re today's EE Newsletter article on spam by Teksquisite, there are deeper spam problems
Today's article by Teksquisite on company email to clients going direct to spam dump without being seen, is a matter of great concern, and a growing problem that is threatening to make email redundant as a reliable means of communication for many. To help others, I describe the problems we have had, why it happens, and solutions found. If I have anything wrong or mis-understood, or there are other cost effective solutions, I would appreciate responses.
We have to send our clients instructions and obtains their authorisations, such as permission to use their logo and obtaining their approval on our promotional wording of their business, in order to deliver services they pay us for.
Spam filtering has become so invasive and disruptive and inaccurate (too all encompassing) that we can no longer be sure what we send arrives. Using read receipts is redundant, by default GMail does not handle read receipts, nor do others.
We check our emails against spam checkers such as GravityMail for the spam score and we pass almost with zero score (others use another basis where 0 is worst). We follow all the guidelines on wording and content, including those Teksquisite mentions, we put in our contact address and company number etc.
But content has nothing to do with the main problem. If your email IP address is inside a range which SpamHaus or one of the 18 or so self appointed rulers of who is classified as a spammer, then you are also classified as a spammer.
You can check by going to "WhatismyIPaddress" or one of the other blacklist checkers and see if you are blacklisted. You may send perfect harmless emails, but, if you email IP is associated with a known spammer, your email will often get blocked.
We use Strato as our email provider (part of Deutsche Telekom and formerly Lycos Europe) and have had detailed discussion with their tech about our email blocking. They have one or more clients who send spam despite their best efforts to block them. Our email IP is inside a range of IPs identified as spammers by DNSBL.info who operate a domain blacklist database.
A serious spammer does not send from just one IP, they pick a selection on non-sequential IPs. When 2 or more IPs are identified as spamming, the blacklist seems to simply take the highest and lowest spamming IP and block all between. We innocently sit inside a range and become a victim.
We use Strato because we have to keep cost low, they deliver an excellent and normally very reliable service with tech support that is very good. I guess their pricing makes them popular with spammers. But, we were previously with BT and then another before that. The same problem caused us to leave them, we can't keep changing with the disruption it causes.
For the past 2 months we have been unable to send to any Hotmail account, and now MSN and Google. Many of our clients a re small one man businesses and use these type of email accounts. Strato have appealed to Microsoft to remove the blacklisting, but, after they did it, others followed as they pick up who is a blacklisted by what Google in particular does.
We took up a service by Wizemail to send our important emails, and circulations such as Newsletters. Wizemail (who use a white label service by Dotmail) they make sure they are approved and known to only send approved emails to opted in and double opted in recipients. As many of our clients are small businesses, they use a single email contact such as sales@ and info@. These are known as generic addresses.
All email marketing providers such as Wizemail submit all send lists for cleaning and checking before send. As generic addresses are the target of spammers, all generic addresses get cleaned out - if you have more than 30% generic addresses in your send list. This stops the large email clients from marking emails sent as spam.
So, we can not even use Wizemail and similar to send our important email. Now we are reluctantly having to move to using Msoft Office 365 and deploy Msoft's email Exchange Server which we configure to use our exiting email addresses but which do not run through the Strato email servers (it's also a cost effective way to always have the latest Msoft's Office software). But with the many domains and email addresses we have, it is not the easiest task or quick.
The alternative low cost way is to use our current email domains and run them under Google's business mail, changing the DNS primary MX Record to Google's servers (as is done with Office 365 Exchange Server or preferably the TXT record if your domain provider gives access to it).
But, this comes to what I and Strato believe is the root of the problem. What is spam to one person is essentially and often needed mail for another. Companies buy mailing lists assured as clean, but, which do not completely have opt-ins. people receive unwanted mail and Google and Hotmail make it easy to simply mark it as spam to stop it, instead of marking it personally as unwanted and blocking it at their own computer's level.
Google especially and others report the marked spam to the blacklist controllers, if too many come in for one email IP, it is blacklisted. Other self elected email spam blocking services make it too easy to report a received email as spam and that quickly goes to the blacklisting services. There are 20 or more blacklisting services often feeding off each other who is blacklisted.
Yes, I can move my email to specialist providers who say they will ensure delivery. Why should I be forced to go to that cost because of other's spam ? Why should I have the cost and considerable hassle and problems of turning to running my own email servers.
Spam filtering is getting out of control and destroying email as a reliable means of communication. But, if you migrate your email to Google, most of your problems sending go away. How surprising. I have never liked Google, it is insidious and writes itself deep into the Registry, almost impossible to weed out, as it continues to work to make itself the dominant service . . thank goodness Bing is a far more accurate search engine despite its stupid name.
Could it be that Google uses spam to migrate email users to itself. Am I being paranoid :) Maybe if I look at the underside my plate or cup, or under the chairs in my house, I will soon find the makers name as Google :))
Rgds Jonathan
We have to send our clients instructions and obtains their authorisations, such as permission to use their logo and obtaining their approval on our promotional wording of their business, in order to deliver services they pay us for.
Spam filtering has become so invasive and disruptive and inaccurate (too all encompassing) that we can no longer be sure what we send arrives. Using read receipts is redundant, by default GMail does not handle read receipts, nor do others.
We check our emails against spam checkers such as GravityMail for the spam score and we pass almost with zero score (others use another basis where 0 is worst). We follow all the guidelines on wording and content, including those Teksquisite mentions, we put in our contact address and company number etc.
But content has nothing to do with the main problem. If your email IP address is inside a range which SpamHaus or one of the 18 or so self appointed rulers of who is classified as a spammer, then you are also classified as a spammer.
You can check by going to "WhatismyIPaddress" or one of the other blacklist checkers and see if you are blacklisted. You may send perfect harmless emails, but, if you email IP is associated with a known spammer, your email will often get blocked.
We use Strato as our email provider (part of Deutsche Telekom and formerly Lycos Europe) and have had detailed discussion with their tech about our email blocking. They have one or more clients who send spam despite their best efforts to block them. Our email IP is inside a range of IPs identified as spammers by DNSBL.info who operate a domain blacklist database.
A serious spammer does not send from just one IP, they pick a selection on non-sequential IPs. When 2 or more IPs are identified as spamming, the blacklist seems to simply take the highest and lowest spamming IP and block all between. We innocently sit inside a range and become a victim.
We use Strato because we have to keep cost low, they deliver an excellent and normally very reliable service with tech support that is very good. I guess their pricing makes them popular with spammers. But, we were previously with BT and then another before that. The same problem caused us to leave them, we can't keep changing with the disruption it causes.
For the past 2 months we have been unable to send to any Hotmail account, and now MSN and Google. Many of our clients a re small one man businesses and use these type of email accounts. Strato have appealed to Microsoft to remove the blacklisting, but, after they did it, others followed as they pick up who is a blacklisted by what Google in particular does.
We took up a service by Wizemail to send our important emails, and circulations such as Newsletters. Wizemail (who use a white label service by Dotmail) they make sure they are approved and known to only send approved emails to opted in and double opted in recipients. As many of our clients are small businesses, they use a single email contact such as sales@ and info@. These are known as generic addresses.
All email marketing providers such as Wizemail submit all send lists for cleaning and checking before send. As generic addresses are the target of spammers, all generic addresses get cleaned out - if you have more than 30% generic addresses in your send list. This stops the large email clients from marking emails sent as spam.
So, we can not even use Wizemail and similar to send our important email. Now we are reluctantly having to move to using Msoft Office 365 and deploy Msoft's email Exchange Server which we configure to use our exiting email addresses but which do not run through the Strato email servers (it's also a cost effective way to always have the latest Msoft's Office software). But with the many domains and email addresses we have, it is not the easiest task or quick.
The alternative low cost way is to use our current email domains and run them under Google's business mail, changing the DNS primary MX Record to Google's servers (as is done with Office 365 Exchange Server or preferably the TXT record if your domain provider gives access to it).
But, this comes to what I and Strato believe is the root of the problem. What is spam to one person is essentially and often needed mail for another. Companies buy mailing lists assured as clean, but, which do not completely have opt-ins. people receive unwanted mail and Google and Hotmail make it easy to simply mark it as spam to stop it, instead of marking it personally as unwanted and blocking it at their own computer's level.
Google especially and others report the marked spam to the blacklist controllers, if too many come in for one email IP, it is blacklisted. Other self elected email spam blocking services make it too easy to report a received email as spam and that quickly goes to the blacklisting services. There are 20 or more blacklisting services often feeding off each other who is blacklisted.
Yes, I can move my email to specialist providers who say they will ensure delivery. Why should I be forced to go to that cost because of other's spam ? Why should I have the cost and considerable hassle and problems of turning to running my own email servers.
Spam filtering is getting out of control and destroying email as a reliable means of communication. But, if you migrate your email to Google, most of your problems sending go away. How surprising. I have never liked Google, it is insidious and writes itself deep into the Registry, almost impossible to weed out, as it continues to work to make itself the dominant service . . thank goodness Bing is a far more accurate search engine despite its stupid name.
Could it be that Google uses spam to migrate email users to itself. Am I being paranoid :) Maybe if I look at the underside my plate or cup, or under the chairs in my house, I will soon find the makers name as Google :))
Rgds Jonathan
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ASKER
Thanks for the answer ve3ofa. Slow in responding as I have been away. As I said, it is not that we are blacklisted, it is nothing to do with any of our emails, we do not send many.
As I noted, our IP is within a range of IPs that one of the blacklist operators has decided is responsible for spam.
A spammer using our email provider has randomly selected IPs to spam from. The blacklist operator has taken two of the IPs at either end of a range of IPs and blocked every address in between, including ours.
We can't do anything about that except get angry with our provider or spend money moving to another with all the disruption caused. Many others are similarly affected. We are by no means the only ones.
My point was that, in response to Teksquisite's advice on how to compose email to avoid being seen as spam, there are other serious reasons for being blacklisted or marked as spam which are not of one's own making and beyond any action to resolve. This does not seem to be understood in replies made.
There is also the case that with Google and Hotmail and probably others, the method of their recipients marking an email as spam needs looking at. For example, people get emails from their own Bank, which they opted to receive, but rather than use the opt-out function, they simply stop it by marking it as spam. So, Barclays for example had their emails to other customers who opted to receive, headed as spam or blocked - according to your email system.
Spam filtering is getting out of hand in some cases. I am plagued with spam like others. I use Avast which effectively deals with 95% of it.
Regards Jonathan
As I noted, our IP is within a range of IPs that one of the blacklist operators has decided is responsible for spam.
A spammer using our email provider has randomly selected IPs to spam from. The blacklist operator has taken two of the IPs at either end of a range of IPs and blocked every address in between, including ours.
We can't do anything about that except get angry with our provider or spend money moving to another with all the disruption caused. Many others are similarly affected. We are by no means the only ones.
My point was that, in response to Teksquisite's advice on how to compose email to avoid being seen as spam, there are other serious reasons for being blacklisted or marked as spam which are not of one's own making and beyond any action to resolve. This does not seem to be understood in replies made.
There is also the case that with Google and Hotmail and probably others, the method of their recipients marking an email as spam needs looking at. For example, people get emails from their own Bank, which they opted to receive, but rather than use the opt-out function, they simply stop it by marking it as spam. So, Barclays for example had their emails to other customers who opted to receive, headed as spam or blocked - according to your email system.
Spam filtering is getting out of hand in some cases. I am plagued with spam like others. I use Avast which effectively deals with 95% of it.
Regards Jonathan
You can also add the email address to your contacts list - which should obviously prevent it from going to the spam folder :)
unfortunately it is his isp's ip ranges which has been marked as BAD so his outgoing email is being blocked.
ASKER
Thanks for the comment Teksquisite, as ve3ofa correctly pointed out, we are victim of actions by another causing our IP address to be blocked as spam as it sits inside a range of IPs classified is spam originators simply because that address range contains 2 or more known spamming addresses.
The spammers use random IPs to spam from, not a set of sequential IP addresses. The spam filtering organisations take two spam originating addresses that are numerically near to each other, and block all in between including any innocent addresses.
The purpose of my original question was to respond to Teksquite's article in Experts Exchange a while ago. That article gave good help on how to stop some spam. For many it is not as simple as that. I wanted to, hopefully, raise awareness that there is a much deeper and fundamental problem in the way spam filtering organisations decree which IP addresses should be blocked, and in the method of using feedback from recipients of email (clicking an email received as spam) to define what is spam.
It causes many innocent people to have their business communications devastated. The Teksquisite article made dealing with spam sound easy to achieve when in many cases it is beyond anything you can control. The whole spam filtering methodology needs overhauling. Email is teetering on the edge of collapse as an effective means of communication. The more who ask for change, the more likely it is to happen.
Yes, I and the many others affected, do use hosted email solutions with lower pricing to try to cut costs and remain profitable. It is not a free email service. Now I am forced to pay much more and charge my customers more to stop the problem when I have done nothing wrong. I have to stop using my email provider who has given us reliable and efficient service for many years.
Rgds Jonathan
The spammers use random IPs to spam from, not a set of sequential IP addresses. The spam filtering organisations take two spam originating addresses that are numerically near to each other, and block all in between including any innocent addresses.
The purpose of my original question was to respond to Teksquite's article in Experts Exchange a while ago. That article gave good help on how to stop some spam. For many it is not as simple as that. I wanted to, hopefully, raise awareness that there is a much deeper and fundamental problem in the way spam filtering organisations decree which IP addresses should be blocked, and in the method of using feedback from recipients of email (clicking an email received as spam) to define what is spam.
It causes many innocent people to have their business communications devastated. The Teksquisite article made dealing with spam sound easy to achieve when in many cases it is beyond anything you can control. The whole spam filtering methodology needs overhauling. Email is teetering on the edge of collapse as an effective means of communication. The more who ask for change, the more likely it is to happen.
Yes, I and the many others affected, do use hosted email solutions with lower pricing to try to cut costs and remain profitable. It is not a free email service. Now I am forced to pay much more and charge my customers more to stop the problem when I have done nothing wrong. I have to stop using my email provider who has given us reliable and efficient service for many years.
Rgds Jonathan
I once had a domain that was blacklisted and used emailreg.org - They could not remove me from the Barracuda Block List (BRBL) so I had to contact Barracuda and work with them to get removed.
ASKER
Thank you Teksquite, like you I was previously directly and wrongly blacklisted, mine was by DSBL, who have now gone as their technology became outdated. I could not get removed for months because their unblocking function had been under a DDoS attack by spammers who had pulled down part of the DSBL site.
Now it is a case of not us being directly blacked, but, the ISP serving our mail. Our ISP (Strato who is part of Deutsche TeleKom) has been blacked by Hotmail and MSN, so we can not communicate with those address types, plus Google who have followed what Hotmail did. The blacking has applied to a series of IP address ranges affecting many businesses.
We have had detailed exchanges with Strato Tech who have pleaded with Microsoft to remove the blacking. It was removed, but, was quickly re-applied. Strato agree that the method of blacklisting has become unmanageable and needs re-design.
Rgds Jonathan
Now it is a case of not us being directly blacked, but, the ISP serving our mail. Our ISP (Strato who is part of Deutsche TeleKom) has been blacked by Hotmail and MSN, so we can not communicate with those address types, plus Google who have followed what Hotmail did. The blacking has applied to a series of IP address ranges affecting many businesses.
We have had detailed exchanges with Strato Tech who have pleaded with Microsoft to remove the blacking. It was removed, but, was quickly re-applied. Strato agree that the method of blacklisting has become unmanageable and needs re-design.
Rgds Jonathan
ASKER
It needs to be changed before it becomes crippling all together. Currently it is too much of a crude hammer to hit a nut - by blocking an IP range for example, and the problems and time it takes to get one IP in that range unblacklisted. Its the recipient of the spam that needs to be given more explicit tools to stop what they don't want locally, to have explained that unless it is totally spam such as investment, pension, medications spam email, etc not globally report it is spam, just block at their local computer level. I use Avast which does that very well, even if you take the free version.
I know many who simply formally report as spam ANYTHING they get which they did not expect. That is wrong. Recently I have had routine notifications from my bank Barclays marked as spam, from the British Heart Foundation, even some of Google's own notifications.
My point is that the way of reporting what is spam needs to be changed and unless people start saying anything, it will get worse. So, I hope others seeing this will also agree, as well as understanding some of what I said about the blacklists ... or tell me to shut up :))
Why should I have to pay a considerable amount more because people wrongly report spam ? But, I am doing so (along the lines you suggest) because I have no choice. It means customers have to pay more for our service.
Rgds Jonathan