Need urgent help regarding spam & e-mails.

Perkdaddy · 05-07-2007, 04:29 AM

Ok, I'm new so don't eat me alive. The question I have today is something I cant find an answer to.

I'm the webmaster for a real estate company in Egypt. For some reason all my company's e-mails are going strait into people junk mail boxes. Can someone explain how I can reduce this occurrence or make it stop all together? Do i need to modify the address someway or make sensible subject line text? (I say this because most if not all of our e-mails have something to do with money or investment.)

This is not for spam, what we mail out is directly aimed towards clients or affiliates and is always important information, but we are losing valuable clients, time and money with "lost" e-mails. For example, we cant write to any hotmail account lately. What is the deal?

Any help would be greatly appreciated... Thank you
Patrick

StupidScript · 05-08-2007, 10:57 AM

Could you post one of the emails? It sounds like the way you are writing them is triggering anti-spam algorithms. Possibly, email might not be the communications method of choice for your company. Can you switch to faxes? At least you should instruct the people who are receiving your emails to add your company's outgoing email address (the one you use to send your messages) to their "white list".

Owen · 05-08-2007, 11:14 AM

Here's some stuff that usually triggers off spam filters:

* Too many recipients: no more than 15 will be allowed.
* Too large message size: maximum is 2MB.
* Image links to remote sites
* Numeric IP in URL
* URL Redirect to Other Port (other than port 80 or 443)
* Empty Messages
* JavaScript or VBScript in HTML
* Frame or IFrame tags in HTML
* Object tags in HTML
* Embed tags in HTML
* Form tags in HTML
* Web Bugs in HTML
* Sensitive words
* Empty subject line

In addition to the words itself, some alternate spellings of the words will also be matched (junk versus j*u*n*k etc.)

The spam filter I use tends to give a score for each spam characteristic it finds, so feel free to send me an email at owen@cutajar.net and I'll let you know what I find.

The other problem you may have is spam databases blacklisting your originating address/domain. If you've been sending unsolicited mail in the past this may be the case.

Perkdaddy · 05-09-2007, 01:14 AM

Hmmm, you guys are great and really gave me a lot of stuff to check out.. I was on the hotmail site trying to figure out why we cant receive or send to/from Hotmail. Something to do with a private IP because my office runs on a small lan router... Any thoughts?

Next thought... We probably did send a ton of unsolicited mail in the past... What can I do to correct it???

Perkdaddy · 05-14-2007, 01:06 AM

Ok, I fixed the outgoing mail problem from my server by changing the smtp, so now hotmail receives but the clients still cannot reply, I have attached the error message below...

Reporting-MTA: dns;bay0-omc2-s13.bay0.hotmail.com
Received-From-MTA: dns;BAY134-W3
Arrival-Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 01:00:52 -0700

Final-Recipient: rfc822;p.kennedy@ssqrealestate.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550-Callback setup failed while verifying <losthomesickalien@hotmail.com>
550-(result of an earlier callout reused).
550-The initial connection, or a HELO or MAIL FROM:<> command was
550-rejected. Refusing MAIL FROM:<> does not help fight spam, disregards
550-RFC requirements, and stops you from receiving standard bounce
550-messages. This host does not accept mail from domains whose servers
550-refuse bounces.
550 Sender verify failed