I don't know. I am still trying to figue out why all my e-mail notifications from this forum are going into my trash can after I read them in my in box. Is this a degreeinfo glitch, or is it something on my end? I e-mailed MSN to try and find out. Oh boy! Take care buddy! Abner
Re: Re: Stupid Question? At least you're getting email notifications! DesElms' suggestion didn't work but I do appreciate his willingness to help.
Re: Re: Stupid Question? That's interesting! I wish I knew why I'm not getting any email notifications! I used to get email notifications, but ever since the board was down for a few days in May 2005, I haven't gotten any!
Re: Re: Re: Stupid Question? Who said I was done? I wish you'd told me earlier, I would have made my next suggestion... Have you changed email services lately? If so, two things are possible: First, that this forum software is sending to an old email address; and secondly, that your new email provider has some kind of filter turned-on that is misinterpreting mail from this place as spam. Along those same lines -- and this may be useful to everyone here who suddenly experienced this problem starting right about the time Chip moved this forum to another server a few months ago -- another thing that could have happened is that the IP address of the server onto which Chip moved this forum may be on a spammer blacklist. Assuming nothing bad happened to the configuration of this forum software during the move; and if your problem began right about the time the move happened, then it's actually quite possible that the IP address now associated with the degreeinfo.com domain name is on a spammer blacklist and, if so, and if your email provider subscribes to said blacklist and uses it as a way of filtering-out spam, then emails from this place might be being blocked by your email provider's spam filter. If this turns out to be the case, we may have to convince Chip to get a dedicated IP address from his hosting provider (if he doesn't already have one). Or, if he already has one, to change it to one that isn't on blacklists. I'm not saying that this is what's happening, but I'm offering it as a possibility. I'd have to seriously research it to figure out if that's, in fact, what's actually going on. But if the problem pretty much began for you right around the time this site got moved to a new server, then I'd take this theory very seriously, indeed! One way to at least begin to check might be to go into your control panel and change the email address (to which mail from this place is sent) to another email address on a completely different server owned by a completely different provider and see if your notification messages get sent there successfully. If so, then there's likely some kind of anti-spam filter on your regular email that's at least partially controlled by a blacklist; and either DegreeInfo's domain name, or the IP address associated therewith, is on it! Check-out those possibilities, and if that's not it, then we can go to the next thing.
Re: Re: Re: Stupid Question? See! I'm tellin' ya'... this thing is starting to feel like the IP address of the server on which this site now sits is on some kind of RBL (black) list; and that a few DegreeInfo members's email service providers are using said blacklist(s)s as a means of filtering-out spam. The fact that this is happening to more than one person -- and that it began when the site was moved to another server -- should not be considered coincidence. By the way, the way that the IP address of the server which now hosts this forum could have ended-up on some kind of RBL list, is if this site's new hosting provider once had a spammer using that same server and didn't aggressively and quickly remove said spammer (and remedy the problem) once said hosting provider became aware of said spammer's behavior. If either the shared IP address that is associated with DegreeInfo once had a spammer on it; or whether DegreeInfo's unique, dedicated IP address (if it even has one) was once used by a spammer a long time ago and no one's bothered to get the situation corrected), the bottom line is that someone else's spamming and then someone else's failure to do something about it while they were in control of the IP address that this site now uses... either situation can get an IP address onto an RBL list. To learn more about this, check-out the black-lists/block-lists section of www.spamlinks.net and poke around a bit. You'll get educated in a big hurry. If it turs out that this is the problem, then Chip's going to have to take some action to get this fixed. It is not an easy thing, and it can be a real pain-in-the-ass to finally straighten out.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Stupid Question? I think you are correct. My wife installed McAfee Spam Killer yesterday and along with the Virus protection. Anway, I e-mailed MSN and they said I was probably due to to the Spam Killer. I could indicate mail from degreeinfo is ok, however, I need an e-mail address. Do you (or anybody) know what the e-mail address is when degreeinfo mails e-mail notifications? I notice all the replies do not show an e-mail, even if you click on it. Please advise. For now, I have a custom filter set up. What this does is send anything with "Reply to" over to a degree info folder I set up. I would like to know what the e-mail address from degreeinfo is anyway. Thanks, Abner
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stupid Question? Well, that's a bit different than what I'm talking about with respect to what Ted and Jimmy are saying. I'm saying that in both of their cases, their ISPs (your ISP is MSN, for example, so I'm talking about whoever they use in exactly the same way that you use MSN) might be filtering all incoming email on the POP3 (incoming email server), and may be using an RBL-type blacklist or blocklist of known spammer IP addresses and/or domain names to determine what to filter out; and that somehow either DegreeInfo's domain name or, more likely, its new IP address, is being published on those publicly-available RBL-type blacklists/blocklists and, therefore, the ISP's POP3 email server is dumping the messages into a black hole (technially, the nul processor) before it even arrives for download into their POP3 account inboxes. If that's the case, then it's going to be something just short of a nightmare for Chip, et al, to get that domain name and/or IP address off said RBL-type blacklist/blocklist. If it's only the IP address, it may, in fact, pay for CHIP to request of his hosting provider a fresh, new IP address -- one that CHIP, et al, first verify isn't blacklisted before they associate it with the DegreeInfo domain name. But if you're using McAfee Spam Killer, that's right there on your local computer, not on your ISP's (MSN's) POP3 server. I so hate McAfee products now, and it's been so long since I've used one, that I no longer remember (nor am I going to take the time to look-up) how Spam Killer works as far as its use of RBL-type blacklists. I presume it doesn't use them, but if it does, and if DegreeInfo's domain name and/or the IP address associated with it is on whatever blacklist McAfee uses, then I suppose that could be the problem. In any case, all you really need to do is reconfigure Spam Killer to stop killing your incoming messages from DegreeInfo. Seems simple enough... though, without going and looking it up on the McAfee web site (which I'm not going to do), I don't know how to tell you to do that. But how to do it should be in the Spam Killer HELP file; or its manual (which, I presume is either printed or is a PDF file). It shouldn't be too hard. Below is a typical notifcation email from DegreeInfo, including full header: Code: Return-path: <[email protected]> Envelope-to: [email protected] Delivery-date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 22:01:33 -0400 Received: from [66.220.2.16] (port=62332 helo=sbgc.workingmansoftware.com) by xxxx.xxxxxxxxx.xxxx.com with esmtps (TLSv1:DES-CBC3-SHA:168) (Exim 4.52) id 1xE9Yxm-x0xxx0xx0x40w-QxQ for [email protected]; Sun, 28 Aug 2005 22:01:30 -0400 Received: from sbgc.workingmansoftware.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sbgc.workingmansoftware.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id j7dT2x4whq083x661 for <[email protected]>; Mon, 29 Aug 2005 02:04:58 GMT (envelope-from [email protected]) Received: (from www@localhost) by sbgc.workingmansoftware.com (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id j7Tx24xwpG0x836x60; Mon, 29 Aug 2005 02:04:58 GMT (envelope-from www) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 02:04:58 GMT Message-Id: <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Reply to post 'Law School Question' From: "Distance Learning Discussion Forums Mailer" <> X-Group-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-Group-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-From: [email protected] Hello xxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxx has just replied to a thread you have subscribed to entitled - Law School Question - in the Distance Learning Discussions forum of Distance Learning Discussion Forums. This thread is located at: http://www.degreeinfo.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=xxxxxx&goto=newpost There may be other replies also, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the board again. Yours, Distance Learning Discussion Forums team ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Unsubscription information: To unsubscribe from this thread, please visit this page: http://www.degreeinfo.com/forums/member2.php?action=usub&threadid=20957 To unsubscribe from ALL threads, please visit this page: http://www.degreeinfo.com/forums/member2.php?action=usub&type=allthread The above includes the FULL header, which is alot more information than one normally sees when one opens and reads an email message. I have redacted from the header certain private and/or identifying information that has no bearing on what we're trying to do here. First thing to notice or pay attention to is the "From:" field. Notice that it says: "Distance Learning Discussion Forums Mailer" <> The proper format of data in the "From:" field is: "Informal or 'display' name" <[email protected]> Notice that where the actual email address goes, there's nothing between the <> brackets. Only the "display" name appears. If your spam filter software looks for continguous text surrounding an "@" symbol as its way of figuring out where in the "From:" field the actual email address is, and then runs the filter list against that, then it would fail, based on this "From:" field contents. If, on the other hand, your spam filter is capable of looking for any text at all in the "From:" field, then you could tell it to look for the text string "Distance Learning Discussion Forums Mailer" and tell it to always make sure that such mail never gets filtered out. Or, the better way, in my opinion, is to filter based on content anywhere in the header. That way you don't have to worry about strange "From:" field contents. The unique header content that is likely never to be reproduced by or contained in any messages other than those from DegreeInfo would be messages that have the text string: sbgc.workingmansoftware.com somewhere -- actually, pretty much anywhere -- in their headers. If you can program your anti-spam software to never filter out any message that has that text string anywhere in its header, then all DegreeInfo traffic will probably get through. I'd kill that one; and I'd try to figure out the filter that's sending the messages to the wrong place and disable it. WARNING: Doing so may require that a very general rule is turned off which will suddenly allow-in all kinds of spam or virus-/worm-infected mail. So be careful. A better way to do it would be to just leave that filter rule alone, and simply create the "whitelist" type rule that I'm specifying below, then simply move the whitelist rule up in priority so it is followed before any other rule beneath it can be complied with. Then I'd create, in effect, a "whitelist" type (or an "allow" type) filter rule that allows any message with the text string anywhere in its header that I just specified, above (sbgc.workingmansoftware.com), to get through, no matter what. Then move that rule up to the top so it's complied with by the spam/filter software before any other filter rules are. So you mean the email address that's in the "From:" field of all messages from DegreeInfo. And there's a problem there. Again, note the "From:" field in the raw email message, with full header, that I provided, above. The "From:" field only has a display name in it, and no actual email address. It was done that way so that no one would ever hit their "Reply" or "Reply to all" button in their email software and try to send a reply. Technically, the email is from the address you see in the "Return-path:" field in the email with full header that I provided above. And that email address is: [email protected] but that's not a real email address. See, the DegreeInfo forum software doesn't really want you to know the "From" address of its notification messages... because it never wants you to try to send an email back to it by clicking on your "Reply" or "Reply to all" button. It just wants to send you a message and then be done with you. So you'll have to filter on something else. It could be the text string that's in the "From:" field, as I explained above; but if your filter software will let you specify any text string in any part of the header, I'd go with that sbgc.workingmansoftware.com text string. It's unique and is just about guaranteed to be present in the header of virtually any message you receive from the forum software.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stupid Question? Mr. DesElms: I put in the sbgc.workinmangsoftware.com. The filter seems to have accepted it because everything is back to normal! Thanks, I realy appreciate the help. Abner
