 2003. I have used NIS in various flavours since time immemorial but I did a complete disk reformat an clean intall of windows 18months ago so the only versions since then have been NIS2007.08/09.

 

The reason I am suspicious of a Liveupdate issue is that I regularly log on to an admin account and do a manual interactive liveupdate as not all patches seem to load automatically in a LUA. On this occasion I had downloaded email normally in a limited user account and antispam worked fine.  Having read and dealt with all my emails I loggerd off, logged on to an admin account and ran liveupdate, which downloaded and applied a patch for Norton Ghost. I then logged off and logged back onto my LUA and opened outlook. It was at this point that I noticed that no spam was being detected. I was reeiving things in my inbox that would normally have been chucked out into the antispanm folder. Also, nothing was being labelled as norton antispam at all - even those messages that were in the outlook junk email folder (usually some antispam mail gets in there too). Now trhis may be a coinicidence but I have had so many problems in the past with Norton Ghost crapping things up that I feel this is the most likely culprit.

 

I am tempted to remove Ghost 14 and see if that solves the problem, but since Ghost 10, 11, and 12 all messed mup at some stage and the online tech who took over my computer completely trashed it and made it unbootable, I am reluctant to let microsoft anywhere near it, Ghost is working fine so why rock the boat. It was just weird that antispam stopped working after running liveupdate.

 

I suspect the problem is not in the antispam software per se but in a setting it is making in the registry or with how it integrates with outlook. presumably it effectively creates a rule to divert spam to the spam folder although this rule does not appear in the normal rules window under tools. There must be a setting somewhere that is common to antispam 2008 and 2009. Any ideas?

 

Philip

 

 

18

Hi James,

 

To answer your specific Questions:

 

1. Are any incoming messages sent to the "Norton AntiSpam" folder?

 

No - none at all.

 

2. For the messages that are sent to Outlook's Junk Mail folder, do any of them have the "Norton AntiSpam" tag in the subject?

 

No - none at all.

 

3. Does changing how strict the AntiSpam treats email make a difference?

 

No - I have tried on the strictest settings to try and block more mail buit still nothing identified

 

4. Does your email messages contain any headers that begin with "X-NAS"?  To check for the email headers, right-click on any email in your inbox and then click "Options".  The headers are listed in the "Internet Headers" portions of the dialog.

 

Not that I can see - I have looked at valid andf junk mail but cannot see andy X-NAS

 

Philip

19

Interestingly enough - my antispam toolbar has now disappeared as well! I have tried turning off integration and turning it back on but it is not playing ball. It appears in outlook when I log on as administrator but in my LUA it has disappeared altogether.

 

What is going on here?

 

Philip

20

OK so the norton antispam add-in had become disabled - Quite how I do not know. I have re-enabled it and got my toolbars back. Still no spam detected though.

 

I tried changing my LUA to an administrator account, reintegrating Norton and running outlook. Still no spam detected so I have set it back to a LUA.

 

Maybe Norton antispam only works on one account on a PC?

 

Philip