question on preventing spam listing

S

snooper

Perch
Hi all

in light of the recent Spam discussion here, i'd like to ask the following:

i have some mailing list apps running on some clients' sites. it mails out to opt-ed members, and sends out one email for each member, i.e.: it doesnt dump all members into the BCC field, but rather each member will get his own email.

the reasoning here was so that the server doesnt get "caught" sending out emails with large amounts of recipients, and thus get markes as spam.

on the other hand - sending out in the above manner (individual emails) will probably take up some server resources while it sends (possibly up to a few thousand members!), and might also get risked been marked as spam, as sending a large amount of emails to the same server (say: AOL..) from the same server (client's site on JDH).

...so: the question is which is the safer way to do this - AND the most efficient? maybe do a loop of 15 emails in each BCC field?

advice and tips appreciated!
thanks!
 
I don't think it makes a difference

As long as those members have directly subscribed to you and you have a functional unsubscribe procedure and your emails , you should be OK

However we at JodoHost must not receive any spam complaints otherwise we treat your bulk emailing as unsolicited
 
Yash said:
However we at JodoHost must not receive any spam complaints otherwise we treat your bulk emailing as unsolicited
Click to expand...

That's the problem right there. The sender of the legitimate emailing campaign has NO control over whether members who have signed up for their list will report emails as spam.

Unfortunately, this does happen. Trust me snooper - I had an opt-in list and had many different easy ways for people to unsubscribe including an email link, user account management and a telephone number. And I still got reported for spam.

My advice - use a third party service such as www.bravenet.com

- They have a double opt-in procudure, they offer professional emailing services, and it keeps the emails away from Jodo's servers, all these things really limit the chances of being reported, though of course, they don't eliminate it.
 
The problem with unsubscribe links is that either they remove you from that particular mailinglist, or they remove you from that particular mailinglist and add you to 3 others in the process..

If people clearly opted in it's silly to not just try the unsubscribe link, but there is a large grey area of semi reputable sources that you might expect to honor unsubscribes. You never know though, so I guess some people now avoid unsubscribe links altogether :(
 
SubSpace said:
The problem with unsubscribe links is that either they remove you from that particular mailinglist, or they remove you from that particular mailinglist and add you to 3 others in the process..

If people clearly opted in it's silly to not just try the unsubscribe link, but there is a large grey area of semi reputable sources that you might expect to honor unsubscribes. You never know though, so I guess some people now avoid unsubscribe links altogether :(
Click to expand...

Can't disagree with that. I never click unsubscribe links for those exact reasons. On the other hand, I've only ever opted in to a handfull of mailing lists either. Funny how I get about 65 examples of spam in my inbox every day from so called mailing lists. ?(
 
Thanks for the replies, all.

so it seems that even if one does the maximum (clear opt-in/out, links, whistles and bells) - one still isnt safe and can be suspended!
 
Not really. if you ensure that the customers have directly subscribed to you, they have confirmed email addresses and you have a clear opt-out procedure you should be safe. We have customers that bulk email from our mail server without any complaints

An added safety precaution would be to have a renewal system. Send out an email to your subscribers every 4 to 8 weeks asking them to renew their subscription by clicking a link. If they do not, drop them out of the list
 
the renewal idea is a good one. might take a little time to setup, but once it running should be quite smooth.

by the way - dunno if you have changed anything with the forum, but i am suddenly receiving email notification about replies (as i specified in the cp) - so whatever you did to fix - thanks!
 
We suspended an account a few days ago as you all know. We did so because we felt that he did spam. He claimed that those email addresses were from partner networks. We really couldn't take that explanation considering the huge number of complaints he had generated.

if we receive complaints from bulk emailing activity of your's or any customer's, but feel that the mailing was carried out from a genuine list and the number of complaints are minimum, we will issue a strong warning but would not suspend (even though we will still treat it as unsolicited emailing). but if the customer continues to bulk email that causes further complaints, we'd be forced to suspend

We don't like suspending accounts, but we have to take action in order to prevent our IPs from being blacklisted and customers being affected
 
hey - understood 100%!

i'm just trying to find the most efficient and safe way to continue offering a mailing list service to my customers.

thanks.
 
No problem. I just wanted to make our policy clear

I understand that many times SpamCOP and other blacklists get it wrong. But we as a hosting company have the responsibility to provide trouble-free email services to all our customers. If we were to defend one customer, all our customers would suffer if our IP was blacklisted

This policy is to protect you and ensure that your emails don't get blocked.
 
Hi..

How this spammers can make use my domain name to send spam mail?

Received: from cs6820183-70.stx.rr.com (cs6820183-70.stx.rr.com
[68.201.83.70]) by rly-na02.mx.aol.com (v98.5) with ESMTP id MAILRELAYINNA21-15408467c4345;
Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:59:01 -0500
age-Info: TVtoW6jgAOsg/uJQYuNxATtkQWyglnBLj116LKJ
Received: from low-pfu789.open.jungco.com ([193.168.101.228]) by
sbo786-o052.jungco.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6824);
Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:41:45 -0400
From: charline Hudyma <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: vuxn Reduce your credit card bills by over 55% ud
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:47:26 -0400 EST
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="--qrwasnvucctyi_1082421967"
X-AOL-IP: 68.201.83.70
X-AOL-SCOLL-SCORE: 1:XXX:XX
X-AOL-SCOLL-URL_COUNT: 2

Actually I'm already open a tickets but until today all this spammers still use my domain to send spam mail.

Any idea how to solve this probem?

Thanks,
 
That's nothing you or JodoHost can do anything about. The spammer isn't actually using JodoHost mailservers, he's just putting your e-mail address on top of the email.

Nothing stops you from writing a letter and putting someone else's address on the back/corner of the envelope, claiming that person is the sender. This is essentially the same thing.
 
SubSpace said:
That's nothing you or JodoHost can do anything about. The spammer isn't actually using JodoHost mailservers, he's just putting your e-mail address on top of the email.
Click to expand...

And if I understand allt his correctly (and for the benefit of everyone else), the spam listing services don't care about what e-mail address appears in the From field, but rather the IP address of the sending e-mail server. So an e-mail that appears to sent from [email protected] but was sent from an e-mail server mail.anotherdomain.com will result in a spam list entry of anotherdomain.com not adomain.com.

Did I get that right?
 
Yes, though some people might blacklist you by e-mail address if a spammer consistently sent people spam with your address in the From field. Spam block lists don't use this method however, so you're relatively safe.
 
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