Comments on: An Open Letter from an Email Sender Whose Email Was Blocked and Spam Filtered

By: Simon Liebman

Simon Liebman — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:50:55 +0000

As it happens, my wife is a lactation consultant and Peri/Post Natal Registered Nurse. We have had to get every email address into her address book for anyone she corresponds to for work or through professional organizations. She uses Yahoo for her email and she spends alot of time un-spamming her mail. She is not an experienced computer user and she gets very frustrated, I wish there was an easy solution.

By: Joshua Gruber

Joshua Gruber — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:44:07 +0000

Has anyone tried a service that requires the user’s _computer_ to do the lifting? Something like hashcash for Wordpress?

Here’s the URL, I’m thinking of trying it out: http://wordpress-plugins.feifei.us/hashcash/ ?

By: ann

ann — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:45:26 +0000

didnt really help…just wanna know i would be notified if i was blocked from an email account

By: SteveB

SteveB — Sat, 06 May 2006 02:52:39 +0000

Heuristic filtering beeing the answer? I don’t think so. Statistical filtering is the answer.

By: Bill Webb

Bill Webb — Thu, 04 May 2006 10:49:43 +0000

I get hundreds of spam messages every day on addresses that are necessarily posted on web sites (like this one). They’re all routed through Gmail accounts, and Google’s heuristic filtering is so consistently accurate that out of thousands a month only a couple of dozen are forwarded to my “main” account. I used to check the other accounts for inaccurately filtered stuff, but found so little that I quit bothering.

Heuristic filtering is the answer and, as Auntie has said, the old blacklist/whitelist system is way obsolete. Trouble is, you can rent someone’s lists a lot cheaper than you can lease or develop good algorithms, and the ISPs don’t really care anyway.

By: J.D.

J.D. — Thu, 04 May 2006 00:35:15 +0000

I doubt there are many ISPs who filter solely based on one word in one message. That maay have been state-of-the-art for a couple weeks in the late nineties, but not anymore.

More often, there will be a whole bunch of different criteria involved: mail server profile, past sending practices, user complaints, etcetera.

Some ISPs will help you understand what you’re doing wrong, but most won’t because they don’t know if you’re a spammer. However, there are a ton of companies that offer deliverability consulting — many of whom have been mentioned on this very blog.

By: RonJohnson

RonJohnson — Wed, 03 May 2006 23:53:39 +0000

I have very little problem with getting what I want and blocking what I don’t want. The spammers seem to target the major ISPs, so I use a lesser known one (copper.net) They send a list of blocked emails (usually only 2 or 3 per day)each day and give me the option of downloading it anyway and whether to list it a a “trusted sender”. For the spam that they miss, I use SpamAware (a free spam filter for Outlook Express.) RonJohnson

By: JimBob

JimBob — Wed, 03 May 2006 21:24:55 +0000

If I get emails that I feel are inappropriate, my ISP will block those specific Ip addresses, as I report them.
I am still fairly new at this setup, but so far it seems to work, and I think it is fair.
I don’t mind receiving legitimate messages, but with children in the house,I do mind receiving some of the absolute trash that I have been getting.

Michael Lee, while I can empathize with your plight, if I receive an email that has tricks applied in order to get past filters, it goes right in the trash.
It just seems less than honest, whether it is , or not.

Therefore, at this point, I feel that the system that my ISP is using is fair.
Leave out the subtrifuge and let the receiver decide upon the filter.

It is certainly not my intent to put any legitimate business off.

By: Kelson

Kelson — Wed, 03 May 2006 21:11:16 +0000

Imagine if ISPs applied the same filtering rules they used for email to people’s surfing

Of course, there’s a big difference between web surfing and email. Spyware/adware notwithstanding, you choose to visit a website. Someone else chooses to send you an email.

It’s just like putting a lock on your front door. You want it to keep random people from walking into your home, but you don’t want it to prevent you from walking out when you want to.

Anyway, your story is the latest in a long line of examples showing that any spam filter that’s blocking solely on keyword matches is broken. That’s not a judgment on spam filtering in general, it’s a judgment on a technique that’s been discredited for years now.

By: Michael Lee

Michael Lee — Wed, 03 May 2006 20:30:25 +0000

I can appreciate this story. I am an insurance agent and my domain and email has my name and the word “insurance” connected as one word. Many ISP have sent my client commications to the spam folder. I decided to add a new url to my domain as a solution. I chose a name that described what I do which is Employee Benenfits for Small Employers. The combination of the words I used small____benefits (intentionally missing second word to discourage spammers) ended up in the same spam filters. Why? It has the words ’small’ and ‘benefits’ in the domain name.
I give up! I need to learn the tricks spammers use because I get thier emails. Maybe if I used thier tricks I could get my legit emails through.