Mark as Not Junk
July 10, 2006 9:24 AM Subscribe
Any tips for keeping email I send out of the recipients' spam folders?
I have my own domain name, and my home machine uses qmail, with the domain's web host's SMTP server as a smarthost. This setup has worked beautifully for quite a few years, just recently a number of messages I send seem to be getting tagged as junk by the recipients -- Apple's Mail client in particular seems to have it in for me.
The home machine is on a cable connection with a dynamic IP address (which never actually changes), and that seems to be at the root of the problem. SpamAssassin complains in particular about RCVD_IN_NJABL_DUL, RCVD_IN_WHOIS_INVALID. I have a valid SPF record but I wonder what else I can do to make my outgoing mail seem less spammy.
I have my own domain name, and my home machine uses qmail, with the domain's web host's SMTP server as a smarthost. This setup has worked beautifully for quite a few years, just recently a number of messages I send seem to be getting tagged as junk by the recipients -- Apple's Mail client in particular seems to have it in for me.
The home machine is on a cable connection with a dynamic IP address (which never actually changes), and that seems to be at the root of the problem. SpamAssassin complains in particular about RCVD_IN_NJABL_DUL, RCVD_IN_WHOIS_INVALID. I have a valid SPF record but I wonder what else I can do to make my outgoing mail seem less spammy.
Mailservers on consumer DSL and cable modem connctions are a major source of spam. Your best bet is to use a mailserver at a reputable ISP for your outgoing mail. If you have to have your own mailserver in the loop for outgoing mail, you can probably configure it to forward outgoing mail through the ISP mailserver and mask it's own involvement.
Both of those spam assasin hits look like they are byproducts of your network & hosting arrangement. I'm not sure there is any way to address them directly, and even if you can, there are probably other rules that will cause a big hit against your messages, like realtime blacklists, and reverse DNS.
posted by Good Brain at 9:34 AM on July 10, 2006
Both of those spam assasin hits look like they are byproducts of your network & hosting arrangement. I'm not sure there is any way to address them directly, and even if you can, there are probably other rules that will cause a big hit against your messages, like realtime blacklists, and reverse DNS.
posted by Good Brain at 9:34 AM on July 10, 2006
sorry, I'm a bonehead, I missed the part about the smarthost, which means most of my post is useless.
posted by Good Brain at 9:37 AM on July 10, 2006
posted by Good Brain at 9:37 AM on July 10, 2006
Get a report from Pivotal Veracity, Return Path or some other email deliverability vendor. There's at least 2 or 3 other companies that do this.
posted by GuyZero at 9:44 AM on July 10, 2006
posted by GuyZero at 9:44 AM on July 10, 2006
Response by poster: Are you *sure* smarthosting is working as you expect? (You've checked the logs to see that everything going out is connecting to the smarthost?
Yes, everything's routed through my web host. The first Received: header though shows my own miserable dynamic IP.
The "deliverability vendors" mostly seem to use their reports as tools to sell their own services. I don't want to spend $400 to register as Sender Score Certified™.
posted by Eater at 9:59 AM on July 10, 2006
Yes, everything's routed through my web host. The first Received: header though shows my own miserable dynamic IP.
The "deliverability vendors" mostly seem to use their reports as tools to sell their own services. I don't want to spend $400 to register as Sender Score Certified™.
posted by Eater at 9:59 AM on July 10, 2006
Any tips for keeping email I send out of the recipients' spam folders?
I guess the answer to that question is a question: if there were a foolproof way to avoid spam blockers, don't you think the spammers would have found it and started using it, leading to the spam blockers plugging the hole?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:32 AM on July 10, 2006
I guess the answer to that question is a question: if there were a foolproof way to avoid spam blockers, don't you think the spammers would have found it and started using it, leading to the spam blockers plugging the hole?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:32 AM on July 10, 2006
Some of the reports, like the ones I see from Pivotal Veracity, are pretty useful by themselves.
It may be your IP that's the issue, it may be the email contents. There are few clear-cut answers is the murky waters of email deliverability.
posted by GuyZero at 10:51 AM on July 10, 2006
It may be your IP that's the issue, it may be the email contents. There are few clear-cut answers is the murky waters of email deliverability.
posted by GuyZero at 10:51 AM on July 10, 2006
If you can afford to spend an extra $20 a month on a virtual server, you could set up a postfix relay on that static IP, have it strip out the Recieved line that matches your local MTA (using the header_checks config in main.cf), and relay through that rather than your web hosting provider.
posted by cmonkey at 11:11 AM on July 10, 2006
posted by cmonkey at 11:11 AM on July 10, 2006
@Cray: note that we've established that he's smarthosting outbound mail, and his it's the mail from *that* server (presumably on a static IP at his hosting company) that's getting spam-flagged.
posted by baylink at 7:53 PM on July 11, 2006
posted by baylink at 7:53 PM on July 11, 2006
Ah. SA *does* actually look at the Received headers for this. (I'd speculated, negatively, in my first reply, and your comment wasn't clear on that -- and *I'm* not an SA mechanic, either.)
Then yeah, that is his problem, and the only real way to deal with it will be either to get a static address, or teach the smarthost to lie (rewriting the first Received header), which is unlikely in the extreme.
posted by baylink at 9:52 AM on July 12, 2006
Then yeah, that is his problem, and the only real way to deal with it will be either to get a static address, or teach the smarthost to lie (rewriting the first Received header), which is unlikely in the extreme.
posted by baylink at 9:52 AM on July 12, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
The recipient server can't *see* your IP address, since you don't connect to it.
Are you *sure* smarthosting is working as you expect? (You've checked the logs to see that everything going out is connecting to the smarthost?
If the recipient's mailer is reaching back into Received: headers to look for dynamic IP addresses on mail forwarders to declare something spammy, then I submit that's the recipient's problem, and you shouldn't enable them, you should send them lots of mail which loses *them* money if they miss it, and let the proper person fix the problem. :-)
posted by baylink at 9:29 AM on July 10, 2006