Fighting spam

Spam is unsolicited email that may be delivered your email address. It may contain advertising, chain letters, computer viruses, or even be a phishing attempt. Address databases are created by spammers using dedicated programs that pick addresses using a special dictionary or just collecting addresses posted publicly.

Unsolicited mail should be differentiated from honest mail. Proper mail usually implies explicit consent. You can also unsubscribe to stop receiving such emails.

Yandex Mail uses the Anti-Spam service, which learns from user-submitted spam complaints, to recognize spam. It puts suspicious emails with spam features in the Spam folder.

Alert

All messages in the Spam folder will be automatically deleted in 10 days. Note that you will not be able to recover the deleted emails.

Yandex Mail filters not only incoming but also outgoing mail. Each email is checked for viruses. If a virus is detected in a message, the message is rejected by the mail server and the sender receives a report.

Note

Email filtering works automatically, and you can't disable it.

Spam issues

This step-by-step guide will help you solve issues related to spam. Before you start, open Yandex Mail in a new tab to follow the recommendations.

Select a problem:

Spam ends up in my “Inbox” folder

Desktop version of Yandex Mail

Mobile Yandex Mail

Application

If you think you have received a spam message in your Inbox, select the message and click It's spam! and it will be moved to Spam and the required information will be sent to Anti-Spam.

After you submit several complaints about the same kind of message, Anti-Spam starts putting all similar email into Spam automatically. Mark all emails that you believe are spam by clicking Spam! until all such messages start going to the Spam folder instead of your Inbox.

Tip

Send unsolicited emails to Spam one by one. All email from one sender that gets moved to the Spam folder at one time is considered as one complaint.

If a message gets into Spam by mistake, click Not spam! and new messages from this sender will go to the Inbox.

Anti-Spam takes into account both general and “personal” filtration rules which apply to specific mailboxes. Any messages that you believe to be unsolicited but another mailbox user finds useful will be filtered into Spam in your mailbox and into the Inbox of the other user's mailbox.

If you received an email you think is spam in your Inbox, please let us know about it:

Open the email.
On the right side of the screen, tap .
Tap Spam!

This will help our anti-spam filters work better in your mailbox. You may need to make several complaints about similar unwanted messages for it to work. Learn more about how Yandex Mail fights spam in Yandex Mail Help.

To mark several emails as spam, do the following:

Select the messages. To select an email, click on the sender's image in the message bar.
At the bottom of the screen, tap .

If you received an email you think is spam in your Inbox, please let us know about it:

Open the email.
Tap More.
Tap Spam!

To mark several messages as spam, do the following:

Select the emails. To select an email, click on the sender's image in the message bar.
On Android, tap at the top of the screen. On iOS, tap at the bottom of the screen.

I received suspicious messages

If you receive emails from companies, services, or social networks that urge you to follow the link inside, don't click it. Those are phishing messages. Phishing refers to a variety of online scams that are designed to get your confidential information.

Learn more about fraudulent email (phishing)

Scammers send fake email on behalf of companies and services that you use: social networks, postal services, government agencies, or payment systems. The email messages are written and formatted in a convincing way to avoid suspicion. The sender's name and address also appears to be in order. Hackers disguise phishing email in hopes you won't notice the difference.

The messages usually try to persuade you to click the link inside and enter some personal data (your account passwords, credit card number or PIN, etc.) for some supposedly important reason. The link leads you to a fake website. These sites usually mimic the appearance of their real counterparts, so it's quite easy to be misled into entering personal data on such a website. Scammers get the information they need and use it to send spam to other users, get access to your social network account, or even steal money from your bank account.

Alert

Yandex will never send email asking you to follow a link and enter personal data.

How to tell a phishing email from a real one

Make sure to check the addresses of links. To learn where a link leads to, hover over it without clicking. You will see the address in the bottom left corner of the window.

A Yandex address looks like https://yandex.com/section or https://service.yandex.com/section. There must be a slash (/) after yandex.com, not a dot. If the address you see is different, contains typos, or has a random string of symbols, don't click it.

If you clicked through to the website, please check the site address in the address bar.

How to prevent becoming a victim of fraud

Carefully check all incoming email messages and link addresses.
Never pay for purchases or bills you don't remember. Never send text messages to suspicious phone numbers and never share your Yandex password.

Yandex Mail marks all phishing emails with a special warning:

If you discover a phishing or otherwise suspicious email that is not marked with a warning, please let us know using the feedback form and include its properties.

If you fell victim to fraud

Contact the police if funds have been unlawfully debited from your account.
If you have followed a phishing link, check your computer for viruses using free antivirus software such as CureIt! from Dr.Web and Virus Removal Tool from Kaspersky Lab.
If you shared your password on a phishing page, make sure to change your Yandex ID password, link your phone number to your account, and change your security question and answer. It's better to do this after the virus scan. If you lost access to your account, follow the instructions to restore access.

If a phishing email is not marked with a warning

: If you discover a phishing or otherwise suspicious email that is not marked with a warning, please let us know using the feedback form and describe its properties.

I got the message "Message cannot be sent because it looks like spam".

If you receive an error message "Message cannot be sent because it looks like spam" ("Spam limit exceeded" or "Message rejected under suspicion") or a prompt to enter captcha numbers, this may be caused by the following:

Messages that are similar or use a template are sent out

Messages that are identical, based on a template, or contain commercial or advertising proposals are being sent from your mailbox. Yandex Mail doesn't allow you to send these types of emails. Our service is intended for actual communication between people.

Tip

If you want to send out mass emails to your partners or clients, please use our special mailing services. To find them, use Yandex search.

The daily limit on how many emails you can send was reached

Your mailbox sends out a large number of messages every day, which is regarded as spam by our security system. The messages can be sent with your involvement, as well as without your knowledge.

In order to avoid this, Yandex Mail has set restrictions on the number of emails you can send each day. These restrictions cannot be changed or avoided.

Yandex Mail limits

Number of recipients	Restriction
Total for all email in a 24-hour period	500
In one email sent from the site	50
In a single email sent from a mail client or over SMTP	35

Alert

Limits can be lowered if Anti-Spam notices the mass emailing of similar messages, templates, spam, advertising, or commercial offers.

Your account was marked as suspicious

Our security system flagged your account as suspicious. This usually happens if you don't link a secure phone number to your mailbox or enter a fake name in Yandex ID. Check this data and update it if necessary.

Emails are sent to non-existent addresses.

A large number of messages were sent to nonexistent addresses from your mailbox. If an email is sent to a non-existent address, you receive an automatic non-delivery report .

We received a complaint about a mailing sent from your email address

We received several complaints from users about spam sent from your email address.

If this occurred, sending emails from your mailbox will be blocked. Only sending emails is blocked. You will be able to log in to Yandex Mail and receive emails. The blocking is lifted automatically after 24 hours if you don't try to send an email during this time — otherwise the blocking is extended for another 24 hours.

While you are waiting for the block to be removed, follow the recommendations below to avoid similar issues in the future:

Please check your computer for viruses with free anti-virus programs such as CureIt! from Dr. Web or Virus Removal Tool from “Kaspersky Lab”. Then change your password.
Enter your valid personal details in Yandex ID and link your phone number to your account.
Make sure the your recipients addresses are entered correctly and remain active.
Make sure that recipients of your emails have voluntarily agreed to receive them.

I get a lot of spam in my “Spam” folder

If you receive a lot of spam in the Spam folder, it means that Anti-Spam works. If the email is really suspicious, leave it in this folder — it will automatically be deleted in 10 days. If the folder contains emails you need, restore them.

If you want to automatically erase all new messages that are sent to the Spam folder, configure your mail filters:

In the Apply list, choose to all messages including spam.
Under If, specify the following condition: "From contains <domain_name>".
In the Perform action section, choose Remove.
Tap Create rule.

I receive spam from my own email address

If you are informed that you have received spam or if you receive spam emails from your own email address, the reasons for may be:

Malware infection of your computer

: If the computer was infected with a virus, your Yandex Mail account might have been hacked. Please check your computer for viruses with free anti-virus programs such as CureIt! from Dr. Web or Virus Removal Tool from “Kaspersky Lab”. Then change your password.

Spoofing (forged mail headers)

Check if the email is located in the Sent folder. If it's not there, that means that someone is sending spam with your email address specified as the reply address.

You might also get a message from the “Mailer-Daemon” service with an automatic email non-delivery report for an address that you didn't send anything to.

This usually happens because of spoofing. Spoofing is a type of internet scam designed to distribute information in the form of unsolicited advertising (spam). Spammers enter fake addresses in the email properties (such as From or Reply to). They do not actually have access to your mailbox, but they use your address instead of the sender's real address.

If you receive this type of email, select it and click It's spam! so that Yandex can improve its spam filtration.

Check your Session history to make sure that nobody has sent messages from your mailbox other than you.

I receive other people's email

Check the address shown in the To field of these messages.

The To field lists an address with a dot, while mine uses a hyphen.

If your address contains a hyphen but you receive email for an address with a dot, or vice versa, the messages are probably yours, not someone else's.

Yandex Mail doesn't distinguish between dots and hyphens in email addresses.These are aliases — synonymous addresses of the same mailbox.They always belong to the same recipient. For example, if you registered my-address@yandex.com, you can also send and receive emails via my.address@yandex.com. No one else can use either of these addresses.

The To field shows an address with uppercase letters, but my address uses lowercase letters.

If your address contains uppercase letters but you get email meant for the same address with lowercase letters (or vice versa), the messages are probably meant for you.

Yandex Mail doesn't distinguish between addresses with uppercase and lowercase letters.These are aliases — synonymous addresses of the same mailbox.They always belong to the same recipient. For example, If you registered my-address@yandex.com, you can also send and receive emails with My-Address@yandex.com. No one else can use either of these addresses.

The To field shows my address, but the From field has an address I don't recognize.

If you're receiving emails from an address you don't recognize, there could be several reasons:

Sender error when providing the address of the recipient

: If you received a message from an unknown sender, the sender may have made a mistake when specifying the address of the recipient. You can inform the sender of the mistake or just ignore the email.

Someone registered on a website using your email address as a contact

Some websites allow registration without email confirmation. This means that people can enter an email address that is not theirs. Even if someone enters your address on a website, they can't use your mailbox. If you don't want to receive email from this site:

Add the sender's address to the blacklist.
Contact the website administrator and inform them that your address was provided on their site by mistake.

The From field lists an address of someone I know while the To field has an address I don't recognize.

If you've received an email from someone you know but it was sent to another address, then your address is probably listed in the Bcc field. Such messages may be meant for you. Contact the sender some other way and ask them.

In some cases, this may happen if another mailbox is configured to forward messages to your address. If forwarding was set up by someone else, contact the administrator of the server hosting the mailbox that forwards your emails and attach a copy of the email along with its properties.

The To field lists an address of someone I know but the From field has an address I don't recognize.

If you've received email from someone you don't know meant for another address, then your address is probably listed in the Bcc field. Messages like this might be spam.

I get the error “Message rejected under suspicion of SPAM” in the mail client.

If you receive “Message rejected under suspicion of SPAM”, it means that Yandex Mail determined that the contents of your email were spam. To resolve the problem, go to Yandex Mail and send a test email. This shows the system that messages are not being sent by a robot.

Please check your computer for viruses with free anti-virus programs such as CureIt! from Dr. Web or Virus Removal Tool from “Kaspersky Lab”.

For more information, see the I got the message "Email can't be sent, because it appears to be spam".

Non-spam messages arrive in the Spam folder

Desktop version of Yandex Mail

Mobile Yandex Mail

Application

If a non-spam message arrives in the Spam folder by mistake, select it and click Not spam!. This email is then moved to the Inbox folder. After a while, all emails from this address will start arriving in the Inbox folder again.

Make sure your mail filters are not set up to move such messages to Spam. If any filter is doing this, disable it.

The It's spam! button does not work

Emails may end up in Spam if you use certain mail clients to manage your Yandex Mail (such as Microsoft Outlook, The Bat!, or Thunderbird for desktop or Mail.Ru, Gmail, or Mailbox for smartphone or tablet). Some mail clients have built-in anti-spam filters that may send emails to the Spam folder.

If the It's not spam! button does not work on Yandex Mail, click it in your mail program or app (it may have a different name in other e-mail programs). Also disable the Spam check in the settings of your mail client so that emails aren't sent there automatically.

If the program has no spam filter, then change the password to your Yandex mailbox. Changing your password may help if you've set up the program earlier and don't currently use it, but it's still running and continues to move emails to Spam.

If an email arrived in the Spam folder by mistake:

Open the email.
On the right side of the screen, tap .
Tap Not spam!

New emails from this sender will now be arriving in the Inbox folder.

To restore several emails from the Spam folder:

Select the messages. To select an email, click on the sender's image in the message bar.
At the bottom of the screen, tap .

If an email arrived in the Spam folder by mistake:

Open the email.
Tap More.
Tap Not spam.

New emails from this sender will now be arriving in the Inbox folder.

To recover multiple emails from the Spam folder, do the following:

Select the emails. To select an email, click on the sender's image in the message bar.
Click the icon.

I receive too many newsletters. How do I unsubscribe?

If you signed up to receive newsletters from a site or service and no longer wish to receive email from them, you can unsubscribe right from your mailbox. To do this, open any email from this sender and click Unsubscribe:

After you click the button, the selected message will be moved to Trash. Messages from this sender will stop coming to your mailbox.

Alert

If the unsubscribe procedure was unsuccessful (for example, a wrong unsubscribe link was provided in the message or the request was processed incorrectly by the website or service), messages from the sender will continue arriving in your mailbox but they will be filtered as Spam.

If the email doesn't have a Unsubscribe button, add the sender's address to the blacklist or configure a mail filter that deletes email from this sender.

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