[FQuest Notice] Do Not Bounce or Forward Spam - Action Requested

[Bob]

Greetings,

It is possible that spam (unsolicited email) is being sent from your domain without your realizing it. This has the potential to generate spam complaints against your domain and the FutureQuest network which can result in other networks blocking email from our servers. This blocking can prevent not only you from being able to send email to others on those networks, but it can also affect all other FutureQuest clients.

FutureQuest is requesting your assistance to prevent this from happening.

==== The Problems ====

The main sources of the problems at this time are:


Filters, such as SpamAssassin, set to bounce spam
Autoresponders responding to spam
Forwarding or Redirecting spam to external networks

Spammers rarely, if ever, use their own email address for sending out spam. Instead they take email addresses that belong to other people and forge them as the sender of the spam message. When you send a response to that spam, automated or not, the response doesn't go to the spammer -- it goes to this innocent party who did not send the spam in the first place. This can result in those receiving your responses to submit spam complaints against you, as they no more solicited your response than you did the original spam message.

==== Preventive Actions FutureQuest Has Taken ====

FutureQuest has removed the ability to set the SpamAssassin filter to bounce suspected spam. At this time, only packages that currently have SpamAssassin set to bounce will see that option.

==== Requested Actions For You To Take ====

SpamAssassin and all other filters should be set to either Delete unwanted emails or Redirect them to a POP email account on your domain. Email that is detected as spam should never be Bounced or Redirected to an address outside of the FutureQuest network.

If you have email set to Forward, be sure that it is filtered first so that suspected spam is not sent to another network.

Autoresponders should not be used on a mailbox that receives a substantial amount of spam unless SpamAssassin is enabled to Delete suspected spam or Redirect it to POP email account on your domain.

==== Possible Consequences of No Action ====

If we receive complaints or otherwise determine that problems are being caused by such a configuration on your domain, then one of the following actions will be taken:


If possible, we will notify you and allow some time for you to take corrective actions. In most cases we are able to do so.
If corrective actions are not taken by you and the problem continues, FutureQuest will have to take actions. The actions can include disabling the forwarding, redirecting, or autoresponder, or deactivating the hosting package until you contact us and work with us to resolve the matter.

At this time FutureQuest is closely monitoring complaints of this type. Most of the complaints we receive come from the AOL network, and the next largest number of complaints come from the SpamCop.net service.

We are regularly notifying clients of these types of complaints, and appreciate that clients have been very responsive in taking the necessary actions to prevent further issues. However, we are requesting that you take action now to proactively address these issues.

==== If You Have Questions ====

If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please post them in a reply to this forum announcement and we will be happy to respond.

Thank you for your assistance in addressing this situation.

The FutureQuest Team
http://www.FutureQuest.net
FutureQuest, Inc.

[hobbes]

It is possible that spam (unsolicited email) is being sent from your domain without your realizing it Just for clarification as we've been asked this by clients in the past -- the above statement does not mean the spam is being sent from your account, rather your domain name is being forged when messages are sent from the spammer's network.

[Bob]

Actually in this case the spam is being sent from the actual account. This post is in regards to bounces, redirects and autoresponses from an individual account.

Totally separate issue from Forged From: spam. :)

-Bob

[jelevin]

I tag mail and then forward to 2 places: a FQ pop account and my gmail account. Is this considered a problem?

[Pontist]

I received your notification for my account. I have checked my mail settings, and I am NOT using SpamAssassin. My email for this account goes through the Spam Arrest servers (smtp.spamarrest.com). And that system is specifically designed to bounce unsolicited email. However, doesn't the bounce indicate that it comes from smtp.spamarrest.com and not my FQ account?

[phppete]

My two domains have no bounces, all spam is set to delete and both have no forms or content accessible as one is a development site password protected and the other is a holding page.

As technical contact for my client I get to see her weekly warnings over and over again about spam complaints from AOL so to me it seems you are sending warning emails to people who do nothing wrong and letting the ones causing all the problems off without a warning, how weird is that! :(

[shatty925]

I received this notice and have one spam heavy email account active with an autoresponder (email account owner been out sick for more than a month). However, all suspected email on this domain is set to be forwarded to a pop account with FQ.

Is this ok?

[Bob]

I tag mail and then forward to 2 places: a FQ pop account and my gmail account. Is this considered a problem?

Forwarding Tagged mail to an address not hosted at FutureQuest can be, and is by some, considered as sending spam to that network from your domain.

Pontist, Pete, Shatty and everyone else that received the email notice, which was sent to ALL Site Owners and Technical contacts,

This is a General announcement in an attempt to prevent problems, it was not directed against any specific account or domain and we just want to make folks aware of the potential issues in how spam is handled...

What used to be appropriate in the method of handling mail may no longer be appropriate as a result of the spam problem, similar to how a catch-all email account used to be a valuable tool while today it causes more problems then it solves in many cases...

-Bob

[MPaul]

I think you guys forgot something. The notice doesn't list Catch-All Alias as a problem. If I have Catch-All Alias disabled, this would basically act as a "bounce" if the spam is sent to an email that is not on the domain, right? If yes, then we would also need to enable Catch-All Alias to further prevent bounces.

[sheila]

MPaul,

No, having the Catch-all disabled is a GOOD thing and PREVENTS bounces.

When the catch-all is disabled and an email is sent to an address on your domain that does not exist, then no bounce is ever generated.

Instead our mail system never accepts the message in the first place.

If instead the Catch-all were enabled, then our system would accept the message, process it a bit, and then generate a bounce going to an innocent third party.

When the catch-all is disabled, since we never even accept the message in the first place, the sending mail system gets the refusal error, not the innocent third party.

[phppete]

This is a General announcement in an attempt to prevent problems, it was not directed against any specific account or domain and we just want to make folks aware of the potential issues in how spam is handled...

What used to be appropriate in the method of handling mail may no longer be appropriate as a result of the spam problem, similar to how a catch-all email account used to be a valuable tool while today it causes more problems then it solves in many cases...

-Bob

Hi Bob, that is fine but surely there are many people at FQ, through no particular fault of their own, who simply wouldn't understand the email, wouldn't be able to realise it applies to them or who will just ignore it through ignorance rather than anything else.

Why not disable the features that are causing these problems? I know for a fact you let serial repeat offenders keep doing this without any consequences, surely it is time to start ruling with an iron fist instead of a teddy bear paw!

[jelevin]

Forwarding Tagged mail to an address not hosted at FutureQuest can be, and is by some, considered as sending spam to that network from your domain.


Could you explain this? Why would this be worse than any other mail forwarding? And isn't the whole Internet based on mail hopping from server to server.

[Kevin]

Could you explain this? Why would this be worse than any other mail forwarding? And isn't the whole Internet based on mail hopping from server to server.
If a spam message comes in to your FutureQuest account and is forwarded to some other email provider (like Google) here is what happens...

Our server receives the message.
Our server does whatever processing you have enabled.
Our server then sends the message to wherever you wanted it forwarded.
On the other end the message is received and processed.
If the other email provider determines that the message is spam through whatever filtering they use that information goes into a log of some kind.
If they receive some number of spam messages from a particular IP address they will stop accepting email from that IP address.
Since the Received: lines in an email can be forged they only pay attention to the IP they actually received the message from which will be one of ours.
The result is that their spam filtering software decides that our IP belongs to a system that is either spamming on purpose or is a mis-configured relay which is allowing spammers to send messages from an alternate IP. Either way they don't want to hear from that IP anymore, block it, and then email starts backing up on our server because it can't get through.

[tippiedog]

Let me make sure I have this straight...

Currently, all my email is forwarded to my Gmail account, and Gmail filters out the spam. Now, you're asking me to turn on Spamassassin for my forwarder--and NOT tagging or bouncing spam--so that a first level of spam filtering is done by FQ's server, limiting the amount of spam that gets forwarded to Gmail. Is that correct?

One of the main reasons I switched from POP on my domain to forwarding to Gmail was Gmail's spam handling. Right now, if Gmail accidentally recognizes legitimate email as spam, it goes into my spam folder in Gmail, which I can review.

However, if I change things as you are requesting, then if spamassassin incorrectly recognizes legitimate email as spam, then I'll never know it, as the FQ server will drop it.

That's an option that I'm not too crazy about. Back when I still used POP on my domain, I set SA to tag, not delete or bounce, so that I would never lose a legitimate email.

Thanks, Stan

[shatty925]

gmail has great spam handling, but to keep it that way you and everyone else have to play by their rules.

the cynic in me says google prefers you to use their google aps for their domain and just skip the middle (?) man in FQ.

[hobbes]

Actually in this case the spam is being sent from the actual account. This post is in regards to bounces, redirects and autoresponses from an individual account.

Totally separate issue from Forged From: spam. :)

-Bob

I stand corrected.

[phppete]

That's an option that I'm not too crazy about.

We aren't too crazy about customers never receiving emails because people like you show absolutely no regard for your fellow neighbours who host here.

Christmas is coming and we don't want to waste endless hours dealing with customers who have never received emails from us because certain ISP's are blocking FQ email because people like YOU aren't 'too crazy' about doing what you are told.

[jelevin]

If a spam message comes in to your FutureQuest account and is forwarded to some other email provider (like Google) here is what happens...

Our server receives the message.
Our server does whatever processing you have enabled.
Our server then sends the message to wherever you wanted it forwarded.
On the other end the message is received and processed.
If the other email provider determines that the message is spam through whatever filtering they use that information goes into a log of some kind.
If they receive some number of spam messages from a particular IP address they will stop accepting email from that IP address.
Since the Received: lines in an email can be forged they only pay attention to the IP they actually received the message from which will be one of ours.
The result is that their spam filtering software decides that our IP belongs to a system that is either spamming on purpose or is a mis-configured relay which is allowing spammers to send messages from an alternate IP. Either way they don't want to hear from that IP anymore, block it, and then email starts backing up on our server because it can't get through.

Kevin, please go back and read my question. Why is tagging different than any other forwarding?

Do you guys actually know that gmail does this, or is this all a big scare campaign (the only logical result will be for those of us who use gmail to cancel our FQ accounts).

[Kevin]

Currently, all my email is forwarded to my Gmail account, and Gmail filters out the spam. Now, you're asking me to turn on Spamassassin for my forwarder--and NOT tagging or bouncing spam--so that a first level of spam filtering is done by FQ's server, limiting the amount of spam that gets forwarded to Gmail. Is that correct?
That is exactly the situation we are trying to avoid.
When you forward a spam message to Gmail this way they do filter it out for you. Unfortunately they also log that a spam message was sent from a FutureQuest IP address. When some number of these are logged they block all email coming from that IP or possibly even all of FutureQuest. What happens next is that email (forwarded and regular) from FutureQuest to Gmail just stops for a few hours while we try to convince Gmail that we aren't really a spammer. This is becoming increasingly difficult as Gmail and others are becoming less tolerant of forwarded spam.

[sheila]

Hi Bob, that is fine but surely there are many people at FQ, through no particular fault of their own, who simply wouldn't understand the email, wouldn't be able to realise it applies to them or who will just ignore it through ignorance rather than anything else.

Why not disable the features that are causing these problems? I know for a fact you let serial repeat offenders keep doing this without any consequences, surely it is time to start ruling with an iron fist instead of a teddy bear paw!

Pete,

We are not letting anyone who is a known repeat offender on this matter continue. We are handling each and every complaint that we receive and we are requiring that site owners take steps to reduce complaints, as mentioned previously in this post:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=159981#post159981

There is some kind of misunderstanding if you believe otherwise. If this is a mailing list related issue, then we would prefer to discuss that in a separate thread, but again, we are not letting anyone be a chronic offender without taking actions.

While we realize that some clients will not understand the message that was sent, and some will ignore it, we are dealing with so many complaints recently that we somehow (mistakenly?) thought it would be a good idea to request that all clients review their filters and forwarding to ensure that they are not re-sending spam from their accounts.

[DogAndPony]

I stand corrected.You don't sit in a chair when you're at your computer? :rasberry:

[phppete]

Kevin, Bob , Sheila - if the comments on here by some people don't make you realise you need to remove features or even better delete their accounts then I have no idea what will. FFS just ban the ones who think its clever to do what they want when they want.

[sheila]

Kevin, Bob , Sheila - if the comments on here by some people don't make you realise you need to remove features or even better delete their accounts then I have no idea what will. FFS just ban the ones who think its clever to do what they want when they want.

Pete, we have removed the bounce feature from SpamAssassin, as noted in the original notice. We are deactivating accounts when clients fail to address the problem.

[Kevin]

Kevin, please go back and read my question. Why is tagging different than any other forwarding?

Do you guys actually know that gmail does this, or is this all a big scare campaign (the only logical result will be for those of us who use gmail to cancel are FQ accounts).

Forwarding spam is the problem. It does not matter if the spam is left unchanged or is tagged as a spam. It is still a spam message and the ISP on the other end will believe that we sent it to them.

Yes, we know for a fact that Gmail and others act this way because we spend countless hours behind the scenes trying to convince them to lift these blocks while at the same time responding to complaints at the service desk from FQ clients who can't get their legitimate email through.

[sheila]

Let me make sure I have this straight...

Currently, all my email is forwarded to my Gmail account, and Gmail filters out the spam. Now, you're asking me to turn on Spamassassin for my forwarder--and NOT tagging or bouncing spam--so that a first level of spam filtering is done by FQ's server, limiting the amount of spam that gets forwarded to Gmail. Is that correct?

One of the main reasons I switched from POP on my domain to forwarding to Gmail was Gmail's spam handling. Right now, if Gmail accidentally recognizes legitimate email as spam, it goes into my spam folder in Gmail, which I can review.

However, if I change things as you are requesting, then if spamassassin incorrectly recognizes legitimate email as spam, then I'll never know it, as the FQ server will drop it.

That's an option that I'm not too crazy about. Back when I still used POP on my domain, I set SA to tag, not delete or bounce, so that I would never lose a legitimate email.

Thanks, Stan

Stan,

We are asking that you avoid forwarding known spam to any network. It can and DOES cause problems for the FutureQuest network and all of our other clients. It leads to network blocks and so on.

At the minimum, please enable filters (most notably SpamAssassin) to prevent as much spam as possible from being forwarded to Gmail. While we are not currently saying that you cannot forward email to an external network, we would prefer that you didn't. However, if you still wish to forward email, then at least try to keep the spam from being forwarded. Enable a spam filter to delete the suspected spams before it is forwarded, or if you are concerned about having legitimate email deleted unseen, then set up a redirect to save suspected spam on your own domain for later review.

Unfortunately, due to the problems it causes, we are no longer permitting clients to forward unfiltered email to external networks. Right now we are handling on a case-by-case basis, as complaints are received. This notice was an attempt to have all clients check their mail configuration to prevent any such complaints being received.

[hobbes]

You don't sit in a chair when you're at your computer? :rasberry:
No, I find standing on a table gives me a higher perspective. It's not like the computer does what I want it to anyway (see PHP/MSSQL thread):wink:

[DogAndPony]

I think this is an excellent move, guys. The amount of bounce-style spam I get has increased dramatically over the last few months, and it's clear that a lot of site owners (hosted anywhere) don't know enough or care enough to stop it. Thanks for taking action!

[DogAndPony]

No, I find standing on a table gives me a higher perspective. It's not like the computer does what I want it to anyway (see PHP/MSSQL thread):wink:Oh, so true. Perhaps I should try this superior/dominant posture as well. It might work for me... :dopey:

[tippiedog]

I was asking an honest question out of ignorance. I don't think being a dick in response was called for.

[sheila]

I was asking an honest question out of ignorance. I don't think being a dick in response was called for.

We also do not think that was called for and the post has been removed. Our apologies...
However, I can't find any post (removed or otherwise) that contained the specific content you mention...

[jelevin]

Stan,

We are asking that you avoid forwarding known spam to any network. It can and DOES cause problems for the FutureQuest network and all of our other clients. It leads to network blocks and so on.

At the minimum, please enable filters (most notably SpamAssassin) to prevent as much spam as possible from being forwarded to Gmail. While we are not currently saying that you cannot forward email to an external network, we would prefer that you didn't. However, if you still wish to forward email, then at least try to keep the spam from being forwarded. Enable a spam filter to delete the suspected spams before it is forwarded, or if you are concerned about having legitimate email deleted unseen, then set up a redirect to save suspected spam on your own domain for later review.

Unfortunately, due to the problems it causes, we are no longer permitting clients to forward unfiltered email to external networks. Right now we are handling on a case-by-case basis, as complaints are received. This notice was an attempt to have all clients check their mail configuration to prevent any such complaints being received.

Sheila, I have a problem with a company advertising a feature (see http://www.futurequest.net/Services/CNC/ ) and then sending vaguely threatening email to paying customers who take advantage of that feature. Forwarding is one of the reasons I selected FQ, and for the life of me, I don't understand why other customers would have chosen FQ and then demand that one of the advertised features be disabled.

Be that as it may, if it is FQs intention to turn off forwarding then please give us long-standing customers fair notice (say six months) so that we can find other hosts.

Thanks.

[tippiedog]

That is exactly the situation we are trying to avoid.
When you forward a spam message to Gmail this way they do filter it out for you. Unfortunately they also log that a spam message was sent from a FutureQuest IP address. When some number of these are logged they block all email coming from that IP or possibly even all of FutureQuest. What happens next is that email (forwarded and regular) from FutureQuest to Gmail just stops for a few hours while we try to convince Gmail that we aren't really a spammer. This is becoming increasingly difficult as Gmail and others are becoming less tolerant of forwarded spam.

FQ folks,

Thanks for verifying that I understood the email correctly. It never occurred to me that Gmail would consider the forwarded spam as coming from FQ. I'll enable SA for my forwarded mail accounts. Losing an occasional email in SA is not that big a deal. I'll do as I used to do: start with a high (low?) threshold and then make it more restrictive to get to the level where it looks like it's catching most spam but not incorrectly catching good email.

Regards, Stan

[phppete]

Sheila, I have a problem with a company advertising a feature (see http://www.futurequest.net/Services/CNC/ ) and then sending vaguely threatening email to paying customers who take advantage of that feature. Forwarding is one of the reasons I selected FQ, and for the life of me, I don't understand why other customers would have chosen FQ and then demand that one of the advertised features be disabled.

Be that as it may, if it is FQs intention to turn off forwarding then please give us long-standing customers fair notice (say six months) so that we can find other hosts.

Thanks.

Can you not understand that the likes of gmail, AOL, hotmail and many others blocking email from FQ creates problems for people, especially those who are running shopping sites. It is EU law that customers receive an email after placing an online order from an EU web site.

If you would like me to help you find another host please PM me, I'll be very happy to help.

[jelevin]

We are asking that you avoid forwarding known spam to any network.

Sheila, if the spam filtering were perfect then I wouldn't need to review the tagged messages, but right now I can't take the chance of missing something important.

Is there a way to redirect to a FQ account messages with a very high spam score and to forward with tagging other messages. I would be willing to do that. Otherwise my understanding is that you would prefer that I disable SA and forward everything, so I am not forwarding messages tagged as "known spam." Seems crazy to me.

Thanks.

[sheila]

Sheila, I have a problem with a company advertising a feature (see http://www.futurequest.net/Services/CNC/ ) and then sending vaguely threatening email to paying customers who take advantage of that feature. Forwarding is one of the reasons I selected FQ, and for the life of me, I don't understand why other customers would have chosen FQ and then demand that one of the advertised features be disabled.

Be that as it may, if it is FQs intention to turn off forwarding then please give us long-standing customers fair notice (say six months) so that we can find other hosts.

Thanks.
Jelvin,

While we offer the ability to forward email, we have never allowed the sending of spam (as noted in the TOS). Forwarding spam is sending spam. Unfortunately, this is how other networks are treating it nowadays.

We do regret that due to changes in the way other networks are handling the email sent to them, that it is simply no longer possible to allow clients to continue to send spam from our network via forwarding.

While this notice is a warning only, advisory if you will, we are requesting that all clients review and modify (if necessary) their mail configuration to prevent any sending of spam from their account, even through automated means (forwarding autoresponders).

You know, if only we'd had a crystal ball and been able to forsee this day coming... sigh.

Well, we just have to deal with it as best we can at this point. We realize it is inconvenient to have to make changes, but sending spam simply cannot continue as it creates too many problems.

We are not intending to turn off forwarding. We are requesting that clients manage the mail that they forward to prevent spam from being forwarded. Other email (non-spam) may still be forwarded.

[tippiedog]

We aren't too crazy about customers never receiving emails because people like you show absolutely no regard for your fellow neighbours who host here.

Christmas is coming and we don't want to waste endless hours dealing with customers who have never received emails from us because certain ISP's are blocking FQ email because people like YOU aren't 'too crazy' about doing what you are told.

I was asking for clarification out of ignorance, not disregard for others. Being a dick in response is really not called for.

If you see my responses below, now that I verified that I understood what was being asked, what the ramifications are, and how I might legitimately avoid the situation that I would prefer not to have, I'm going to comply with the request.

[sheila]

Sheila, if the spam filtering were perfect then I wouldn't need to review the tagged messages, but right now I can't take the chance of missing something important.

Is there a way to redirect to a FQ account messages with a very high spam score and to forward with tagging other messages. I would be willing to do that. Otherwise my understanding is that you would prefer that I disable SA and forward everything, so I am not forwarding messages tagged as "known spam." Seems crazy to me.

Thanks.

Jelvin,

Right, we realize that spam filtering is not perfect. :( :( :(

In regards to having selective delete/redirect...
That would require a custom filter.

Here is a thread about such a filter that either you could use or perhaps modify to suit your purposes...

http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15875

No, we don't want you to disable SA and forward everything. ???
We want SA set to delete or redirect to an email address on our network, to prevent spam from being forwarded to addresses outside of the FutureQuest network.

[sylvano]

G'day

it always makes me paranoid receiving an alert that I *may* have stuffed up my settings and causing problems... :aussie:

So I've changed my settings, which I figured should be OK, until I clarify.

I had:
* a catch-all of any email to my domain go to a single email, that is at the domain hosted by futurequest.
* Spam Assassin on and have messages marked spam.
* collect emails at that single email via pop and do local filtering.

now have:
* a new black hole email for catch all emails.
* SA is now set to just delete.

regards
Sylvano

[sheila]

G'day

it always makes me paranoid receiving an alert that I *may* have stuffed up my settings and causing problems... :aussie:

So I've changed my settings, which I figured should be OK, until I clarify.

I had:
* a catch-all of any email to my domain go to a single email, that is at the domain hosted by futurequest.
* Spam Assassin on and have messages marked spam.
* collect emails at that single email via pop and do local filtering.

now have:
* a new black hole email for catch all emails.
* SA is now set to just delete.

regards
Sylvano

So sorry to make you paranoid. :(

It doesn't sound like your previous setup was contributing to any problems mentioned in this notice (in other words, your previous setup was OK).

In regards to your new setup, rather than have your catch-all forward to a blackhole address, it is much preferred to simply disable the catch-all as explained in this Knowledgebase article:
http://service.FutureQuest.net/kb267

This is much kinder to the mail servers, as we do not even accept the message in that case, so no processing need be done on the email which saves the servers work.

[sylvano]

So sorry to make you paranoid. :(

It doesn't sound like your previous setup was contributing to any problems mentioned in this notice (in other words, your previous setup was OK).

In regards to your new setup, rather than have your catch-all forward to a blackhole address, it is much preferred to simply disable the catch-all as explained in this Knowledgebase article:
http://service.FutureQuest.net/kb267

This is much kinder to the mail servers, as we do not even accept the message in that case, so no processing need be done on the email which saves the servers work.
Cool.

I am back to the original configuration. :smile:

thanks
Sylvano

[plevans]

SpamAssassin and all other filters should be set to either Delete
unwanted emails or Redirect them to a POP email account on your domain.

Why am I receiving the following error message when I set up to redirect to a POP email account on my domain?

"When enabling SpamAssassin as a global filter, you can NOT redirect to an email address on the same account"

[sheila]

Why am I receiving the following error message when I set up to redirect to a POP email account on my domain?

"When enabling SpamAssassin as a global filter, you can NOT redirect to an email address on the same account"

You must have SpamAssassin enabled as a global filter. If you do, then you can't redirect to a POP mailbox on the same domain. The reason for this, is it causes a loop in the mail delivery process.

Instead what you need to do is disable the Global SpamAssassin filter, and re-enable the filter individually on each desired mailbox.

When setting up the first mailbox with SpamAssassin, if you scroll down on the SA configuration screen, you will see a list of checkboxes listing all of your other email accounts. You can check off the ones that you wish to enable SpamAssassin on, so this should save some time. Just don't include the mailbox to which you are redirecting the tagged spam.

[plevans]

Thanks Sheila.

[gymshoe]

Okay, ..
I can see the need to be strict on FQ's end, ..
but I would hope FQ can see why people do not feel totally comfortable just dropping email that some AI deems is spam. Every spam filter i've used has been wrong here and there and I've had to retrieve the email out of a spam folder or such.

However, since I'd prefer to be part of the solution than the problem, ... would this work? ..it's kind of an off-shoot of someone else's setup posted earlier.

msg's that spamassassin filters out go to a POP account on FQ.
Then I'll download from the pop account and manually check.

Is there a way to only download email headers so I don't have to get the whole email? ..set the pop account to auto-cleanse itself every week or so?

-james

[tippiedog]

Cool.

I am back to the original configuration. :smile:

thanks
Sylvano

Sheila, thanks for pointing that out. I'll change mine that way, too. Makes sense.

Stan

[Tom E.]

Is there a way to only download email headers so I don't have to get the whole email? ..set the pop account to auto-cleanse itself every week or so?

I use this script (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=22895) that I wrote to quickly preview and delete messages in the spam mailbox.

It doesn't delete based on age, but that should be pretty easy to add if you know PHP.

Also, I have a filter set up on the spam mailbox only to delete messages whose subject contains certain words ("hoodia", "rolex", "0em", etc) common in spam, and unlikely to be used legitimately. See the FQ Knowledgebase article on email filters for details.

[Yaun]

Greetings,

It is possible that spam (unsolicited email) is being sent from your domain without your realizing it... FutureQuest is requesting your assistance to prevent this from happening.


Isn't this related to other discussions we've had here before?

When Futurequest implemented DomainKeys, some of us asked how it would benefit us, since it would not have any effect unless all potential recipient systems were to use that system for ID verification. Since the latter is not the case, adding DomainKeys was basically something you do just in case it might work -- but don't get much real benefit from. Witness the fact that we're revisiting nearly the same exact issue now!

Spammers rarely, if ever, use their own email address for sending out spam.

But sometimes they do! Why not be able to bounce something if the sender is clearly and unmistakably bad? Isn't there a legitimate place for bouncing, in the email universe?

Instead they take email addresses that belong to other people and forge them as the sender of the spam message. When you send a response to that spam, automated or not, the response doesn't go to the spammer -- it goes to this innocent party who did not send the spam in the first place. This can result in those receiving your responses to submit spam complaints against you, as they no more solicited your response than you did the original spam message...
FutureQuest has removed the ability to set the SpamAssassin filter to bounce suspected spam. At this time, only packages that currently have SpamAssassin set to bounce will see that option.

Honestly, I am trying to figure out how we are more "to blame" in this scenario than the postmasters who are being so sloppy in their own mail-bounce policies! Aren't we "innocent" also? I mean, really -- the first bounce is the one that should be interrupted. Are similar policies being implemented elsewhere on the internet, so that we do not get inundated with all these bounced spams in the first place? If not, why are we left holding the bag?

I have no problem with doing my part to be a good netizen. I just don't like being "presumed guilty" so to speak.

SpamAssassin and all other filters should be set to either Delete unwanted emails or Redirect them to a POP email account on your domain. Email that is detected as spam should never be Bounced or Redirected to an address outside of the FutureQuest network.

This brings up the other topic that was never clearly addressed earlier (as far as I know): the ability to perform more than one pass through SpamAssassin, and then to set two different actions in response to two different spam scores.

For accounts that I use a lot, I don't like having an "all or nothing" choice based on the SA score. I would much prefer having the ability to tag, but pass through or forward, messages at a relatively low score -- and then to take more drastic actions on messages that are blatantly bad (like scores over 10 or whatever). I'd feel a lot better using the "Delete" action if I knew it was only being applied to the worst offenders.

The Whitelist/Blacklist feature is way too inefficient in this situation. SpamAssassin is an automated system that works fairly well at picking out spam. The only need for the whitelist/blacklist is to avoid false positives, and the only reason that matters is to avoid destruction of non-spam messages.

Well, that would not matter if the destructive actions (delete or bounce) were reserved only for really high scores. And that is only practical if you can flag messages with intermediate scores, for manual review.


SpamAssassin and all other filters should be set to either Delete unwanted emails or Redirect them to a POP email account on your domain. Email that is detected as spam should never be Bounced or Redirected to an address outside of the FutureQuest network.

If you have email set to Forward, be sure that it is filtered first so that suspected spam is not sent to another network.


What??? I have all my accounts "filtered" but most of them just tag suspected spam, then send it elsewhere because I prefer to login to just one email account per day. I can use other filters on other email systems to help out, and that is what I've been forced to do, with all this ridiculous counterfeiting and bouncing and whatnot. It still leaves me with a lot of messages to delete "by hand" but at least I don't lose legitimate messages that might have been caught in a "false positive" situation.

But you're saying I should not do this -- the method I use in lieu of bouncing?

... We are regularly notifying clients of these types of complaints, and appreciate that clients have been very responsive in taking the necessary actions to prevent further issues. However, we are requesting that you take action now to proactively address these issues.

Okay, then how about two passes through SpamAssassin? Forwarding a message from one account to another, but still in my own domain, does not help at all, because SpamAssassin is programmed not to look at messages that it has already seen before -- wherever that happened. I feel like you are demanding compliance, but not providing enough resources for us to cope with the request.

Perhaps there's a solution somewhere else in this thread. Either way, speaking for myself, I'm feeling kind of cramped. Hope there is more being done here than just telling customers of all the things they can't do!

Sorry if I'm misreading, but this is dumping a lot of worry on me that I kinda don't need right now. After all the time I've already invested, coping with this same stupid bouncing problem, I am not happy to be thinking about it again.

[Yaun]

Whoa... "Doing what we are told?"

Um, Futurequest stands the risk of losing customers who chafe at ever-increasing restrictions, if Futurequest does not match the restrictions with some kind of proactive search for better solutions.

Everybody is inconvenienced by spam. If you start jumping all over the other users here, you are basically smacking around a fellow victim.

Sounds like you are saying, we should all agree with you and just do whatever is convenient for you (i.e. your customers, i.e. your wallet). Never mind what works best for UserA, or UserB, or UserC. None of them has a legitimate complaint, it sounds like you're saying.

Is that what you meant, really?

[phppete]

Whoa... "Doing what we are told?"

Um, Futurequest stands the risk of losing customers who chafe at ever-increasing restrictions, if Futurequest does not match the restrictions with some kind of proactive search for better solutions.

Everybody is inconvenienced by spam. If you start jumping all over the other users here, you are basically smacking around a fellow victim.

Sounds like you are saying, we should all agree with you and just do whatever is convenient for you (i.e. your customers, i.e. your wallet). Never mind what works best for UserA, or UserB, or UserC. None of them has a legitimate complaint, it sounds like you're saying.

Is that what you meant, really?

Yes that is exactly what I mean. We already have a major problem with hotmail, not one of our customers receives email if they use hotmail.

I can guarantee I can pull the plug on over 50 accounts here at FQ in one big go if I so choose, therefore if we want to play lets see who can bully FQ I think I will win, especially since my main client brings a new site onto FQ about every 2 weeks and will continue to for many years to come.

I don't know where you people are from but common sense would suggest getting blocked by any email provider is not a good idea. It's not about what I want or my customers, it is about FQ offering the service they advertised. When I came here FQ never advertised they are blocked from hotmail, gmail etc.

You folks with the bad attitudes need to shape up or ship out, preferably the latter, the sooner the better.

[jelevin]

Jelvin,

Right, we realize that spam filtering is not perfect. :( :( :(

In regards to having selective delete/redirect...
That would require a custom filter.

Here is a thread about such a filter that either you could use or perhaps modify to suit your purposes...

http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15875


It does seem that that thread from 2003 addresses the same need that I have: it is useful to tag borderline spam, but fine to delete flagrant spam. I would urge FQ to offer this type of filter. In fact, I personally would be fine if FQ made it impossible to forward externally messages above some high threshold. Wouldn't this sort of technical improvement be more likely to have impact than cajoling? In my experience the original email is like yelling at the entire Kindergarten class for some bad behavior. The kids who were offending are oblivious, while those who did nothing wrong are likely to burst out in tears.

[kitchin]

Phpete, I agree.

Yaun, instead of two passes of Spam Assassin, you can use one pass to tag mail, and a custom Simple Filter to delete (or redirect) the mail with a high score. The script I originally wrote for it is in the thread mentioned above:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=101307#post101307
or I could post a simpler version now.

Gymshoe, yep it looks like if you filter and redirect/forward the spammiest mail, then it should go to a POP box at FutureQuest. You could review it with QuestMail to see only the headers. Maybe change the options to show more messages per page. I think deleting it there deletes it from the server. Or use Tom E.'s script he linked to above:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=22895

Bounces. I can't think of any smart way to use them for anything. That's too bad, because the simple case of someone sending mail to the wrong address is (sometimes, see below), no longer handled. Sorry Elvis Presley. (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/e/elvis+presley/return+to+sender_20047831.html) So no one expects bounces now when they mis-address mail, so no reason to use them for anything. So black hole ("delete") silently. The user gets no feedback that the mail has failed. Or block at the server (by turning off catch-all), in which case the sender may or may not get a bounce, depending on his or her own provider. But it won't be a bounce from a FQ server, it will come from his/her own server.

Autoresponder. You can set it not to include the original message. Otherwise it is a spam machine. The few times I've used them, I've included an apology-in-advance type of disclaimer and full contact info. Physical address is required by California law? Or maybe that's just for newsletters.

Hotmail. The worst. I'm not having any problems sending to Gmail. But different FQ servers will get different results I suppose.

Arggh email management has become the most incredible time wasting PIA. The only worse thing about the internet is isolated forums like this one having replaced the universal Usenet newsgroup system. When I'm researching an unfamiliar topic I never know where the good forums are. Here's funny Wikipedia article about AOL ruining Usenet: Eternal September (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September). By the time AOL unplugged from Usenet in 2005, nobody much cared I guess. Maybe some porn hounds.

[kitchin]

I edited my post on the Bounces. Since mis-addressing mail may get you a bounce from your own, sending, server, maybe people do still expect bounces?? But deleting mail silently has become necessary in many cases. Too bad.

[Yaun]

I can guarantee I can pull the plug on over 50 accounts here at FQ in one big go if I so choose, therefore if we want to play lets see who can bully FQ I think I will win, especially since my main client brings a new site onto FQ about every 2 weeks and will continue to for many years to come.

Thanks for answering the question. So it was indeed your intention to play "bully" and not to be the least bit understanding or empathetic with other people posting here. Great to be sharing the system with you. You are doing a wonderful job of making Futurequest look just plain terrible.

I'm still trying to figure out how a customer here is considered a spammer by doing nothing more -- READ THIS -- nothing more than forwarding a message someplace else to be read and answered.

Read that one more time. I am talking about forwarding email. The post at the top of this thread says that it is suddenly verboten to forward email. HELLO?

I have several addresses that have been forwarded to other email accounts I own, on a 24/7 basis, for several years. None of the ISPs or hosts at those recipient accounts of mine has balked, or bounced, or complained.

And every one of my incoming addresses has an address-specific SpamAssassin filter on it. So a message to any of those addresses that get forwarded is NOT forwarded based on its SA score! It is forwarded regardless.

What I am getting from this is that my setup is suddenly wrong. And I'm trying to figure out how to even use my account, if that is correct. If you think that this simple setup is "bad" or "naughty" then I believe you have a very serious attitude problem.

I don't know where you people are from but common sense would suggest getting blocked by any email provider is not a good idea. It's not about what I want or my customers, it is about FQ offering the service they advertised. When I came here FQ never advertised they are blocked from hotmail, gmail etc.

As other people have already noted in this thread: they also did not advertise that they would give you features to use (like forwarding, bouncing, etc.) and then take those features away, and indeed to threaten to terminate an account -- from people who are perfectly innocent of any, repeat any bad behavior of any kind!

Like I said before, these people, who come from Planet Earth I'm pretty sure, are your fellow victims. If you treat them with hostility, I seriously doubt that any good will come from it. So far you are simply making your viewpoint, and yourself, look nasty.

You folks with the bad attitudes need to shape up or ship out, preferably the latter, the sooner the better.

Help me out here -- somebody from Futurequest. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT? I do not hear you stepping up with anything other than do-it-yourself scripts, which is not what I was looking for when I came here several years ago, nor when I renewed my account over and over again, year after year, since then.

I have accounts elsewhere, and have not been happy with the service, and until today I was planning to move them here. Sheesh! Right now those plans are immediately canceled until further notice (i.e. until this brouhaha is settled and I hear something like SUPPORT -- instead of all this negativity.)

[Tom]

Oh my, you folks have been busy today. :confuz:

how a customer here is considered a spammer by doing nothing more -- READ THIS -- nothing more than forwarding a message someplace else to be read and answered.

Very simple.

About 60-70% of the incoming mail on my main domain is spam. So let's say that I get 1,000 e-mails in a week, of which 650 are spam.

And I forward everything--all of those e-mails to my Yahoo account.

Yahoo sees that my domain is sending 650 spam messages into their system and they start the beatdown not only on my domain, but on everybody else on the same server by blacklisting the IP address. It's crummy, but true.

We've had instances in the past when someone torqued AOL and AOL basically blocked everyone on FQ, who then had to scramble to remove the blacklist.

I used to forward mail to Yahoo maybe 8 or 9 many years ago and had to stop for the exact same reasons discussed in this thread. Now I use Questmail when I'm at the office and a second spam filter that works great for me, but it requires daily management.

[Kevin]

Let's see if I can explain this one more time in a slightly different way...

First we are not calling anyone a spammer here.

The problem is that major email providers as well as ISPs are calling you (and us) spammers. When you forward spam from our network to their network they see you and us as a source of that spam. The fact that you own a mailbox at each end means nothing to such automated systems.

We are requesting (not demanding) that you look at what you are doing and reconsider how you deal with your email in light of the way that other email and ISP services are now treating spam. We know that most of you had no idea that this has been going on for a while now.

BTW, FutureQuest does not currently use this type of filtering. If you forward spam to a FutureQuest account from some other account it may be tagged or blocked by SpamAssassin but it will not result in an automated blacklist of that email server.

[Terra]

Help me out here -- somebody from Futurequest. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?
No, of course not, but things like this can erupt the emotions and passions of clients...

If our announcement is reread, you will find that we were not making any accusations, only a clear picture of what we are dealing with on the backside trying to keep the email flowing...

We were merely bringing to light a specific problem that places us in a demoralizing Catch-22... If we had a whizz-bang technical solution to fix the problem, we would have implemented it... Unfortunately we just simply don't and the best we can do is try to explain the 'Cause and Effect' in a clear and rational manner with a voluntary solution before any hammers are dropped from the sky for those that find themselves the cause of an email blockade...

I implore everyone to look over their site's email handling to see if bounced spam could potentially be going to innocent victims...

I have several addresses that have been forwarded to other email accounts I own, on a 24/7 basis, for several years. None of the ISPs or hosts at those recipient accounts of mine has balked, or bounced, or complained.
Well, there are exceptions to the announcement, and if you are not seeing any problems and trust the receiving email servers - than great - you have evaluated your email delivery and made a valid decision that this portion really doesn't affect you...

Unfortunately, you are in a small minority where you actually trust the receiving side... Our primary focus is on the big email hosts, like Hotmail, GMail, etc etc etc that can potentially affect a large number of our clients... This in turn puts pressure on us to fix a generally unfixable problem by technical means or by removing features that we now offer...

The goal of all this is renewed awareness of the problem that not only us, but also mail administrators all over the world... I'm sure many will agree this has reached epidemic proportions and the best we can hope to accomplish is to educate and try to not be part of the problem...

You folks with the bad attitudes need to shape up or ship out, preferably the latter, the sooner the better.
As well as other various comments are not necessary...

Let's please return this thread to site owners helping each other out and hopefully someone will come along with a brilliant and creative solution to the problem that maybe no one else has considered... We'd sure like to know of a whizz bang technical solution to this without removing any features and/or unduly inconveniencing innocent site owners...

[Yaun]

kitchin,

Excellent post. I hope to take a look at your script(s) when time allows (I think that will be around 2019... :wink: )

Anyway it is nice to know that somebody else is viewing this in perspective. Yes, a lot has been lost in terms of the "free" internet and the abuses that have occurred there. By the same token, I do not think it's cool for any provider to hide behind that, or to maintain a static level of service when the demands are increasing. I am trying to discern if that's what is going on here.

I came here from a different host where that was the very problem -- my needs were growing, largely due to changes in the internet itself, but the company barely did anything in response to those changes.

So here I am, and although I've felt a bit cramped along the way, generally the tools provided by Futurequest have sufficed for my greatest needs. All that is being put in jeopardy by this new, somewhat vague policy.

To make it even more clear: I have an account elsewhere, on a bigbigbig internet ISP, where many of my messages are forwarded. That ISP offers its own automated spam filtering, as well as a creaky, specify-your own filtering system. I've spent much time there, setting up such filters, and as a result I get nice, clean mail (only 50% spam ;)) when I open up my inbox.

This system works for me. It is simple. It is not abusive. It does not tie up bandwidth. It does not go back to postmasters ANYWHERE.

(I mean, give me a break folks, I ain't STUPID ... when I get a postmaster's bounce coming back to me, with a message I did not send, I know full well that nothing is gained from telling them it was spam. They KNEW it was spam, which is why they bounced it, duh! So I have never bounced a bounce, so to speak. If that's the ONLY problem here, then why won't somebody come out and admit it?)

So, as far as I'm concerned, I am all set. I am not bothering anybody, and I just want to be left alone. I think my approach and my needs are reasonable, and no amount of badgering from other, less polite, users is going to change that. I'm still waiting to see what Futurequest says...

[McDuff]

Dear Friends at FQ

Just opened the FQ mail, took some time to figure it out, and then checked this seemingly a bit overheated thread that the staff is answering with saintly patience (although they occasionally reply a wee bit sharper).

Just some points:
For FQ staff: Because the email seemed to be addressed only at me personally, it took some time to figure out if I was doing something wrong already or if I just was being attended to a rising problem and should check my configuration. Actually, in the beginning I was not sure if the mail was really of FQ or a spam as well. Reading it again (20/20 hindsight etc) it would have helped if the intro had sounded somewhat friendlier, like ”Dear Site Owners, we at FQ are running into a Spam problem and would like to ask you to help us stop this”. Just a nicer intro that might have prevented some heated responses. I know, I know, easy said after seeing the replies.

For site owners:
Personally, I think FQ offers enough options to us (more than most in Europe, to be honest) to handle this problem personally with investing a little time as opposed to having to ask and wait for a sales rep to do it for you.

I am using about (or only?) 10 email addresses, both at FQ and at a provider in the Czech Republic (I work there as well) and get my share of spam. One reason of shifting to FQ is that AOL and others were blocking our Czech providers left, right, and center, starting from our previous small provider up to and including Czech Telecom, at that time the State-owned national phone company! Compared with AOL, Czech Telecom, and almost every other mayor web hosting company, FQ is providing a good service for money deal in a friendly way.

Why “blind bounce” outside FQ at all? I can figure out no reason why to do that. If you are blindly forwarding ALL your incoming mail to your second address (gmail), why do you have an FQ address to begin with? No criticism, I really do not know and maybe miss something

For the few people who do need large amount of bouncing, FQ has options enough to pre-filter the obvious spam (redirect it to a "spamcheck" account within your FQ domain) and then, maybe in combination with a good email program, insert some script that selectively forward mails. How you do that, is your problem; FQ cannot be expected to solve all our needs (at least not for this price)

As said, our non-profit and many others have experienced blocking by AOL and other large companies. This was not for a few hours but for several days without any response from the blockers; it is no fun. Ever tried personally to get something done from AOL? I am very very glad FQ is taking care of that part.:clapper:

The internet is changing and some things offered maybe now have to be a bit more restricted. You can forward, but you are asked (true, the way the email was formulated is not too stimulating, but focus on content, not style) not to do it blind. This is a completely reasonable request. In addition, FQ explained clearly, why and how blind forwarding can result in being labeled a spammer.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

[Terra]

”Dear Site Owners, we at FQ are running into a Spam problem and would like to ask you to help us stop this”. Just a nicer intro that might have prevented some heated responses. I know, I know, easy said after seeing the replies.
We honestly weren't expecting this thread to go in the direction it did... Maybe for those of us on the 'inside', it is much more obvious to us than it may be to those that don't fully understand the problem... I know the announcement went through several revisions trying to find a balance between technobabble and real world explanations...

They say hindsight is 20/20, and we will do our best to incorporate your 'gentle' opening to announcements like this in the future...

All in all, we are playing whack-a-mole with email providers every day... If it isn't Hotmail, then its AOL, or its Bellsouth, or its Comcast, or its Cox, or or or or or ad infinitum... Add on the myriad of differing procedures of trying to get them to remove the block, and you will see that countless man hours are wasted on trying to keep the email flowing even though we are battling against an overwhelming number of reasons for blocked mail... This once again determined by an opaque black box operated by that provider, that uses unknown rules and metrics to determine if a message is spam or not... If it is spam, they mostly just pull the trigger and block our mail servers...

In a nutshell, if we can reduce the number of spams being forwarded or bounced to other email servers, then we reduce the number of blocks placed against us... In my eyes, that is simply a smart thing to do, however it needs the voluntary effort of all site owners to help us accomplish that goal as there is no one-size fits all technical solution...

[Juan G]

If you have email set to Forward, be sure that it is filtered first so that suspected spam is not sent to another network.
So, this also affects all forwarding aliases in our accounts.

I'm thinking about a possible solution for a multiple SpamAssassin threshold, adapting a custom filter suggested some years ago by Sheila (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=78937#post78937). For example, we might want to directly delete all mail with a SA score of 7.0 or higher, and to redirect (to a POP mailbox in our account) all mail with a score between 3.0 and 6.9 for later review. In this case, we can use SpamAssassin to only tag mail with a required score of 3.0, and then use two custom filters like the following (not tested yet).

For SA score of 7.0 or higher (with mail header X-Spam-Level: *******):

condredirect blackhole@example.com sh -c "level='822field X-Spam-Level'; [ ${#level} -gt 6 ]"

And after that, for 3.0 to 6.9 (X-Spam-Level: ***):

condredirect usualsuspects@example.com sh -c "level='822field X-Spam-Level'; [ ${#level} -gt 2 ]"

or another way for this second filter (X-Spam-Flag: YES):

condredirect usualsuspects@example.com sh -c '822field X-Spam-Flag | grep -qi YES'

These two filters should be enabled at least for our forwarding aliases, but not for blackhole@example.com and usualsuspects@example.com (example.com would be one of our FQuest domains).

Before testing this, I would like to know if it seems OK to comply with the new forwarding requirements at FQuest. :umm:

Of course, I think we should test first with a normal POP email instead of a blackhole, in order to prevent any possibility of losing mail during the testing.

Some related documents by FQuest Support:

Custom Filters: Advanced Email Scripting (http://www.aota.net/Email_Extras/eScripts.php4)

Custom Email Filter Recipes (http://service.futurequest.net/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=97)

The Order in Which Email Filters Run (http://www.aota.net/Email_Extras/FilterOrder.php4)

[phppete]

You folks with the bad attitudes need to shape up or ship out, preferably the latter, the sooner the better.
As well as other various comments are not necessary...

Let's please return this thread to site owners helping each other out and hopefully someone will come along with a brilliant and creative solution to the problem that maybe no one else has considered... We'd sure like to know of a whizz bang technical solution to this without removing any features and/or unduly inconveniencing innocent site owners...

Terra, as usual I get singled out yet again AND have a post deleted. Here are some important points:

1) On one site we have, nobody is receiving emails when their email is hotmail, so lets count up how many hotmail customers we have...

mysql> SELECT count(id) from customer where email LIKE '%hotmail%';
+-----------+
| count(id) |
+-----------+
| 1036 |
+-----------+
1 row in set (0.09 sec)


oh look over 1000 and that is a count of a database which is actually 3 months old, a local copy. So I am sending a ticket in right now and you can fix that today and sort it out because I don't see why we have to put massive signs on our site telling people 'if you use hotmail you won't receive email', it is simply not good enough.

2) I am sick of the comments aimed at me about not helping fellow FQ members out. I go out of my way, and I always have done to ensure any code I write does not impact anyone else. I always try to be a good neighbour on any server at any host. It was just three days ago I wrote an SQL query that was taking 3.54 seconds, as soon as I noticed the slowness I removed the file and modified the query and indexes. I'm not the one throwing up Joomla, Wikipedia and every other resource hogging application I can lay my hands on. I go out of my way to not use any more resources than I have to.

Is FQ here for hosting grannies knitting site that nobody ever visits or are you a mission critical host for ecomm sites?

The fact of the matter is other peoples actions are already causing us major problems with hotmail right now. FWIW we do not use any mailing list here, or anywhere else, we will be using Constant Contact, YET AGAIN because I have respect for FQ. I could easily send 4000 emails to registered opt-in confirmed customers this weekend in blocks of 300 that would fly under the radar but I don't because I have respect for FQ rules, other FQ members. It is my interest, my clients interest, FQ's interest and everyone else that I do not do anything that might cause any problems whatsoever, I wish others here thought like that as well.

[gymshoe]

Just saw that Google announced free IMAP support for it's Gmail.

Sooo... I'm in the process of taking my FQ hosted pop email accounts.
Setting up Gmail to pull the POP email from those FQ accounts
Settting up my Outlook clients on my desktop and laptop to sync with Gmail via IMAP.


There...no forwarding of emails any longer from FQ to anywhere.

:yeah:

[sheila]

1) On one site we have, nobody is receiving emails when their email is hotmail, so lets count up how many hotmail customers we have...

mysql> SELECT count(id) from customer where email LIKE '%hotmail%';
+-----------+
| count(id) |
+-----------+
| 1036 |
+-----------+
1 row in set (0.09 sec)


oh look over 1000 and that is a count of a database which is actually 3 months old, a local copy. So I am sending a ticket in right now and you can fix that today and sort it out because I don't see why we have to put massive signs on our site telling people 'if you use hotmail you won't receive email', it is simply not good enough.

...

The fact of the matter is other peoples actions are already causing us major problems with hotmail right now. FWIW we do not use any mailing list here, or anywhere else, we will be using Constant Contact, YET AGAIN because I have respect for FQ. I could easily send 4000 emails to registered opt-in confirmed customers this weekend in blocks of 300 that would fly under the radar but I don't because I have respect for FQ rules, other FQ members. It is my interest, my clients interest, FQ's interest and everyone else that I do not do anything that might cause any problems whatsoever, I wish others here thought like that as well.

In regards to the hotmail issue, we agree that telling clients "don't use hotmail" is not a satisfactory solution to the problem. We will certainly look into the matter and do what we can to assist you, if it is within our power. Of course, if Hotmail is accepting the emails with a 250 status OK and then failing to deliver them once they have accepted, there is nothing we can do about that. But, once you send the requested information to the Service Desk, we will search the mail logs to see what we can find.

Note that other people's forwarding and auto-responders are not likely to be affecting emails sent from your domain's PHP script, as emails sent from your PHP script would be sent from your dedicated IP address. Nevertheless, as noted before, we will investigate the matter, of course.



2) I am sick of the comments aimed at me about not helping fellow FQ members out. I go out of my way, and I always have done to ensure any code I write does not impact anyone else. I always try to be a good neighbour on any server at any host. It was just three days ago I wrote an SQL query that was taking 3.54 seconds, as soon as I noticed the slowness I removed the file and modified the query and indexes. I'm not the one throwing up Joomla, Wikipedia and every other resource hogging application I can lay my hands on. I go out of my way to not use any more resources than I have to.

Is FQ here for hosting grannies knitting site that nobody ever visits or are you a mission critical host for ecomm sites?
Pete, sometimes you are simply amazing and generous and offering extremely helpful comments and posts. However, sometimes you are ... well, shall we say "not playing nice with others". Yes, we would like everyone to play nicely here. Well, it is our ideal, at least. Please review the forum guidelines (http://www.aota.net/forums/register.php?do=showrules). Thank you.

[phppete]

EDITED - Last post here, moving away, had enough, game over.

[tknterry]

I apologize if this has been asked already, but how can I find out if my FQ email account in particular is an offender in sending spam without my knowledge? The only time I even use my FQ account is when someone sends email to me from my website domain (which isnt too often) and I have it auto-forwarded to my non-FQ email account which I regularly check. Obviously I dont want to be a sender of spam (inadverdant or not) since I regard spam senders to be the lowest form of life on the planet, so I will like to find out if my account is an offendor and to what degree. Thank you very much.

[Nyxie]

I apologize if this has been asked already, but how can I find out if my FQ email account in particular is an offender in sending spam without my knowledge? The only time I even use my FQ account is when someone sends email to me from my website domain (which isnt too often) and I have it auto-forwarded to my non-FQ email account which I regularly check. Obviously I dont want to be a sender of spam (inadverdant or not) since I regard spam senders to be the lowest form of life on the planet, so I will like to find out if my account is an offendor and to what degree. Thank you very much.

Yes I have to reiterate this point. I have no way of telling if I'm one of the offenders.

I will say that the email shocked me. I have a little site, which I hardly think even generates a blip on your radar. I have maybe processed 20 emails across this server. I used to log into my c n c and if i saw a couple just forward them to my regular email. Now after reading this I think that may be bad, so I just set up to access them from thunderbird.

Please someone tell me if this is good, without jumping on me, because I know very little about how this stuff works. I've been reading this thread for half a day and have just now worked up to courage to even ask...

[sheila]

I apologize if this has been asked already, but how can I find out if my FQ email account in particular is an offender in sending spam without my knowledge? The only time I even use my FQ account is when someone sends email to me from my website domain (which isnt too often) and I have it auto-forwarded to my non-FQ email account which I regularly check. Obviously I dont want to be a sender of spam (inadverdant or not) since I regard spam senders to be the lowest form of life on the planet, so I will like to find out if my account is an offendor and to what degree. Thank you very much.

Yes I have to reiterate this point. I have no way of telling if I'm one of the offenders.

In general, if we do determine a problem (e.g. we receive specific complaints against your domain) then we will notify you.

But here is a quick checklist that you can go through to review for yourself if your site is likely to generate complaints as described in this notice.
(1) Do you have any email filters, such as SpamAssassin or Built-In filters set up on your site?

If yes, are they set to bounce? Then change that so they are not bouncing. Your options are either to delete or to redirect. If they are set up on a POP mailbox, you can also use the Tag option (the Tag option isn't appropriate for forwarding aliases that forward to external networks or for autoresponders).
If yes, are they set to redirect the suspected spams to an email address not hosted by FutureQuest? If so, change that to redirect to an email address hosted by FutureQuest.
If no, then you're good for the email filters.


(2) Do you have any forwarding email aliases set up?
If no, then you're fine.
If yes, then... have you set up a filter such as SpamAssassing to delete or redirect suspected spam? If so then you're fine.
If yes and there is no filtering on the alias, then you're probably forwarding spam outside of FutureQuest's network and that should be changed.

(3) Do you have any auto-responders set up?
If no, then you're fine.
If yes, then...have you set up a filter such as SpamAssassing to delete or redirect suspected spam? If so then you're fine.
If yes and there is no filtering on the mailbox where the autoresponder is set, then you're probably auto-replying to spam and that should be changed.

I will say that the email shocked me. I have a little site, which I hardly think even generates a blip on your radar. I have maybe processed 20 emails across this server. I used to log into my c n c and if i saw a couple just forward them to my regular email. Now after reading this I think that may be bad, so I just set up to access them from thunderbird.

Please someone tell me if this is good, without jumping on me, because I know very little about how this stuff works. I've been reading this thread for half a day and have just now worked up to courage to even ask...
So sorry to hear that the email we sent was so unpleasant today. Using Thunderbird to download your emails is excellent though. Way to go! :yeah:

[Nyxie]

Thank you. :smile:

[sheila]

It does seem that that thread from 2003 addresses the same need that I have: it is useful to tag borderline spam, but fine to delete flagrant spam. I would urge FQ to offer this type of filter.
We have added this request to the feature request list and are looking into it.
In fact, I personally would be fine if FQ made it impossible to forward externally messages above some high threshold.
Just as a side note, we already do this for Parked hosting packages. Parked packages do not come with a CNC and have no options for email management or filtering, so we do have a threshold for which email with an SA score higher than that is deleted.

[sheila]

So, this also affects all forwarding aliases in our accounts.

I'm thinking about a possible solution for a multiple SpamAssassin threshold, adapting a custom filter suggested some years ago by Sheila (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=78937#post78937). For example, we might want to directly delete all mail with a SA score of 7.0 or higher, and to redirect (to a POP mailbox in our account) all mail with a score between 3.0 and 6.9 for later review. In this case, we can use SpamAssassin to only tag mail with a required score of 3.0, and then use two custom filters like the following (not tested yet).

For SA score of 7.0 or higher (with mail header X-Spam-Level: *******):

condredirect blackhole@example.com sh -c "level='822field X-Spam-Level'; [ ${#level} -gt 6 ]"

And after that, for 3.0 to 6.9 (X-Spam-Level: ***):

condredirect usualsuspects@example.com sh -c "level='822field X-Spam-Level'; [ ${#level} -gt 2 ]"

or another way for this second filter (X-Spam-Flag: YES):

condredirect usualsuspects@example.com sh -c '822field X-Spam-Flag | grep -qi YES'

These two filters should be enabled at least for our forwarding aliases, but not for blackhole@example.com and usualsuspects@example.com (example.com would be one of our FQuest domains).

Before testing this, I would like to know if it seems OK to comply with the new forwarding requirements at FQuest. :umm:

Of course, I think we should test first with a normal POP email instead of a blackhole, in order to prevent any possibility of losing mail during the testing.
The concept sounds fine. I haven't had any time or chance to actually look at the code you proposed, so you will definitely want to test.

Let us know how it goes. I'm sure others will be interested in your results and if it works out well, you might want to share your final solution.

[jelevin]

We have added this request to the feature request list and are looking into it.

Just as a side note, we already do this for Parked hosting packages. Parked packages do not come with a CNC and have no options for email management or filtering, so we do have a threshold for which email with an SA score higher than that is deleted.

That's great, Sheila, Thanks. My guess would be that if you could enable something like this by default and then allowed people that had a special need or otherwise knew what they were doing to opt-out you would see the significant reduction in forwarded spam you are looking for.

Regarding gmail: Would pulling email from FQ via POP instead of forwarding be better from FQs point of view?

Thanks.

[kitchin]

Juan G, I've been looking for a one-line replacement for my spam-score filter, so I hope yours works out. I have some technical questions. This post probably belongs in a new thread, but here it is for now...

1. Can the field "X-Spam-Level" be faked? If so then "822field" would see multiple lines and return multiple lines.

2. If "X-Spam-Level" is absent, then 822field exits 100. What does the "sh" do? Whatever you do, don't send a 100 exit code to condredirect, because it will then also exit 100, and the mail will bounce. At least, this was the undocumented behavior of "condredirect" I found back in April 2002:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=65056#post65056
The "man" and "info" entries for "condredirect" are wrong if it still does that.

3. I see "X-Spam-Level: ***" (with real asterisks), no numbers. Probably due to my non-default SA settings. I also don't always see "X-Spam-Flag". Maybe only if it's "YES". The numbers, and the flag, are always in "X-Spam-Status:" though. Example: X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3....
X-Spam-Level: ******
X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=6.4 required=4.9 tests=UR... Also, I have the score tagged at the start of the "Subject:" field, which is what I grep on in my script.

4. I'd prefer a one-liner, but I use an external perl script because my bash skills are pretty low and because of some of the complications above, and to enable logging when testing. So despite my lousy skills on bash, maybe this one-liner would be useful to you:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=62786#post62786
(my "fail safely" comment is probably wrong though).
And just in case the idea comes up, don't bother with "except" because its exit codes (0/100/111) don't play well with the exit codes taken by condredirect (0/99/100/111). Again, 100 is bad, condredirect exits with it and the mail bounces, AFAIK.

Also, "condredirect" is easy to mistype! :)

[Bob]

Regarding gmail: Would pulling email from FQ via POP instead of forwarding be better from FQs point of view?


If Gmail accesses your mail via POP, I believe Yahoo has a similar capability, then any messages tagged as spam would not be shown as being "sent" to your Gmail account from your FutureQuest account and would, at least in theory, alleviate the basic problem with forwarding which is that the receiving network sees the forwarding network as the originator of the spam.

Hope that makes sense,
Bob

- Time for that second pot of coffeee :confuz: -

[julieA]

Sheila or Bob,

Can someone check my settings and tell me if they meet the "best practices" suggested. I deleted the only forwarded alias that I had and I don't see any autoresponders. I have received a letter from my university that blocked an email to my professor saying my domain had been blocked due to spam so I'd really like to make sure I correct this BUT I don't know how to tell if I have done all that I can do.

Sincerely, julie ashley
mother of ten, wife of one

[Melissa]

Sheila or Bob,

Can someone check my settings and tell me if they meet the "best practices" suggested. I deleted the only forwarded alias that I had and I don't see any autoresponders. I have received a letter from my university that blocked an email to my professor saying my domain had been blocked due to spam so I'd really like to make sure I correct this BUT I don't know how to tell if I have done all that I can do.

Sincerely, julie ashley
mother of ten, wife of one
Hi Julie,

I'm not seeing any concerns with your accounts, and your SpamAssassin settings look fine with your current email configuration. :yeah:

[Yaun]

Here is an example of something that -- in my view -- should be "screenable" without having to use up the one pass I get through Spam Assassin. (I don't think I can even do it in Spam Assassin anyway).

Some fairly high percentage of the junk mail I get has non-Western characters in the Sender or Subject field. Here is an example from a message in my Inbox today:

�*åöäõîáòïäîùê éîóôéôõô âéúîåóá

(I wonder what that means in some other language -- if anything!)

I do not expect to ever need to read a message like that, so I have set up a filter in my Email client to delete any that it sees. But it would be a lot better if I had a built-in tool on my Futurequest account that could delete such stuff, rather than waste my time with it. That means it would never get forwarded anywhere else, nor would it get downloaded to my local hard drive.

Such a filter would not require me (or any other user) to know the sender's IP address or Return Path or anything else. It would not require any analysis of the body. The setting, pure and simple, would be: If message header originates in Chinese or Greek or Cyrillic or whatever, stop processing and dump it.

I have no clue if this would affect other users who might be sending and receiving mail via Futurequest using non-Western character sets. But if it were a switch available to every account, each user could set it to meet his/her/their own needs, and nobody is inconvenienced.

I suspect it would cut down processor load, not to mention storage space, as well as the obvious reduction in wasted bandwidth.

[songdog]

So here's a question for FQ. For a domain I administer, there are 8 mailboxes and 6 forwarding aliases. Of the aliases, one forwards to AOL, one to MSN, and one to Hotmail.

There is only one filter currently active: a global SpamAssassin filter with a threshold score of 4.8, with all tagged messages being deleted.

Is this acceptable under the new guidelines?

Thanks.

[Melissa]

So here's a question for FQ. For a domain I administer, there are 8 mailboxes and 6 forwarding aliases. Of the aliases, one forwards to AOL, one to MSN, and one to Hotmail.

There is only one filter currently active: a global SpamAssassin filter with a threshold score of 4.8, with all tagged messages being deleted.

Is this acceptable under the new guidelines?

Thanks.Very much so. As most of the spam should be caught and deleted by SpamAssassin, it won't be forwarded on with the rest of the legitimate email to those external networks. :)

[Juan G]

The concept sounds fine. I haven't had any time or chance to actually look at the code you proposed, so you will definitely want to test.

Let us know how it goes. I'm sure others will be interested in your results and if it works out well, you might want to share your final solution.

About a flexible solution for the current forwarding aliases spam problem, I've tested several possibilities, because surely I did some mistake in the -then untested- codes I quoted before: all spam passed undetected through that first filtering attempt.

To enable multiple SpamAssassin thresholds (for example one low for quarantine and other higher for deletion), what seems to be working correctly is my current test, using grep -F (capital F, not f) to avoid interpreting the * of the X-Spam-Level headers as regexp.

The following two custom filters can be used in each email account that forwards to other networks outside FQuest, but -to prevent loops- not in the previously created accounts blackhole@example.com and junk@example.com mentioned in the code (of course, use one of your FQuest domains instead of example.com). They should be added as two "simple filters", and necessarily in this order (filter 1, filter 2).

As mentioned on my previous post (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=161860#post161860), we can use SpamAssassin to only tag mail with a required score of for example 3.0, and then two custom filters will read the SA's X-Spam-Level header.

With the first filter, we delete each email message with a SpamAssassin score of 7.0 or higher, sending it to a blackhole:

condredirect blackhole@example.com sh -c '822field X-Spam-Level | grep -F "*******"'

After that, any remaining email with a SA score of 3.0 or higher (that is, between 3.0 and 6.9) is sent by the second custom filter to a POP mailbox for quarantine and later review:

condredirect junk@example.com sh -c '822field X-Spam-Level | grep -F "***"'

The rest of emails (SA score under 3.0) are then normally processed (forwarding, etc.).

During the first days, for testing purposes before using a blackhole, the first filter should use a normal POP account to verify if everything is working fine or we need other thresholds for quarantine and deletion (for instance maybe 5.0 and 10.0, instead of 3.0 and 7.0), depending on the amount of spam, possible false positives (very rare for a SA score over 7.0), etc.

As said, please first test without a real blackhole, and verify carefully the two email addresses used in your filters for redirection (those POP mailboxes must be created in advance in your account), in order to prevent losing mail due to any possible mistake.

[Juan G]

Juan G, I've been looking for a one-line replacement for my spam-score filter, so I hope yours works out. I have some technical questions. This post probably belongs in a new thread, but here it is for now...

1. Can the field "X-Spam-Level" be faked? If so then "822field" would see multiple lines and return multiple lines.

2. If "X-Spam-Level" is absent, then 822field exits 100. What does the "sh" do? Whatever you do, don't send a 100 exit code to condredirect, because it will then also exit 100, and the mail will bounce. At least, this was the undocumented behavior of "condredirect" I found back in April 2002:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=65056#post65056
The "man" and "info" entries for "condredirect" are wrong if it still does that.

3. I see "X-Spam-Level: ***" (with real asterisks), no numbers. Probably due to my non-default SA settings. I also don't always see "X-Spam-Flag". Maybe only if it's "YES". The numbers, and the flag, are always in "X-Spam-Status:" though. Example: X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3....
X-Spam-Level: ******
X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=6.4 required=4.9 tests=UR... Also, I have the score tagged at the start of the "Subject:" field, which is what I grep on in my script.

4. I'd prefer a one-liner, but I use an external perl script because my bash skills are pretty low and because of some of the complications above, and to enable logging when testing. So despite my lousy skills on bash, maybe this one-liner would be useful to you:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=62786#post62786
(my "fail safely" comment is probably wrong though).
And just in case the idea comes up, don't bother with "except" because its exit codes (0/100/111) don't play well with the exit codes taken by condredirect (0/99/100/111). Again, 100 is bad, condredirect exits with it and the mail bounces, AFAIK.

Also, "condredirect" is easy to mistype! :)

1. It seems possible for spammers to fake X-Spam-Level, but in my testing -using FQuest- I've seen SA overwriting a previous X-Spam-Level with a new one (after forwarding), in spite of what is said on The Order in Which Email Filters Run (http://www.aota.net/Email_Extras/FilterOrder.php4) about running SA only once. This could be a door for spammers when SA is forced to accept previous -maybe fake- headers, but it does not seem to be the case at FQuest currently, fortunately.

2. At the end of that thread, Bruce said "The problem with condredirect has been eliminated", and indeed it seems to be working fine. I've tested disabling SA for a moment to get mail without X-Spam-Level, and it passes the custom filters without bouncing. And about sh -c, I think it indicates bash that the commands are in the string that follows.

3. Yes, that's normal, real asterisks, not numbers. Sheila suggested to use the length of X-Spam-Level, and I tried it first, but now I'm using directly the asterisks. I also see the score in the subject, for example [spam 05.0] using [spam _SCORE(0)_] in the SA settings, but it seems easier to grep the asterisks of X-Spam-Level for the custom filters.

4. There seem to be many possible ways to do this task, and probably the command test suggested by you it's one of them. In fact, I was thinking of trying your suggestion, but anyway the last test with sh -c and grep -F seems to be working also fine.

[Juan G]

For a domain I administer, there are 8 mailboxes and 6 forwarding aliases. Of the aliases, one forwards to AOL, one to MSN, and one to Hotmail.

There is only one filter currently active: a global SpamAssassin filter with a threshold score of 4.8, with all tagged messages being deleted.

Yours is a simpler solution than mine, and more automatic and comfortable, for those not concerned about false positives because in their case they are losing very few legitimate emails over that SA score.

On the other hand, my filters for multiple SA thresholds and junk folders (between for example 3.0 or 5.0 for tagging and quarantine, and 7.0 or 10.0 for deletion) are for those who don't want to lose even those few, and are willing to review from time to time senders and subjects in junk folders, delete the spam (and preferably marking it to teach a Bayesian junk filter such as Thunderbird's) and forward the few legitimate messages. Probably doing this once or twice a week would be enough if the false positives are very few for your thresholds.

[Evoir]

I would agree, that FQ should offer some kind of built in filter instead of having each individual account configure a custom filter. Would be better if FQ managed the filter and we could just use it or not.

[Yaun]

Hello,

I'm taking time away from other things to try and sort this out, so pardon the revisiting of earlier topics. This one may have been addressed in later discussion, which I'll know when I leave here and continue RE-reading the thread. If so, just point to that and/or ignore this post. Otherwise, please try to help me understand this. Thanks.

MPaul,

No, having the Catch-all disabled is a GOOD thing and PREVENTS bounces.

When the catch-all is disabled and an email is sent to an address on your domain that does not exist, then no bounce is ever generated.

It's in areas like this that I wonder whether I read English as well as I thought.

I thought that the point of enabling catch-all is so that the webmaster/postmaster can receive and process all mail, even if it has an incorrect or nonexistent address in the header. If every email correspondent always typed in every address correctly, then this would not be necessary. But people make mistakes.

If Futurequest does not provide error messages to a person who mistypes an address at a domain FQ hosts, then that person -- understandably -- assumes that the message(s) has/have been delivered. If the message just disappears, and the person hears no reply, then he/she might get agitated or despondent or annoyed or whatever.

And if the person making the mistake is a business contact, then this process could result in the intended recipient losing out on a contract or some such thing.

In short, I do not understand how this is a "good thing."

If instead the Catch-all were enabled, then our system would accept the message, process it a bit, and then generate a bounce going to an innocent third party.

When the catch-all is disabled, since we never even accept the message in the first place, the sending mail system gets the refusal error, not the innocent third party.

Again, I can't figure out what this means. What is the difference between a "bounce" and a "refusal error?"

Understand, there are some of us here whose main focus is not data processing or telecom. I suspect such folks may be reading this thread without commenting -- surely I'm not the only one in this situation.

Thanks for your help.:smile:

[Yaun]

...Since the Received: lines in an email can be forged they only pay attention to the IP they actually received the message from which will be one of ours.
The result is that their spam filtering software decides that our IP belongs to a system that is either spamming on purpose or is a mis-configured relay which is allowing spammers to send messages from an alternate IP. Either way they don't want to hear from that IP anymore, block it, and then email starts backing up on our server because it can't get through.

There is no way to ask this question very delicately, but naturally it comes to mind. So I apologize for asking, but: How can we tell for certain that Futurequest is not, as you put it, "a mis-configured relay which is allowing spammers to send messages from an alternate IP?"

I have read the messages from Terra and yourself and others, describing how much effort you've put in to solve these problems "behind the scenes." I have no doubt that you're trying to do what you can. And I understand that folks like me may simply be ignorant of "how things work."

But I am borrowing a phrase from your message, after all. And the wording you used seems to describe exactly what is happening to many of us.

To put things in perspective, I have at least one other domain-hosting account elsewhere that, somehow, gets abused by spammers in a similar fashion (i.e. they forge headers to make it look like my domain is sending the spam). So I do not see this as a flaw unique to Futurequest, or any such thing!

But as far as I can recall, I have received little, if any, spam with headers showing a forged address at my ISP. Naturally, this observation makes me wonder whether the problem is truly inevitable or unavoidable.

My ISP is a very big company with lots of resources. Moreover, the address I use there is not published very many places. So, those variables may change the picture. Still, it seems like spammers focus more on accounts like the ones I have hosted at Futurequest. Is that an accurate observation? If so, then why/how does this disparity occur?

Just trying to figure this stuff out. Thanks. :smile:

[Melissa]

Hi Yaun,

If we refuse the message, it stays on the mail server that was trying to send it to us. What that mail server does with the message is up to them. Those legitimate senders who may send an email to an address with a typo or other email address on your domain which does not exist will likely receive an error message from the sending server notifying them that the email address was not valid, so they will know that the email was not received by you.

[Yaun]

Here is some information regarding the request for some kind of built-in
second-pass filtering. I still think this is reasonable to ask for, rather than
expecting every postmaster/webmaster to go through the laborious process
of writing and/or installing custom filters on every address in every account.

I do not preferentially use Futurequest as the place where I read mail. I
prefer to read it at my primary ISP email account.

(For the record, I have indeed reviewed my accounts. I process ALL my FQ
mail through SpamAssassin, and tag it -- usually at a low threshold score --
before forwarding. Some of my addresses do an auto-delete based on that
score, and NONE do a "blind bounce." I have only one address that bounces,
and it is based on a non-SA "built-in filter" specific to a few IP addresses.)

Okay, the point is that my ISP offers a "built-in filter" based on subject line
and/or sender's domain.

To use it, one goes to a configuration screen, and there you can type in the
subject-line text you want to use as filter criterion. You do not have to write
any code (or edit it, or proofread it, or whatever). You do not have to install
anything anywhere. You just type text into a box -- identical in appearance
to the custom filter boxes already installed on FQ, like those for IP address
screens, for instance.

I have no idea how hard it is for the company to set up such a thing. Perhaps
it is very hard and very tricky, and they can do it only because they have a
massive IT department. But maybe not -- how would I know? All I can see is
the "front end" which is very user-friendly, surprisingly nimble, and very
effective. I can use it to selectively auto-delete messages such as the
postmaster bounces described earlier, which means that I do not have to
read them OR bounce them back to the postmaster. This has been a life-
saver, so I am not at all happy to be told that I have to go back to manual
screening -- or anything else.

And to wrap this up: the ISP also does its own spam filtering. Naturally,
it catches some messages that are addressed to me directly, as well as some
that were forwarded by my FQ account, or forwarded from elsewhere. The
ISP's broad filter is removing something like 100 messages a day, not counting
the custom filters I mentioned above (I don't know how many those catch
because the messages are deleted). Again, NOT ALL of those 100 are
forwarded from FQ! I'm just giving some idea of how useful it is to have a
second layer of filtering available.

I'm sure other folks get benefits from arrangements like this, and as far as I
know, my ISP is not balking (and has not in the past) at receiving mail from
FQ's IP addresses. Nevertheless, I would go to some trouble to help out, as
long as the effort is within reason. So, I think that the ability to set up a
custom filter on subject lines by typing a text string into a box -- the way I
described above -- ought to be sitting at Priority One on any wishlist, if you
really want to cut down on the flow of spurious messages.

Hope this helps.

[Yaun]

Hi Yaun,

If we refuse the message, it stays on the mail server that was trying to send it to us. What that mail server does with the message is up to them. Those legitimate senders who may send an email to an address with a typo or other email address on your domain which does not exist will likely receive an error message from the sending server notifying them that the email address was not valid, so they will know that the email was not received by you.

Aha. Now I get it! Well done. :smile:

[Melissa]

There is no way to ask this question very delicately, but naturally it comes to mind. So I apologize for asking, but: How can we tell for certain that Futurequest is not, as you put it, "a mis-configured relay which is allowing spammers to send messages from an alternate IP?"The FutureQuest mail servers are not open relay and authentication is required to send email via our mail servers.

When someone forges the From address (or other headers), they are not actually using the FutureQuest servers to send the email. They are simply inserting your email address to *make it appear* as though it was sent from your address. There is nothing that can be done about the actual act of forging...much like not being able to prevent someone from using your return address on a postal envelope.

(Just as a note to be clear to those who may be reading...the notice was NOT in regard to the Forging of From addresses. FutureQuest is very aware, as stated above, that you cannot prevent that from happening. The issues in the notice were regarding the handling of the spam messages you receive as well as potential issues with spam in regard to email aliases and autoresponders.)

[Bob]

Yaun,

Your ISP has probably millions of email users for a single domain and the possibility of a spammer using your particular username to send spam are very low hence the low possibility of seeing bounces or rejections for spam messages sent from that domain, for your username.

However at your Domain here at FutureQuest there will be far fewer user addresses and easier to harvest from web sites, forms and postings. Additionally if you have the Catch-All enabled then any message sent to your domain, regardless of the username used will be received by you.

-Bob

[Tom E.]

I just added a new thread describing the simple filters I use to delete blowback from forged addresses: http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23277

I know it's not exactly what this thread is about, but using this filter setup along with SpamAssassin on the catchall account makes the catchall volume much more managable.

Also...Okay, the point is that my ISP offers a "built-in filter" based on subject line and/or sender's domain.FQ has a built-in filter for SMTP sender addresses (at the bottom of the filter page) which takes wildcards and partial addresses.

It would be nice to have a built-in subject filter too, but at least you can accomplish the same thing with a custom filter.

[sean.barton]

Is it possible for our server respond "550 email address changed" instead of "553 recipient does not exist"?

[Melissa]

(For the record, I have indeed reviewed my accounts. I process ALL my FQ
mail through SpamAssassin, and tag it -- usually at a low threshold score --
before forwarding.We would much prefer that you would Redirect detected spam to an email account here. Although we understand that your ISP provides spam filtering as well, they don't necessarily like to see spam coming into their network (for processing or other reasons). (This is a big part of what we are trying to reduce...the forwarding of *spam* to other networks.)
...as far as I
know, my ISP is not balking (and has not in the past) at receiving mail from
FQ's IP addresses.That's the bad part. Your ISP is not likely to contact you to tell you to stop. Their action will be just to block. They are most likely not analyzing the spam...they just see a good amount coming from you/us and block based on that. We much prefer to prevent a problem than to have to correct it. :(

That being said, we do understand that some site owners want more filtering options (and some seem to want less?). We will review the requests and see what can possibly be offered. In the meantime, there is likely a custom solution that would work to....I'll end this statement here as I see Tom has posted some solutions/suggestions that might help. :)

[tknterry]

I'm in agreement with those who want more robust and configurable built-in SPAM filtering developed on the FutureQuest end instead of relying on individual owners to create their own custom SPAM filters. The latter is definitely not a good solution in my opinion. It may work for a few, but not for the majority.

[songdog]

Forgive me if this has already been answered, but it's hard to keep everything in mind throughout this rather long thread.

We would much prefer that you would Redirect detected spam to an email account here... (This is a big part of what we are trying to reduce...the forwarding of *spam* to other networks.)
I understand (and support) that you want to prevent "detected" spam from being redirected outside of FQ, but the key question is this: what constitutes *detected* spam?

Let me illustrate with a real-world example I've had in place for over a year: On one of my FQ-hosted domains, I host a mailbox for a relative who uses Earthlink as their ISP. For this mailbox, I have SA set up with a threshold score of 3.5, where it tags the subject with *{possible spam _SCORE(0)_}*, creates a new report email and attaches the original message to it, and then allows the *suspected* spam to proceed to a couple custom filters. The first custom filter checks the SA score and blackholes the message if the score >= 5 and doesn't match a group of whitelisted senders. If the message gets by the first filter, the second filter forwards it (and any messages with SA scores < 3.5) to an Earthlink address.

To summarize, non-whitelisted messages having an SA score >= 5 are killed before leaving FQ. Messages with scores < 3.5 are forwarded to Earthlink, as are *suspected* spam having SA scores between 3.5 and 5.

So is this practice acceptable per FQ's current policy? I'm not sure. For while my algorithms *suspect* that they're forwarding spam to Earthlink, it would be rather presumptuous to say they've truly *detected* spam.

[Juan G]

To summarize, non-whitelisted messages having an SA score >= 5 are killed before leaving FQ. Messages with scores < 3.5 are forwarded to Earthlink, as are *suspected* spam having SA scores between 3.5 and 5.
IMHO, I think that's fine, given that a score of 5.0 is the standard SpamAssassin threshold to tag spam, so we should not forward mail with a SA score of 5.0 or higher to other networks outside FQuest. Probably because of this, Melissa gave the OK already on this thread when asked about a threshold of 4.8.

For example, in my case, for now I'm going to use thresholds of 5.0 for quarantine and 10.0 for deletion. I think thresholds of about 3.0 and 7.0 (instead of 5.0 and 10.0) work well for English email. However, I get legitimate email (in Spanish, Japanese, etc.) with non-English characters in the subject that seem to unfairly increase a little their SA score.

My testing of custom filters (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=161888#post161888) is going well. So, I'm ready to end the test soon and start using a blackhole instead of a POP mailbox for the high threshold.

With the only change of new thresholds (5.0 and 10.0), the filters are now:

condredirect blackhole@example.com sh -c '822field X-Spam-Level | grep -F "**********"'

condredirect junk@example.com sh -c '822field X-Spam-Level | grep -F "*****"'

[songdog]

1. It seems possible for spammers to fake X-Spam-Level... This could be a door for spammers when SA is forced to accept previous -maybe fake- headers, but it does not seem to be the case at FQuest currently, fortunately.

Here's the approach I use to eliminate the problem of fake SpamAssassin (SA) headers:

1. Assume address to protect is scott@mydomain.com.

2. Do NOT activate SA for scott.

3. Put a filter on scott that blackholes any message containing the text "SpamAssassin" inside the header "X-Spam-Checker-Version".

4. If message survives step 3, forward to mailbox "scott-real".

5. Activate SA for box scott-real.

6. Retrieve incoming messages from scott-real, not scott.

Since SA always scans a mailbox/alias before other filters are executed, this approach lets my Faked-SA filter run before SA actually scans each message.

[Melissa]

So is this practice acceptable per FQ's current policy?Basically what we are looking for at this time is best effort. I think it's fair to say that what you describe is best effort in trying to prevent the bulk of spam from being sent on to another network. If there are complaints against your domain, we will notify you.

I think it might be helpful to explain this from an inside out perspective. We have a fairly substantial amount of staff resources being used on this issue...from reviewing spam complaints, notifying clients, responding to clients, following up to ensure proper actions have been taken, to communicating with other networks to resolve complaints and any blocking. Unfortunately, dedicating that amount of time and effort pulls us away from other tasks that, quite frankly, we would prefer to work on and you would likely prefer us to work on (such as implementing new and useful features). It has also meant that, for the most part, we are reacting to the situation instead of being able to more actively prevent it.

What we are hoping to achieve by the notice and this discussion is just to raise awareness of the problem and to receive cooperation in trying to prevent any blocking issues that affect the FutureQuest network and our clients as a whole. Please understand: Our goal is to simply ensure that the legitimate email that you send reaches its intended recipient and is not blocked by the destination server due to the issues raised in the notice.

[Yaun]

Hello Melissa,

First, thanks for taking the time to add further explanation here. I hope that I don't give the wrong impression by the questions I've asked. I am not insensitive to the need to solve a problem, and to do so proactively rather than waiting and having to fix it after the fact.

By the same token, as a customer, I think it only responsible to hold the consumerist position. And here's where the problem lies:

Basically what we are looking for at this time is best effort.

It is obvious from reading these messages that "best effort" does not mean the same thing for all users! Some folks here are writing code to be installed on their mail servers, while others among us may just stare blankly when confronted with such a task. :umm:

I'm sure you'd agree, it's not reasonable to expect folks to use tools that they do not understand, or which they can't ever expect to master. And I also strongly believe that the solution to technical problems should be technical. In other words, computers should be made to adapt to people -- not vice-versa. This feels a lot like me being asked to change what I do, and how I do it, because suddenly the computers are out of control. Yes, I get it that people are operating the computers -- that's just the point. They are people with more expertise than I have, or want to have.

I think you can understand that this situation looks like "progress" running in reverse gear. Most of the settings on my account have been there for a year or more, some for much longer. Now, due to bad behavior by other people on the Internet, I am told that my "best effort" -- that was good enough two weeks ago -- may not be good enough today. And I'm being told that I have to do more work, using tools I don't feel comfortable with -- OR else, to spend scads of time eyeballing spam. One way or another, the onus falls on me and on my fellow users here.

So the question I raised earlier seems glaringly obvious to me: why do we not have a better technical solution to this? Something with a user-friendly interface, so that we can get the same level of results -- i.e., everybody gets their mail and not much spam gets through -- without greatly increasing the level of "effort" needed to meet the criterion of "best." On the assumption that technology improves as time passes, why should it require more time, and more effort, for me to reach a level of breakeven success, compared to results I had in the past? That's counterintuitive, see what I mean?

It is not terribly hard to set up email accounts using the CNC thing, and not much harder than that to implement the standard filters. But after that, there is a big learning curve. And it is not just the mental effort that matters. It also takes time, and for some of us, it takes a lot more time. Meanwhile, some of us may not have the time available -- and even more pointedly, some of us may not have a profit incentive motivating us to invest that time. :\

Please understand: Our goal is to simply ensure that the legitimate email that you send reaches its intended recipient and is not blocked by the destination server due to the issues raised in the notice.

Speaking for myself, I hope that nothing I've said is misconstrued as me not getting that point. Obviously it's bad for any individual if the entire system gets blocked from sending messages! (Although I have to say, I don't think I'm personally sending much mail to addresses at Yahoo or Gmail...). Some folks here, basically one I guess, seemed to think that any resistance, or questioning of the initial request, equated to selfishness and/or stupidity. I hope my comments are seen as coming from some higher characteristics than those. ;-)

Thanks again. I appreciate the support you guys are providing here.

P.S. And I particularly appreciate the efforts of other users to participate in the support process, to suggest solutions, etc. Hats off to everybody, and thanks!

[Evoir]

I would agree. In the forwarding screen, there could be something like the following:

[checkbox] enable spam assasin on forwarded mail?
forward mail with a score of [some number] or better (anything above that score will be deleted)
[checkbox] tag messages before forwarding them?

And finally, I would prefill these with some appropriate numbers, so folks have a place to start....

Now that I wrote this out, it would be great of all the spam assasin screens worked this way.... it certainly would free up your resources supporting folks who don't know how to write scripts. It just seems that a better approach that scolding people, or asking them to make some unknown "best effort" would be to simply provide them the tools they need to help your network run more smoothly. And I mean the tools in terms of within the CNC, not installing a custom script on each mailbox etc...

Anyway, I'm seriously thinking of just using google apps for my mail, since I can't forward it, and now there seems to be some tools for porting all my gmail over to google apps. (http://www.limitnone.com/products.php?p=gxfer)

[sheila]

It is obvious from reading these messages that "best effort" does not mean the same thing for all users! Some folks here are writing code to be installed on their mail servers, while others among us may just stare blankly when confronted with such a task. :umm:

I would agree. In the forwarding screen, there could be something like the following:

[checkbox] enable spam assasin on forwarded mail?
forward mail with a score of [some number] or better (anything above that score will be deleted)
[checkbox] tag messages before forwarding them?

And finally, I would prefill these with some appropriate numbers, so folks have a place to start....

We have already said that we have added to our wishlist (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=161870#post161870) the request by jelvin (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?p=161846#post161846) for a 2-level/2-action SpamAssassin filter.

I'm sure you'd agree, it's not reasonable to expect folks to use tools that they do not understand, or which they can't ever expect to master. And I also strongly believe that the solution to technical problems should be technical....
I would certainly agree with this. However, all of us have to do the best that we can at this time. While you may not be able to write your own filters, and maybe the discussion here hasn't been such that you feel you could implement some of the discussed filter solutions, perhaps if you indicated that you wished for someone to explain on a more basic level, additional, more introductory-level instructions could be given for implementing such. I'm not saying you should ask or that you have to try. But I am not sure if you wish you could but feel that there's a huge gap which can't be crossed. If the latter, then if you did want to try these more advanced filter methods, then let us know and perhaps we can give better directions that would allow you to set them up.

I think you can understand that this situation looks like "progress" running in reverse gear. Most of the settings on my account have been there for a year or more, some for much longer. Now, due to bad behavior by other people on the Internet, I am told that my "best effort" -- that was good enough two weeks ago -- may not be good enough today.
This is true. :(
Spam sucks.


And I'm being told that I have to do more work, using tools I don't feel comfortable with -- OR else, to spend scads of time eyeballing spam. One way or another, the onus falls on me and on my fellow users here.
You are not being told that you have to. It was a request. If you feel that you are doing the best that you can at this time, then it will have to do for now.

So the question I raised earlier seems glaringly obvious to me: why do we not have a better technical solution to this?
We will be working on it, as noted above.

[Evoir]

You know, I know you all are trying, but this request for a 2 level filter has been around for quite a while. I can't go back and find threads, but I know for a number of years that folks have been asking for this, and that even year ago FQ has been alerting us about the problem of forwarding spam to 3rd parties. I understand it is on your wishlist (who grants those wishes, anyway?) but instead of sending out a mass email sort of scolding us about sending spam to 3rd parties and getting everyone all riled up, I wonder if it might have been better to spend the same amount of person hours developing the tool so that there would be only a positive experience among your user base.

And honestly, I don't really want to install a custom script on every email account that I service that sends email to Yahoo or Gmail. Custom scripts need updating, tending to, adjustments when other components change. You have to remember or note what you installed and to which accounts etc. It's just inefficient. I mean, you are basically asking thousands or more or your users to install a custom script on their email accounts, rather than centrally providing the tool in the CP.

So, I'm glad it is on the "wish list" and I wonder if it just arrived on the wishlist, or was it on there from years ago when this came up before?

Please know I am not attacking you, Sheila or any individual, but am frustrated with FQ for how this issue is being handled.

[sheila]

Evie, I know that 2-level filter has been discussed in the forums before. When the topic came up again on Friday, I searched our issue tracker, certain that it would be in there. However, I could not find it.

There is now an issue created in our issue tracker on Friday and assigned to our technicians who have been discussing it a bit. Note that the technicians who need to implement this were already off from work on Friday by the time I created the issue in the tracker and that they do not work weekends, so there isn't anything more I can say about this except it is noted and we will do our best to move it up to the top of the list.

I am sure the fact that it wasn't even entered into the issue tracker had a lot to do with it having not been implemented.

I don't know what else I can say except that we will do our best to have it implemented in the near future, especially as I am not one of the staff who would be working on the implementation and none of those persons are here right now to speak about it or give any feedback at all.

We are all frustrated right now with the situation. I think that shows. Believe me, we are frustrated also, we are tired also, and we want very much to give you the tools that you are requesting.

I don't know what else I can say?

[Evoir]

You said it perfectly. Like I said, it's not personal... I'm glad it is being moved up to the top of the list. :)

[kitchin]

Yuan, I agree with you, esp. about computers serving people not vice versa. But as for being able to set your CNC code and forget it, I'm not so sure. Spam is now something like 90% of internet mail traffic and totally out of control. The zombie botnets of broken computers are diversely located and supposedly have more raw power than any supercomputer. I mean, it's like Skynet in the Terminator movies!

It might actually be that the best course would be to convince ourselves and our clients to use settings that don't require forwarding outside FQ. Sad if true, but nobody's fault but the spammers. Alternatives are POP/IMAP, QuestMail (maybe improve it), or GMail over POP, or using an outside MX mail server. Maybe some other bizarre things, like FQ offering as an add-on a separate block of IP's for mail servers?? Just thinking out loud here.

Juan G, those one-line filters look great!
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=161888#post161888
They would catch the string of asterisks even if the header was faked because grep would look at the whole multiline string. A simplification for the blackhole@ filter would be if you could get the filter to exit 99 instead of 1 (right?), then you could remove the condredirect and the need to create a blackhole address. Maybe this, untested: if 822field X-Spam-Level | grep -F '*******'; exit 99; fi

Working in the CNC would be much easier if everything was on fewer pages with simpler layouts, IMHO. Seems to me each address could have everything about it on one page: pop pass, forward(s), blackhole (yes/no), SA settings, built-in filters, custom filters. Help text linked. I think it would be less scary & mysterious that way too.

[Juan G]

A simplification for the blackhole@ filter would be if you could get the filter to exit 99 instead of 1 (right?), then you could remove the condredirect and the need to create a blackhole address.

Yes, that also seems to be one of the solutions available. But custom scripts require some testing first, and I prefer to test with a fake blackhole (a POP mailbox), to see what is being sent there. After that, when everything looks correct, I can create a real blackhole with the same name, with no need to change the filters in all the mailboxes using them (aliases forwarding to other networks, etc.).

Naturally, later, a possible built-in filter wouldn't need testing by the users. And, for the high threshold, surely wouldn't use a blackhole but direct deletion as you suggest.

[Juan G]

Since there seems to be some confusion, and naturally there are different circumstances for different accounts, etc., I think that remembering the following quotes from this thread can be helpful to clarify the new guidelines:



==== Requested Actions For You To Take ====

SpamAssassin and all other filters should be set to either Delete unwanted emails or Redirect them to a POP email account on your domain. Email that is detected as spam should never be Bounced or Redirected to an address outside of the FutureQuest network.

If you have email set to Forward, be sure that it is filtered first so that suspected spam is not sent to another network.

Autoresponders should not be used on a mailbox that receives a substantial amount of spam unless SpamAssassin is enabled to Delete suspected spam or Redirect it to POP email account on your domain.



But here is a quick checklist that you can go through to review for yourself if your site is likely to generate complaints as described in this notice.
(1) Do you have any email filters, such as SpamAssassin or Built-In filters set up on your site?

If yes, are they set to bounce? Then change that so they are not bouncing. Your options are either to delete or to redirect. If they are set up on a POP mailbox, you can also use the Tag option (the Tag option isn't appropriate for forwarding aliases that forward to external networks or for autoresponders).
If yes, are they set to redirect the suspected spams to an email address not hosted by FutureQuest? If so, change that to redirect to an email address hosted by FutureQuest.
If no, then you're good for the email filters.


(2) Do you have any forwarding email aliases set up?
If no, then you're fine.
If yes, then... have you set up a filter such as SpamAssassing to delete or redirect suspected spam? If so then you're fine.
If yes and there is no filtering on the alias, then you're probably forwarding spam outside of FutureQuest's network and that should be changed.

(3) Do you have any auto-responders set up?
If no, then you're fine.
If yes, then...have you set up a filter such as SpamAssassing to delete or redirect suspected spam? If so then you're fine.
If yes and there is no filtering on the mailbox where the autoresponder is set, then you're probably auto-replying to spam and that should be changed.

Apart from bouncing (easily avoidable), one of the points is to prevent forwarding spam (that is, mail with a SpamAssassin score of the standard 5.0 or higher) to other networks outside FQuest. To accomplish this, although I'm using custom scripts (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=161888#post161888) for multiple SA thresholds, other webmasters are using simpler solutions (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=161897#post161897) -already available in the SA settings- that might be convenient enough for many, at least until a user-friendly built-in filter is available.

Three possible solutions (simple, average, and more complete) to choose from are:

1. Deleting

If you only wish a simple and quick solution, and the idea of losing maybe a few legitimate emails is not a problem for you, then you can just select "Delete" in the SpamAssassin settings. Use a "Required Score" of 5.0 (or less, if you want to delete more spam, having more false positives though).

2. Redirecting

If on the contrary you are concerned about losing some legitimate mail -and perhaps some customers- due to false positives (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/2245991), then select "Redirect" instead in the SA settings, with an address in your account such as junk@example.com in order to look for false positives periodically. If you have the SA score in the subjects, you can order alphabetically by subject in your email client (such as Thunderbird) and look more carefully for false positives in the lower scores.

3. Deleting and redirecting

Finally, many webmasters want to avoid losing legitimate mail, but are overwhelmed and with no time for the current amount of spam. Probably they prefer a more complete solution, that is to say deleting mail clearly spam (high SA score) like in the solution 1, and redirecting doubtful mail (medium SA score) to a junk mailbox like in the solution 2. In this case, we can use for example the custom filters I've already tested, until FQuest develops the built-in filter they are considering.

[Bruce]

Is it possible for our server respond "550 email address changed" instead of "553 recipient does not exist"?We have added this feature addition to our task list. While making this change system wide would be a fairly straightforward procedure, it is doubtful that all site owners would welcome this change. To make this change on an individual basis, however, impacts several components on multiple servers, making it a surprisingly tricky feature to add. We will be sure to announce this feature once it is completed.

[Daytripper_MI6]

I have a quick question before I get too entangled in this. If I send an email to someone from my FQ account,(opted in blah blah blah) let's say to their yahoo account, they then forward it to their AOL account. If (for whatever reason) they tag it as spam from their AOL mailbox, who gets dinged for sending the spam, me(FQ) or yahoo?

[Bob]

Hello,

Generally AOL treats the last sending network as the originator of the spam as far as we have been able to determine. So if someone forwards a message received at Yahoo to AOL and then it is reported as spam then the complaint would be generated against Yahoo.

Other Anti-Spam Guardians, such as SpamCop, will generally investigate the email and the actual Origin of the message from the Raw Headers and report the spam to the real Originating Network.

-Bob

[SneakyDave]

Can FQ put a warning in the SpamAssassin page that warns a user when they try to redirect SA tagged email away from the FQ network, and to encourage the use of an email on the FQ network?

[Bob]

Can FQ put a warning in the SpamAssassin page that warns a user when they try to redirect SA tagged email away from the FQ network, and to encourage the use of an email on the FQ network?

I have added this suggestion to the list we are working on in these areas.

I have a feeling that trying to determine whether any address submitted was within our Network or not may cause an enormous resource issue and may be beyond what can be done however some additional warning text should certainly be possible in the settings area itself...

Thanks,
Bob

[songdog]

Basically what we are looking for at this time is best effort... in trying to prevent the bulk of spam from being sent on to another network.
Thanks, Melissa. When you put it this way, it makes it much easier to understand the performance level required. :smile:

[Slim]

Using this quote as a jumping off point:

Dear Friends at FQ

For site owners:

Why “blind bounce” outside FQ at all? I can figure out no reason why to do that. If you are blindly forwarding ALL your incoming mail to your second address (gmail), why do you have an FQ address to begin with? No criticism, I really do not know and maybe miss something

Anyway, keep up the good work.

Not sure if you are using "blind bounce" to mean forwarding all incoming mail to another account, but I can give you some reasons for doing it:

You want to have people send mail to your domain, not to a yahoo or gmail address.

You want to use the gmail reader, and not a POP3 or other email reader locally.

Is there a way to set up to have all mail sent directly to gmail for my domain address? So it doesn't come through FutureQuest servers, and appear to be forwarded spam, but just original spam?

[SneakyDave]

I have a feeling that trying to determine whether any address submitted was within our Network or not may cause an enormous resource issue and may be beyond what can be done however some additional warning text should certainly be possible in the settings area itself...

I guess that's true. I suppose you'd have to reverse DNS the selected email addresses' domain to a list of IP's in the FQ empire?

And at least I found out why hotmail is rejecting a lot of my mail! I didn't even think legitimate people used hotmail anymore.

[Bob]

Is there a way to set up to have all mail sent directly to gmail for my domain address? So it doesn't come through FutureQuest servers, and appear to be forwarded spam, but just original spam?

Gmail provides Mail Fetcher which acts as a POP email client pulling your mail directly into Gmail without accessing it via a POP email client or QuestMail, while not directly bypassing the FutureQuest servers this does remove the forwarding aspect...
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21288&topic=1577

Gmail also offers Gmail as a Google App which basically hosts your Domain's mail.
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/gmail.html
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/topic.py?topic=9202

-Bob

[Bruce]

I suppose you'd have to reverse DNS the selected email addresses' domain to a list of IP's in the FQ empire?Given the components involved, it would be easier to do a lookup in the internal database we maintain that shows which domains we have hosted here. However, since some domains hosted here don't host their mail here, doing a DNS lookup on the domain's MX address would be a necessary sanity check.

[sean.barton]

We have added this feature addition to our task list. While making this change system wide would be a fairly straightforward procedure, it is doubtful that all site owners would welcome this change. To make this change on an individual basis, however, impacts several components on multiple servers, making it a surprisingly tricky feature to add. We will be sure to announce this feature once it is completed.

Bruce, thanks for your reply. That would be great if we could actually do that. To be clear, the ideal situation would be that in which the site owner could specify what text string came after the 550. For example, if I could, I would reply "550 address changed, see directory at http://***" where *** would be the web address of our company email directory. There I would make the email addresses themselves not machine readable (graphics perhaps). If a custom 550 is too difficult to implement, then a generic 550 would still be leaps and bounds above what we can do today. Again thanks for your consideration.
-Sean

[Slim]

Gmail provides Mail Fetcher which acts as a POP email client pulling your mail directly into Gmail without accessing it via a POP email client or QuestMail, while not directly bypassing the FutureQuest servers this does remove the forwarding aspect...
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21288&topic=1577

Gmail also offers Gmail as a Google App which basically hosts your Domain's mail.
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/gmail.html
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/topic.py?topic=9202

-Bob
Wonderful! Why have I been away so long? Life, I guess.
Accessing via POP seems best, as I have other people on the domain who wouldn't want to change to gmail. That also lets me get e-mail from my ISP account(s).