Topic: E-mail problem

[Clive]

Some of you will know that I send out a regular astronomical bulletin using Topica e-mail publisher.  All I have to do is upload the message to Topica and they handle all the distribution.  Unfortunately, Topica has fallen foul of one of the big anti-spam companies and have been blacklisted by them.  

Now I find that some of the recipients of the bulletin are discovering that it is going directly into their deleted folder instead of their inbox.  Nobody can find anything in "Message Rules" so is it possible that an ISP can direct mail into a folder without first seeking authorisation?  

My own ISP filters spam but that goes into a web based folder so I don't actually see it unless I log into my ISP account.

[Simon]

Not really sure how that would work, Clive.  Is it possible to change the mail headers so that it might bypass the spam filters?

[Clive]

Well the header says that it comes from the Society for Popular Astronomy which is about as innocuous as you can get isn't it?  The problem is that the end of each bulletin is tagged with:

Delivered by Topica Email Publisher, http://www.email-publisher.com/

and that is inserted after I upload it.  The people who are complaining don't have "topica" mentioned in their message rules so I can only assume that their ISP's must be to blame.

[Sandra]

Its not really the "Society for Popular Astronomy of Mid wales" is it Clive by any chance  

[Simon]

Can you use another distributor?  Topica obviously seem to have got themselves a bad name.  

[Clive]

Its not really the "Society for Popular Astronomy of Mid wales" is it Clive by any chance  

   Sandra.

It's not that easy to change Simon as we are sponsored by Springer Books and they actually pay the £130 a year or whatever they charge.  The only other one I know of is Listbot which we used previously but Micro$oft started charging big bucks for it and we dumped them.  I'm sure that they are probably on anti spam lists too.

[Simon]

Looks like you're knackered then!    Actually, I'm sure there must be some way for your subscribers to mark mail 'not spam', or whatever.  The ISP's anti-spam systems are obviously not foolproof, so there must be measures to counteract mistakes.

[Adept]

Is it just a broadcast system Clive? What I mean by that, is do individual members of the list send out emails which go to all of the others via list?

You could probably send the emails out yourself if you have a suitable list of email addresses. How many members do you send out to?

[Clive]

No, it's not a broadcast system and I am the only one who can send the e-mails out.  The beauty of the system is that people can subscribe and unsubscribe themselves so I don't have to get involved with e-mail addresses at all.  We have 4,000 subscribers which is a lot to manage really.  I already have a private mailing list and that is hard enough to keep track of.

[ketamininja]

I don't know if this is fully related:

We had an issue where our mail provider (not our ISP) was blacklisted. This resulted in emails not being accepted by major corporations. Obviously their mail server was set to send back these emails... what was the security check?:

OUR MAIL SERVERS IP ADDRESS - it had been "blacklisted".

Now, without backing up my info, I can bet there is a main "list" out there that is checked (a bit like TLD name sturctures or something). I noticed that there are many companies that take joy in doing the blacklisting.

If you change your providers mail server (try sending from another email address altogether) then it may work.

[Adept]

I think you may be describing the "Open Relay" databases such as http://ordb.org/ K

There are several of them and if you get listed, it can take up to 48 hours to get yourself de-listed.

[Clive]

These are the properties of the e-mails I get back from Topica and presumably other subscribers have the same.  Popastro is the domain name for the Sociey for Popular Astronomy.

I can't see how I can make it come from another e-mail address unless I use my own which would mean adding and deleting subscribers.  The Topica system is fully automatic and I don't have to do anything apart from upload the bulletins.  


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Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
To: bulletin@popastro.com
From: The Society for Popular Astronomy <popastro@topica.email-publisher.com>
Subject: SPA ENB No. 134
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 08:56:18 -0700
Message-ID: <1703673864-1463747838-1065974187@popastro.b.tep1.com>
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Status:  

***********************************
The SOCIETY for POPULAR ASTRONOMY
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* Adept obsured your email address Clive. Spammers read web pages and harvest email addresses you know

[Clive]

LOL Thanks Adept, but I think it's already been harvested by every spammer on the planet.