[Mailman-Users] mailing list filtered as spam

[jeff zemla]

Thanks Brian and Brad.  Thankfully the solution was not so painful.  I
e-mail Hostgator, explained the situation, and asked if I could be moved to
a different server/ip address.

They got back to me quickly, saying:

"I have installed something called DomainKeys on your domains which helps
prevent free email services like yahoo and gmail from marking emails from a
domain as spam."

And he told me a few other things in case that didn't work.  But wouldn't
you know it, it worked perfectly!

So for anyone else on shared hosting who may run into this problem--tell
your host to install DomainKeys!

Thanks again guys!

Jeff



On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
wrote:

> jeff zemla wrote:
>
>  I have tried altering the content of the message, but nothing seems to
>> work,
>> which leads me to believe it is being flagged as spam based on where it
>> originates from.  But seeing as the website has no content on it (just a
>> line of text that says "Things will be here shortly") i dont know why
>> gmail
>> would have a preconceived notion that it's a spamming site.
>>
>
> This is one problem with reputation-based systems for detecting potential
> spam.  You may have a nearby network neighbor that is responsible for
> generating a lot of spam (which seems likely, seeing as you say you bought
> the domain from hostgator.com).
>
> Or, the IP address you were assigned may have been used by spammers before
> it was re-assigned to you.
>
> There are a whole host of other reputational issues that you may be dealing
> with, but this should give you some idea.
>
>
> Fixing a tarnished reputation is hard.  Very hard.  Spammers don't care,
> since they just move on to somewhere else.  But for the rest of us, it's a
> real pain.
>
> In the case of the first problem mentioned above (guilt by association),
> you're probably being caught by a blacklist that covers whole networks of
> machines, and there may not be any way for you to get off these blacklists.
>  If you're on an IP-address specific blacklist, you may be able to get your
> provider to issue you a new address that is not blacklisted, or you may be
> able to get those blacklist owners to update their list to remove your
> address.
>
> Another option would be to move your domain and services to another
> provider, one that is much less friendly to spammers, and avoids both of the
> problems mentioned above.
>
>
> You could potentially sign up for service with a company like Habeas (for
> their "Safe List" service) or Return Path (for their "Sender Score
> Certified" service).  If you're a small non-profit, they'll charge you a
> one-time fee, examine how your systems are set up and that you meet all
> appropriate "best practices" requirements, and then that will be that.
>
> If you're not a small non-profit, they'll do the same thing for you, but
> they'll charge you an annual fee.
>
> Habeas has the better reputation in the business, but is more expensive.
> Both are supported out-of-the-box with SpamAssassin, so they'll not only
> help you with all of the other customers with whom they have existing
> contracts and use the Habeas "Safe List" as a whitelist for incoming e-mail,
> but will also help you with anyone who runs a relatively generic install of
> SpamAssassin.
>
> Again, Habeas helps with sites running SpamAssassin more than Return Path,
> by improving your score by a full 8.0 points instead of just 4.0 points, and
> many sites run with 10.0 points being a guaranteed non-spam message, and 5.0
> being a probable non-spam message.
>
>  Any ideas?
>>
>
> And way you look at it, it sounds like you've got a lot of work ahead of
> you.
>
> --
> Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
>