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 -- agai...
Forum Discussion
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.
- Hi OMAQman, this must be so frustrating! I Have your wife log into Cox Webmail and check her Spam Settings. (Click the Settings icon, choose Settings, click on Inbox, and then click Spam settings.) Does your wife have suspected email spam delivered to the Spam folder? Or is her account set to delete Spam without delivering to Inbox? If it is set to delete spam without delivering to the Inbox, have your wife change the setting to "Automatically deliver to Spam folder." Then, resend the email from your Gmail account without deleting the club's website or the community website. I'd like to know if your wife receives the email in the Webmail Inbox, the Webmail Spam folder, or not at all. If she doesn't receive the email at all, I'd like to escalate this and have it investigated further. -Becky, Cox Support Forums Moderator
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". ;)
