Tech: Avoiding spam blockers

Subject: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: MichaelM
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 12:43 AM

A friend of mine who runs a folk music series in Toronto hasrun up against a problem with email. She sends out announcements of concerts to large numbers of interested folkies. Because some spam blockers react to emails with numerous recipients she's getting bounced from people who really do want to know about what she's promoting.

Any suggestions?

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 01:03 AM

Maybe she should disguise her announcements as advertisements for penis enlargers or sure-fire ways to earn thousands of $ at home...those don't seem to have a problem getting through!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 01:11 AM

I'm not sure that it would help get past the spam blockers, but any mail you send to multiple large numbers of people should be sent as "BCC" (blind carbon copies). When you send this way, the "blind copy" recipients see only the address you put in the "send to" box and they do not get all the other recipients' email addresses.

It's possible that this would also make it look like an individually addressed message to the spam blockers, but I can't verify that. Whether it helps with the spam blockers, it's really discourteous to publish the email addy's of all the people on your mailing list.

You should have at least one "To" address on the message. You can send the "real" mail to yourself, or to one or two selected people on your list. The BCC addressees' email addy's should not appear on any copy except the one that remains in your "Sent" file, so you need to keep that copy as your "historical" record, if you need one, rather than the one that you actually send to an open address.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Allan C.
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 01:15 AM

...not to mention so called friends who delight in forwarding stupid jokes and pointless, puerile stories...

Sorry, I know your question was sincere. I can't imagine any one answer that would apply to the variety of blockers there are out there.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: treewind
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 04:34 AM

Absolutely right about using Bcc: for the stated courtesy and ethical reasons. That is the way that real mailing list software works, and it certainly shouldn't get blocked by spam blockers. Unless of course the text and headers have content that twitches them, but that's a different problem...

Anahata

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: MichaelM
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 07:15 AM

Thanks for your responses.
She is using the BCC option but is still getting bounced. May be I'll have a closer look at the rest of her message to see what may be triggering the spam blockers.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: GUEST,Snoozer at Work
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 07:25 AM

Take a look at this site:
MarketingSherpa

This particular page is a number of articles about email, including several on how to get around filters and things.

Susan

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 08:19 AM

Actually, perhaps the easiest way around this and some other problems, such as keeping track of who is in the list, and allowing people to easily & rapidly remove themsleves, or change their addresses, is to use some maillist software. There used to be a plethora of systems around, but perhaps one of the easiest for beginners (both list members & list owners) is the web interface mail group systems - the most well known of which is Yahoo groups.

I don't know of any spam blockers that kill Yahoo groups consistently, and when they do, they usually get modified. If a list member is using something like mailwasher, it's easy to train it to let the yahoogroups stuff thru.

I run quite a few, and have set up many for others. You only have one address to worry about - the yahoo groups address. You can set it up as a send only 'newsletter' system, or as a discussion system

This solves your problem by ignoring it... :-)

Robin

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 08:24 AM

configuring filters and blockers to allow the maximum amount of valid mail to get through while blocking the maximum amount of true spam is one of the most difficult tasks for an IT department. the "rules" have to constantly change - and are a rather delicate balancing act.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: GUEST,, Hamish, no cookie
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 08:26 AM

I use Outlook Express and large e-mail lists are a real problem. I don't know if it's the ISP or at my end, but the only way I've found to get my 117 member list out is to subdivide it into blocks of twenty and send each one separately - even subdividing and sending simultaneously doesn't work. (I have a dial-up connection.) Anyway, my point is that maybe you could subdivide your list?

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Abby Sale
Date: 26 Feb 04 - 07:10 PM

Yahoo groups are also severely limited to haw maynames you can send to within a half hour of time.

I send the Central Florida folk news to over 2,000 addresses per month and have been mostly successful - even for block-type addresses such as Yahoo or AOL. Also, my letter is very, very long (unfortunately - too big and too much work) about 400 lines.

Most of my success, however has been sheer luck. Thus, I've only learned a small handfull of solutions.

1. Use a friendly mailer: I mail using Forte Agent (the registered one, not Free Agent). It allows about 1300 names in its own List module. It's essentially BCC but far easier to use since you just maintain the list in your address book.

2. My To: line reads my own address (as mentioned above) It must be a legit address to get through many blockers.

3. Pick a friendly ISP: Most have some limits on how many addresses you can use per message. Call them & ask. and/or My company was unlimited but went to a max of 200 a while back. I can deal with that by sending 12 copies at once. A minor annoyance.

4. Pay attention to the "Undeliverable" feedback messages. They often tell you exactly what went wrong. Sometimes you must have the intended recipient contact their own ISP and ask the problem. Often it's a tech, heading or registration problem that recipient's and your tech people can solve. Sometimes they can register you with their own ISP to specifically "allow" your messages. I've had five cases like these but I'd never have known without the communication.

I'd _like_ to use a list program or Web based group. No success yet in finding the right one. They're all for fee, of course & I try to avoid that. OTOH, some of the best list servers are at universities. Your friend might try to con a univ-associated list member into checking with their own institution. Generally, she will only have to email her newsletter once to the List which in turn sends it out.

Good luck to her. Every time I get pissed off that something didn't get through, I just sit back and wonder how many spam I'd be getting, myself if blockers didn't exist at all.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: danensis
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 08:48 AM

I subscribe to a number of Rootsweb groups and I know they have been having a lot of trouble with one or two ISPs, particularly AOL and Big Pond(?) in Australia. There have been protracted negotiations between Rootsweb and AOL, and it seems to clear up for a while, and then AOLs software decides Rootsweb is a spammer again, and the mailing lists fill up with "I'm not getting any messages" messages.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 08:51 AM

just an fyi - yesterday at one point we were blocking approx 200 spam messages per account per hour. That was an unusually heavy day - but shows you what kind of spam traffic there is out there.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 10:38 AM

Leo,

I "own" two lists at the university where I work. What that university person you hope to find will have to do, in this age of spam, is run a moderated list, or everyone will soon be swamped with spam that is sent to the list. As it is, I set it up so I receive anything that outside parties want to go to the list, and I don't forward it. Thus, I take the spam "hits" and spare everyone else. It isn't pretty, but that's the only way to do it so far. I set this up a couple of years ago or more, and it has paid off. Those who didn't are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what the problem is.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 10:41 AM

SRS - I think the above message is for someone else...

*grin* my statistics were ISP blocking of straight e-mail accounts (we are the ISP for 47 school districts plus a number of libraries and parochial schools)

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 11:41 AM

OOps--sorry, you're correct, that would have been to Abby. But you can still read it if you want to! :)

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 05:23 PM

There are two levels of problem

1. People's own filters. They can turn them up high and zap anything where they are on bcc, often without seeing it. The only way around this is to send a welcome message to each new recipient reminding them to put your address in their "safe list".

2. ISPs own filtering. They can take a dislike to whole servers. If your ISP uses a backbone that has also been used by spammers you may loose a lot of messages.

You need to read every bounce message and determine what the underlying problem is. Also keep your address list clean, there is no point in sending to closed accounts time after time.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 12:18 AM

Just so you folks don't think it's not a problem for everyone:

I was browsing the Microsoft KB site recently, and got a popup asking if I'd "participate in a Microsoft customer satisfaction survey." While I ordinarily just cancel such popups, I was having good luck that day, and said ok. The next message said "thank you, we'll email you the survey."

When I got the survey email from Microsoft via MSN email, the MSN filter had put it in the junk mail box...

Even "big Mickey" can't get his mail delivered!!!

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 12:42 AM

did you tell 'em you were 'satified' with that, John? *grin*

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 01:24 AM

Actually Bill D, I sent an email to Mickey's corporate site and told them about it. (I love to tweak them guys.) Got nice emails from both corporate and from MSN within about 2 days. They told me they'd get that fixed .?.?.?.?.?.?. (Probably about the time that new Longhorn OS gets released.)

Actually I was a little surprised that my email to Microsoft got a reply from MSN, since they're pretty well isolated from each other in the management structures. Maybe they do talk to each other.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 11:30 AM

MichaelM - is my memory fading? Haven't we met?

If it is Heather, Say hello to the (Commoners for me)
I get her e-mails OK.

Spam blockers usually look for tell-tale signs like HTML e-mails (colour and fancy fonts), graphics, words like "free", probably $$$ signs and any "To" addresses that are not the person receiving the mail. Lists in the "To" box also raise the spam count.

If it is not Heather's e-mails then her hubby would be pretty switched-on to these things - he might have insights for you - Amphisbena(?) Music.

If there is a Viagra Blues in the repertoire you ain't gonna advertise it via e-mails too well.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Abby Sale
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 11:44 AM

SRS: So your ms was Unsolicited to MMario but a legitimate Reply to me. That's a whole different problem.....nevermind.

You've taken a brave and useful approach with your Lists. Actually, neither I nor (likely) MichaelM's friend (hearinafter referred to as "Toronto" or "Tor") actually needs a List in the usual sense. The communication is one-way. Only I need to post to the List. This can be easily set up at Yahoo for small lists (< 100 addresses??????).

The Friend-at-a-University wouldn't really have to do much work. There would be only the single monthly post. My recommendation to use a listserver is because List software is set up to do this stuff.

Tor would still have to solve the spam problem but sending would be much easier. Further, Un/Subscription can be automated.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 01:16 PM

If all the e-mails were identical I think some spam blockers would spot that. Isn't this why some spam has a load of junk verbiage - because it is computer generated to look like a message and be unique to that email? And swamp the real message.

My default view-window background colour is off-white and this shows-up any white text (not that I look at spam - it is rare to find any that fools many people).

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 06:23 PM

Its called an 'email list'. What you do is to set up a email list on your email server. The people who sign up for it get it the rest dont so they dont.

Think theres several freebes out there, I do know CCE has one, as does the Banjo List.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 07:13 PM

Abby, my description wasn't quite complete in the earlier post. My lists are set up to disseminate information, not for discussion. That's another reason why I run a moderated list, so people who are subscribed can't send stuff to everyone else. Every so often I'll see someone subscribe only to start sending promotional materials for their publishing house or book club or something (I work in a library and dispense library news). I would write back to let them know that none of their material was going to the list and they'd unsub pretty quickly.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 11:40 PM

One of the benefits of the system that yahoo groups uses is that a list can be set up so that if anybody sends to it, they are automatically removed - this facility also used to be provided on some email listservers - you thus can use it as a 'newsletter' list. Moderation can be provided/removed for the whole list or any individual on the list.

I note that comment has been made about very large lists supposedly not working well with Yahoo - the Chiff & Fipple Whistle Newsletter list has several thousand members - I never heard of any problems you mention with it.

Robin

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Mr Red
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 05:50 PM

just to give an idea of the way SpamAssasin reports the spam scores. SpamAssasin is a very common blocker.

mail above the SPAM threshold

Subject: [SPAM] A bigger, bett result with Cialis
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="--155414326368415972"
X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on maxio7.uk2net.com
X-Spam-Report:
        * 2.4 ONLINE_PHARMACY BODY: Online Pharmacy
        * 0.1 HTML_FONTCOLOR_GREEN BODY: HTML font color is green
        * 0.2 HTML_50_60 BODY: Message is 50% to 60% HTML
        * 0.1 MIME_HTML_ONLY BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
        * 1.1 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
        * 0.8 PRIORITY_NO_NAME Message has priority setting, but no X-Mailer
        * 1.1 MIME_HTML_ONLY_MULTI Multipart message only has text/html MIME parts
X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=5.8 required=5.0 tests=HTML_50_60,
        HTML_FONTCOLOR_GREEN,HTML_MESSAGE,MIME_HTML_ONLY,MIME_HTML_ONLY_MULTI,
        ONLINE_PHARMACY,PRIORITY_NO_NAME autolearn=no version=2.63
X-Spam-Level: *****
X-SA-Exim-Version: 3.1 (built Mon Jan 5 23:23:23 CET 2004)

Heather's recent mail shot. It is HTML with a graphic and links. If I set the spam threshold lower it would have been labelled as spam.

X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on maxio9.uk2net.com
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=2.2 required=5.0 tests=HTML_FONTCOLOR_BLUE,
        HTML_FONTCOLOR_RED,HTML_FONT_BIG,HTML_MESSAGE,HTML_TAG_BALANCE_BODY,
        NO_REAL_NAME,UPPERCASE_25_50 autolearn=no version=2.63
X-Spam-Level: **

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 09:34 PM

One thing to do is never under any circumstances to use html in bulk emails, and never to include images in the message body. Spam filters will often assume that such messages are spam, and indeed the vast majority of them are. Stick to plain text, and include urls for any images you want your correspondents to be able to see if they wish to.

Subject: RE: Tech: Avoiding spam blockers
From: MichaelM
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 09:01 AM

Thanks for your ongoing help. I have passed on everything and we'll see what works.