[Mailman-Users] Mailman postings deferred by Yahoo

[Mark Sapiro]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>
>Are you getting the "deferral based on customer complaints"?  If so,
>do you think they're lying about that, or something?  (I'm not
>claiming that you or any of your clients are spamming, and I don't
>really care whether Yahoo customers are on average dumber than a
>fencepost; the question is about Yahoo procedures.)


Note: The following is an incoherent rant from a deranged and totally
frusted person. You've been warned.

I'm getting the "deferral based on customer complaints" message. I
looked it up on Yahoo's web site, and I followed a link to "Does
Yahoo! Mail offer a feedback loop program to help senders minimize
complaint rates?". I thought "good, I can sign up and find out who's
reporting my mail as spam". Then I read further and found "To
participate in the program, senders must sign their outbound emails
with DomainKeys (DKIM is not currently supported)."

This is the second time in recent weeks that some large mail service
has used it's 600 lb. gorilla status to try to coerce me into
something, and I don't like it.

Actually, I don't care that much about Yahoo, because they do seem to
accept my mail. My real complaint is with Microsoft and Hotmail.
Several weeks ago, Hotmail started discarding some of my list mail,
this quickly escalated from some to most to all. Note that they didn't
reject it. Their MXs accepted it, but it never got delivered to any
recipient, regardless of any whitelisting the recipients applied.

I eventually found my way to <https://support.msn.com/default.aspx> and
submitted a report via the form linked as "Sender Information for
Hotmail Delivery". I got a response to that (to their credit, they
always responded) suggesting I add SPF records in DNS (more 600 lb.
gorilla tactics), and giving me a hotmail.com address to send sample
messages to, and requesting that I inform the responder of the subject
header of any messages I send.

I tried to do this. I don't know what happened to the message I sent to
the hotmail.com address, but my reply to the support rep bounced per

Action: failed
Status: 5.1.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;554 5.1.0 Sender Denied

I took great pains to always use my postmaster address in reports and
replies. I went through several iterations of submitting forms,
receiving replies and being unable to respond to the follow-up
questions in the replies (always with the same reject as above).

Also, at one point after putting SPF records in DNS, I tried to send an
email per something I found on the support site to inform them of the
domains (I can no longer find this instruction - I think it's been
replaced by yet another web form). Here is the email I sent in it's
entirety.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Return-path: <mark at msapiro.net>
Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1])
	by msapiro.net with esmtp (Exim 4.62)
	(envelope-from <mark at msapiro.net>)
	id JW535E-00003K-OA
	for senderid at microsoft.com; Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:53:38 -0800
Message-ID: <47B1EB32.80602 at msapiro.net>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:53:38 -0800
From: Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>
Organization: Not Very Much
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Windows/20071031)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: senderid at microsoft.com
Subject: SPF records updated
X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.6
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

grizz.org
msapiro.net
sbh16.songbird.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------

And the ironic thing is here's what happened when my MTA tried to send
it.

    SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
    host mailb.microsoft.com [131.107.115.215]: 550 5.7.1 <Your e-mail
was rejected by an anti-spam content filter on gateway
(131.107.115.215). Reasons for rejection may be:
    obscene language, graphics, or spam-like characteristics. Removing
these may let the e-mail through the filter.>

Ultimately, I started submitting the web forms describing the problem
as an inability to respond to follow-up information requests on
outstanding tickets. This got someone's attention, and I am currently
(temporarily) on a mitigation whitelist which is supposed to allow
time for the filters to retrain.

We'll see.

If you read this far, thanks for listening. I don't expect any advice
(but if you have some, I'm interested). I've just been so frustrated
by this process that I had to vent a bit.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan