Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
21 Dec 2005 10:56 PST
Hi John...
You asked a similar question last May. I posted some ideas
in a Request For Clarification, but I never heard back from
you. I'll repeat what I posted then:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Some ISPs, in an effort to reduce spam, use blocking lists,
such as those produced by SpamCop:
http://www.spamcop.net/
You can have your senders go to this page, to see if their IP
address [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] is among those on the blocked list:
http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml
There's also a chance that the malicious elements on your own
system were using your computer to send out spam emails. You
should also check to see if your own IP address is blocked,
using the page above. You can find your IP address by going
to the Start button, selecting Run, typing in 'cmd' with no
quotes, and hitting Enter. In the window that comes up, type
'ipconfig' with no quotes, and hit Enter. You'll see your IP
address listed. Just plug it in to the page above and you can
see if you've been blacklisted.
Other ISPs are sometimes less sophisticated in their response,
so, if a spammer with a specific IP address [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
falls within a block of addresses, they will sometimes opt to
bounce the entire block of addresses in which the address falls.
They do this without telling their users, and the senders may
not always receive notice, either, and they're not necessarily
going to discuss this during a call to tech support, though you
could bring it up.
--------------------------------------------------------------
You note that you've succeeded in getting mail through by
switching accounts and changing the wording in the Subject
field. This suggests that your recipients are using ISPs
which have some form of spam-blocking filters in place,
and that the original wording of your Subject line, and/or
the text body of the emails, contained key words or phrases
which are being blocked by those filters. Using different
wording resolved the problem.
This is not the effect of hackers. It is just a fact of
life that most ISPs providing email service now utilize
this sort of filtering to deflect emails with spam content.
Unfortunately, not everyone uses this service judiciously.
My own ISP has such filters in place, and offers me the
option of labeling suspect emails 'SPAM' and sending them
on to me. I then have a personal filter in place that
collects them all in one folder where I can look through
them and make sure they're all really spam. Occasionally,
one of these is NOT spam, and I have to forward a copy
back to my ISP at a special address that lets them look
at it and try to prevent it from being blocked in the
future.
I also have the option of accepting their judgment and
telling them to not send me any of the emails they've
identified as spam - which means that I'd never know if
they made a mistake. I believe a lot of people tend to
opt for this latter choice, and so, fail to receive some
email which is not spam, but gets filtered anyway.
A lot of ISPs besides mine have a similar setup.
As you've figured out, changing the wording of both the
subject and body of your emails can make a big difference
in this. Another tactic would be to solicit feedback from
your recipients who choose, as I do, to have their ISP
label suspected spam and send it anyway. If they can let
you know when they find your email to be labelled as spam
by their ISPs, you can try to contact the ISPs and negotiate
with them, though this may be more trouble than it's worth.
It might be easier to just take note of the wording in the
labelled email and make some changes, though you'll be
working in the dark, with no feedback on what caused it
to be flagged as spam in the first place.
Along those lines, it might be easier to have your text
and subject line scrutinized by an expert in spam and
spam-blocking. An expert would be able to identify
common words and phrases which would tend to be flagged
as spam.
Let me know where this takes you...
sublime1-ga
