ContributionsMost RecentMost LikesSolutionsRe: Outbound Spam Filters Have Run Amok -- Again Hi, Becky. Thanks for taking the time to reply. Let's just say "frustrating" is an understatement, and let it go at that. ;) Well, we tried your suggestion, and . . . IT WORKED!!! I tested this with an email (the one containing hyper-links) addressed directly to her (it arrived), and then tested "as if" it was a Dance Club newsletter (addressed to my/Sender's Gmail account, 'bcc' to her), and it arrived! And, interestingly, without a "--Spam--" appendage to the Subject. Unfortunately, I don't know that we are home free yet. I still have reason to suspect that there is something else about the newsletter that is hitting CloudMark's tripwire. I'll see when this coming week's newsletter goes out. I can tell you this -- I have segregated out the known cox.net recipients on the list into their own 'bcc' group, and that group is less than 8. So maybe that doesn't hit the tripwire. I will continue to obfuscate URLs. I have also taken to spacing out the emails to over 15 minutes between each "Send". Maybe that helps. I don't know. What I do know is that anti-anti-spam procedure is a BIG pain in the posterior. I will stay on the record as believing that blackholing without notice is the wrong thing to do. Ever. That the apparent default setting (set by Cox, not us) in Webmail is "delete spam without delivering to the Inbox" was news to both my wife and I. I wonder how many other Cox users have had valid email "go missing" because they didn't know it was sent and the sender didn't know it got blackholed? That breaks the function of email, pure and simple. And it has overtones of censorship and suppression of free speech. But I won't go there today. I'm saving that one up for some future discussion. ;) Thanks again for your helpful reply. I'll keep my fingers crossed. You can count on me to circle back if more email gets "disappeared". ;) Re: Outbound Spam Filters Have Run Amok -- Again Just a quick update for anybody watching/listening. Gmail is also not a perfect answer. Instead of the extremely obnoxious blackholing outbound, Cox still is blackholing inbound. Some of the dance Club members are Cox email users. Like, oh, say, my wife. I sent out the newsletter to the 'bcc' group she is in, she never got it. I received no non-delivery report. She asked me, like, 2 days later if I had sent out the newsletter (because without an NDR or bounce error message, I had no reason to know she hadn't received it). OK, I went back into Gmail and forwarded her a copy from Sent mail. Later I asked her if she got it. Nope. Blackholed again. OK, so the email had two phreakin' hyper-links in it -- one to the Club's web site and one to our community's web site. I go back to the Sent folder and forward again, this time obfuscating the hyper-links. She replies within the hour that she got it. CloudMark's filtering is WAY OVER THE TOP, Cox. They are literally breaking the Internet (OK, at least the email part of it). Ask yourself this, do you suppose my wife -- my WIFE -- would like to receive email from me? Allow me to tell you how she can, and how you can allow it while still battling the spam epidemic . . . We use another/different cloud email filtering service at work (I'm not naming them because I am not promoting them). Their service generates a daily "digest" of "spam"-looking stuff it trapped (and this is entirely configurable BY THE USER). If I do nothing with the digest, all of that mail continues its trip down the blackhole. *BUT*, it also has an "Allow" button. You know, just in case it trapped something THAT WAS VALID EMAIL -- a *DECISION TO BE MADE BY THE USER*! (Like my wife (and others) could have made with the Dance Club newsletter, and hopefully Cloudmark's algorithm could "learn" from it.) CloudMark needs to learn this trick. It's the one THAT DOES NOT BREAK EMAIL as you have broken it by using overly aggressive filtering with no whitelisting and "disappearing" email with no notice to either sender or receiver. Broken. Totally broken. Fix it. Please. Re: Forum Settings Not "Sticky" Hey, Colleen. Thanks for jumping in. You read my original post, yes? Based on your reply I just tested things again, hoping maybe you had tweaked something. But, just as before, the "Save" button does not work. You guys really should fix that. But I am pleased to report that since Brian did his tweaking on my account the other day, I have received no forum email notifications the past couple of days. I'm happy about that. Re: Forum Settings Not "Sticky" Hey, Brian. Thanks for looking into this. But it seems some additional tweaking may be required. I just got another forum email notification, like, 15 seconds ago. And out of curiousity, what's up with the "Settings"? Why can't I tweak my own settings and make them "stick"? Forum Settings Not "Sticky" Day before last, and out of the blue, I started receiving email notifications about forum posts. Not just my posts, but EVERYBODY'S posts. I turned off email notifications long ago. And now they are turned back on. By somebody. Not me. I have tried to turn them off again in my forum settings. But when I hit the "Save" button nothing appears to happen. As in, nothing. Like the "Save" button doesn't work. And for sure if I log out of the forums and log back in, the notification check boxes are all checked again. I figured maybe it was a browser scripting thing, so I used a different browser. Same result (or non-result, so to speak). I used both Google Chrome (with scripting enabled), and Microsoft Edge (default settings). I also tried using the "computer" icon/image in upper left of forum pages (per a suggestion in somebody else's post on this same/simiar issue) and made sure I wasn't subscribed to "daily digests". I wasn't. And again this morning, more forum emails in my Inbox. So, I need a fix. I can write a junk mail rule, but what I would really like is for the forum settings to, you know, work. Re: Email won't load For others reading the thread I have reason to believe the correct current URL is myemail.cox.net. Worth trying. And I would use the https:// version. If the general complaint is the horrible slowness of the webmail interface, mostly all I can offer is sympathy. I believe the interface is so script-laden it brings older hardware and browsers to their knees. And while your browser is laboring to produce the interface the server likely times you out. It's bad. As in, bad. And the problem has been around since Cox launched it (now 9+ months ago or so), so I wouldn't anticipate a fix. Wireless connections likely contribute to the problem, since some wireless routers can't transmit data fast enough, especially when your browser is tied up in knots. A customer-driven solution would be to offer an option to use an old skool HTML interface, and not the script-driven interface. But then serving up the ads becomes a problem (for Cox, not the user). Another solution, of course, is to upgrade all your hardware and software. I think that is the solution Cox may be relying on. Otherwise they would have fixed this by now. If they were customer-driven. Outbound Spam Filters Have Run Amok -- Again This issue has been around for a while. I discovered this week, however, it is still alive and well. And equally as frustrating as it was then. Outbound email filtering appears to be broken -- again -- even if you use Webmail. The dead horse was beaten pretty hard here (among many, many other threads): forums.cox.com/.../552-5-2-0-bounce-error-sending-group-emails The result/recommendation was to use Webmail instead of Outlook for outbound email, and to limit the distribution groups to 8 or less people (9 or more recipients triggered spam blocking/blackholing outbound and IP address email account suspension for 48 hours). OK. Fine. So I started using Webmail, and I started using only 8 recipients in the 'BCC' field (the "To:" is to myself/my Cox account). Worked fine. Until yesterday. Here's the timing of when my emails went out (all data obtained from the Webmail interface): Email 1: 10:09 AM Email 2: 10:10 AM Email 3: 10:12 AM Email 4: 10:13 AM Email 5: 10:14 AM Email 6: 10:15 AM Email 7: 10:16 AM Here's when they were delivered: Email 1: 10:44 AM Email 2: 11:06 AM Email 3: 11:07 AM Email 4: 2:59 PM Email 5: Never delivered. No non-delivery report. Nothing. Email 6: Never delivered. No non-delivery report. Nothing. Email 7: Never delivered. No non-delivery report. Nothing. OK, Cox, where did Emails 5, 6 and 7 go? I mean, they were emailed TO me BY me. Do you suppose I wished to receive them? Allow me to answer that. *YES!*. That's the way I know they didn't get blackholed. Kinda simple, really. OK, here's where it gets more interesting. I now know some of the 'BCC' recipients in Email 5, 6 and 7 actually received the email. Wha'!? So I'm left to surmise you spamholed MY email to ME. Hahahahahahahaha! So ironic. You protected me from *ME*. Hahahahahahaha! And pitiful. For me the issue is somewhat moot since I am taking people's advice and moving to Gmail instead of using Cox for my club's newsletter. But that's sad, really. Google will now get the ad revenue, not you, Cox. You really, really need to get better at this. 'Cuz like me, people will leave. You ain't the only game in (my) town. The entire experience since you "upgraded" has been, well, awful. OK. 'Nuff said. Re: 552 5.2.0 bounce error sending group emails! @ Ron Gaspard -- just like john2222, "I feel your pain". And just to join the club, I have been in I.T. and tech. support for over 30 years, including experience in operating internet-facing servers. I get what Cox is dealing with. I am just stunned with how badly they are dealing with it. I have surmised elsewhere in many of the threads that are being generated by this that Cox either bought third-party anti-spam software or hired a third-party service to do anti-spam filtering, and nobody at Cox has/had a clue about fine-tuning it. They likely went with default settings not appreciating how aggressive they were, and are probably being asked to pay a hefty consulting fee to the anti-spam vendor to tweak the software or fine-tune it for them. That's the corporate way -- when things go bad, be sure to have a third-party vendor to point the finger at. That's the way you protect your job. And I think you are absolutely correct -- all people are not being treated the same, but each user is being treated differently. Not necessarily in a malicious way, but in a negligent, and arguably stupid way. I, and most likely you, and quite possibly john2222, have developed a "spam reputation score" to the anti-spam robots -- not a human, but the anti-spam software itself. Why? Because we send "spam looking" email to multiple recipients via Outlook (or Thunderbird, or whatever client you wish) in what appears to the robot to be an automated, bulk way, i.e., "spammy", so suspicious. The robot adds/increments a "score" to your IP address. If your 'automated' emails contain hyperlinks, your "score" goes up. If your email subject contains certain characters (like exclamation points -- a common spammer thing to get your attention), your "score" goes up. If you send a lot of these distributions, your "score" goes up. When your score gets high enough, your IP address gets blocked -- you can no longer send mail. This works great for people who have become infected with malware. Nips the installed spambots right in the bud, and saves Cox from getting blacklisted by other email exchangers . . . because they have robots of their own watching for this exact thing. It doesn't work so great for non-infected, non-spamming email users -- you know, like you, me, and john2222 (and the hundreds of other users in the other threads on this -- and the possible (likely?) thousands of others who never use Internet forums and merely suffer in silence). OK, I'll admit it -- here comes a bizarre theory. When you have your lawyer looking into this, have her or him look into an age discrimination angle. The very pleasant Tier II young woman I had on the telephone was, to me, a young woman. I'm gonna roll with twenty-something I asked her point blank, "Do you never send an email to 10 people?". Without hesitation or reserve, she answered, "No". That gave me pause. I was actually not expecting that answer. I thought I had laid a trap. So it sinks in . . . she's a twenty-something. They don't use EMAIL anymore! SMS and Facebook and Snapchat! Hahahahahahahaha! I'm an ANACHRONISM!!! Hahahahahahaha! Except it's really not that funny. Oh, and a quick after-the-fact edit -- the argument that email is "free" is specious. It is part of a "bundle" we are PAYING for. Basic contract law. They offered, we accepted, and we forked over money. Contract. Re: 552 5.2.0 bounce error sending group emails! Nice find, john2222! Very interesting. I get Cox's "don't look behind the curtain" approach, though. You publish your parameters and every "spammer" is going to know how to fly under the radar. I'm sure that's the logic. Only makes sense. My problem is that there is no human, but a robot, pulling the levers behind the curtains. And the robot is using a machete, not a scalpel. Robots can't say, "Oh! Church choir. Not spam." or, "Oh! Little League baseball team. Not spam." You know, the way 'normal' people use email. And, no, I am not recommending Cox hire a bunch of humans to start looking at email. Cost prohibitive and invasive. I'm just saying stop swinging the machete, for cryin' out loud. You are lopping off the hand that feeds you! Be reasonable. Like the vast majority of ISPs you point out in that link. Are they all getting blacklisted? I'm thinking not. Hopefully a Forum Moderator will drop by as you have asked. My guess is, though, their hands are tied and they will give you all the fudge/hedge lingo here: https://www.cox.com/aboutus/policies/speeds-and-data-plans.html?sc_id=cr_gov_red_z_policy-limitations.asp_vanity That's the party line. We can argue the wisdom of it all day long. Regrettably, they hold all the trump cards. For people who do not have any ISP choice in their locales, that really, really stinks. Re: 552 5.2.0 bounce error sending group emails! An amusing speculation -- if a Cox family member actually used cox.net for personal email this problem would be fixed in a heartbeat. But it is my understanding the leadership of the Cox family still involved in the business live in Atlanta . . . a COMCAST monopolized locale! Hahahahahahaha! OMG, that is funny!